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  • The Last Gift-Knight

    Ten years of work left me right back where I started.

    The cover of the original book The Gift-Knight's Quest shows a leather clad man with a fiery orange cloak riding a white horse. His hair is whipping in the wind and in the distance behind him is smoke. Text at the bottom reads the author name Dylan Madeley.

    A journey like this doesn’t really begin with the first edition published. Where you could begin it is more nebulous: flashes of ideas in 2006, while I was in third year of my undergraduate degree? 2008, when a first draft was finally written?

    For the purposes of this post, I’m more concerned with the attempted career launch of late 2014 and early 2015. It was a time of great excitement and impatience, a decent case study regarding the dangers of getting one’s hopes up.

    “The Campaign”

    Lacking interest from any publisher, I first thought to publish this on my own, with no mentorship or guidance at the time. For that, I rightly expected to need a budget while having no savings to speak of; I was working inconsistent freelance editing and transcribing, listening to empty promises from one particularly erratic client and bouncing in and out of brief work stints with him, and content to use what I earned for the occasional splurge or short trip, while my middle-class parents kept housing and feeding me as I pursued my dream. Whatever career I thought I would get from my degree never transpired, though that did get me some interesting experiences with a magazine – something better suited to another post.

    What a long way to say I didn’t have much money, therefore I went around asking for some. I was familiar with the Kickstarter platform at the time having supported others, and I shopped around about as well as I would when I enter a store already knowing the one item I want.

    My promotional activity was an amalgam of everything I perceived other people to be doing. When they did it, I understood and others seemed to understand; people were going all out for their dream and didn’t have the backing of a corporate sales and marketing team, so word of mouth was the best way to go. When I believed I was carrying this out precisely as observed, I seemed to annoy people and even lost some friends.

    The money went to a small service provider which promised to do several things I couldn’t, and delivered on the basic and most tangible ones. Wraparound cover art, a press release, formatting of the book, everything I paid for. They couldn’t make people want to purchase or read this book. I wouldn’t work with them again.

    What phrasing: “make people…” I like living in a world where we have enough choice for that phrasing to be dubious. If I were able to access a power that would make people read and enjoy my work, there’s no reason why only I would bear this power – and that means anybody else with access could suddenly hijack my choices and yours, mandating our consumption, perhaps altering our perception so we are made to enjoy what we otherwise wouldn’t. Would some detached part of ourselves remain cognizant of our existence as marionettes, helplessly observing in first-person all the things we are made to do? Mentally screaming for the rest of our lives while our mouths are forced to smile? Creepy, dangerous, and wrong no matter who has that power – even if wielded solely by one who promised to use it for good. Therefore, I agree that I would rather live in a world where people arrive at some authentic form of appreciation and enjoyment themselves, and as a consequence, retain the capability to pan and subsequently avoid everything I have ever written if they see fit. Everybody has that lifelong right; you do, which means I do too.

    But everyone lives with that. It’s a baseline problem, separate from the only learning method I seem to employ: bumping into every wall of an unlit labyrinth as I hope to turn a welcome corner.

    2015: The Release Year

    In the background of everything, and not known to most, I had been an anxious wreck for a long time. I had a project to gain a social life that began during my undergrad years, and it was only either euphoria or the brink of collapse. I didn’t have a professional assessment until 2021, to validate exactly why the social realm seemed like such a frustrating place or what I was even doing. Some people seemed pretty insistent that I knew exactly what I was doing while pretending not to, which is the most frustrating reply to hear when you truly have no idea what you are doing.

    In my private life, I more often think of 2015 as The Medication Year. I got my prescription while I had yet to bounce out of my second roommate experience, had the dose steadily upped as I hoped for a breakthrough right around the next corner of the unlit labyrinth; something way more accessible and easier to understand. And somewhere along the way, I’m sure I botched my dosage upwards at least once, got into a disagreement about whether I should be taking it at all, and quietly titrated myself off without any guidance for doing so – quickly and improperly.

    The time span encompassed by that goes between the end of the Kickstarter campaign, the release, an era where I couldn’t seem to stay conscious for much longer than six hours at a time without needing even more sleep than the ridiculous amount I appeared to require, and coming out the other side.

    I feel quite satisfied to be alive after that. Once off the meds, I became capable of staying awake and aware long enough to work even one of the entry level jobs I knew I needed soon. If I were to continue, I decided, there should be no more Kickstarters; no one-stop-shop would deliver quite what I was hoping, and in the long term, soliciting funds hurt more than it helped. Anyway, it was self-evident I needed some form of income to proceed even without the very present external pressure to do so.

    That would lead us to 2016 and the boutique cosmetics manufacturing years, but those encompass the direct sequels and a couple other books released with cover art paid out of pocket. That’s another post in itself.

    The Gift-Knight’s Quest

    My first book is no longer for sale on any platform. If it is, it shouldn’t be. Perhaps someone is trying to sell you a pre-owned first edition at an inflated price; inflated because it’s my earliest work where I had the least knowledge of what to do, and also because I’ve seen eBay listings where people claim it’s from the 19th century or some other era. The author was born in 1985 and never had access to a time machine that he can recall.

    I’m surprised at how many decent reviews this book has, which I chalk up mostly to the willingness to be kind to a debut.

    I say this because I’m writing The Last Gift-Knight, or as it will be known upon release, The Gift-Knight’s Quest. After more than one quiet tweak and re-release, I am undertaking a deeper and more intensive effort to rewrite this book. To me, it’s The Last Gift-Knight not just because Derek could/will be the last gifted warrior in his tradition (tangent – I perceive a narrative hole in the first edition where the gift-knight tradition is well discussed, but no mention is ever made of the one that would have been sent for Jonnecht the Second, or the ones sent to any new regent in the Eastern Kingdoms, for starters). It’s also the last time I’ll attempt to have this book address the ideas I always had in mind, yet I wasn’t skilled or experienced enough to deliver in the first edition.

    My greatest obstacle in the process so far is having to read this book. I have gained a fresh appreciation for why it has been so difficult to persuade anybody else to read it. My chapter-by-chapter outline in advance of a writing retreat is about half way through, but my most recent note warns me to go back to the rather short section for Chapter Seven and actually read it closely this time, not only summarizing what’s there but noting suggested changes, just as I have done for other chapters. I can’t let myself skip steps, even if it’s a slog.

    And if it’s a slog for me, that suggests why it got many looks but few sales in any store where it was on consignment.

    When I took my first three books off sale, I felt like accepting them mostly as they were; I knew they were earlier works, learning is lifelong, and whether others can forgive the necessities of the journey, I of all people should be able to count on my own forgiveness. I expected to sweep through and immediately improve the reading experience by editing countless unorthodox dialogue tags. Other than that, how different could they read from any of the five books I’ve kept on sale?

    So, I opened up The Gift-Knight’s Quest, 2019 re-release edition, in epub and PDF editors to make the changes in parallel. Then I encountered a word choice I would make different, closely followed by a turn of phrase that didn’t mean what I must have thought it meant… an ever expanding list of things from the first couple of pages alone.

    No, thought the author, I see no quick fixes. I believe it would be less trouble to rewrite most of this book.

    And then I began to consider a host of other things. The series order should change; I should direct people to read Prince Ewald the Brave first. It could be read independently of anything published prior to it, anyway, similar to why I promote it and the books after it as readable on their own. But what of the series order? If the prequels are no longer prequels, and read first, they will already have established historic facts and world-building that The Gift-Knight’s Quest attempted to address with countless flashbacks – hoping to show echoes of the past in parallel with a journey in the present. By the same token, this must render obsolete more than one infodump in dialogue.

    If I merely removed flashbacks and brushed up what was left, this would become a short novel like Their Village, Their Fortress. I don’t intend for that. Scenes removed make room for scenes to be added, and I could imagine some that would better develop the present-time of the narrative.

    It would need new cover art. As I vaguely recall my agreement with the original cover artist, I was permitted to use her art for that edition. The 2019 revisions didn’t push that boundary much, essentially leaving it the same book. This time, I can’t really pretend it’s the same even if the title carries over.

    It’s just as well that I have no new stories in the queue. I’ll have my hands full rewriting this one. So full that even if simple logic dictates the propagation of changes to the sequels, perhaps an equal need to revise them (they rely far less on flashbacks, at least), equal need for new cover art… I write down a note when it comes to me, but beyond that, I refuse to look ahead to the next two projects implied by this one. I work better with one task at a time, so as not to feel overwhelmed. Paying work may mandate multitasking, but my creative work feels like a realm where I should consider my personal experiences and optimize my process accordingly.

    The Last Gift-Knight

    When I finally accepted that the difficult path for this project was the appropriate one, I created a working folder for it on my desktop named “Right Back Where I Started”. This refers to a long deleted social media message where I once cynically predicted that after a long series of failed efforts promoting all the past releases, and throwing good money after bad, I would find myself right back where I started.

    I’m standing at that place now and it’s not what I once feared. There’s a life I was worried I would end up with if I never found enough support for my creative works to wildly succeed: it’s very much my life today. It feels like a good life – good enough. With the wisdom of hindsight, I look back upon the only life I could have led, shaped by decisions based very much on my personality and the boundaries of my knowledge and capabilities at the time.

    A dust devil comprised of overwhelming possibilities and things that never came to pass has dispelled, leaving one path ahead that I can recognize. With the other paths stripped away, I might as well.

  • Going Wide

    Years ago, I let Amazon be the sole retailer for my books in exchange for Kindle Unlimited listing and other supposed benefits. My work simply never took off on that platform; KU reads stagnated and paperback editions never sold overseas.

    Eventually, I decided I may as well go wide. Even if I had the same luck on other platforms, readers would have more choice. For paperbacks, my one other option remains Barnes & Noble. For ebooks, my next easiest choice was the Kobo Store (a Canadian choice, great to have these days). Google Play Books rounded out the initial foursome.

    I still turned out the greatest volume on Amazon, but for me, that can mean about 99 discounted digital titles on release day and not many after that initial push.

    I have now added a fifth option: Itch.io

    This platform might be better known for indie gaming, but it does sell books. I found it simple to add my five available titles; it may have taken an hour or less, though I didn’t exactly use a stopwatch to figure this out and wouldn’t trust my inner sense of time. It just felt simple.

    It may be more complicated to list titles more effectively, but I did my best with a beginner’s grasp of things.

  • Listings on Global Pi Market

    Having mined Pi coin on my phone since 2019, and seeing the project recently listed for trade on markets, I had the whim to add four of my titles to the Global Pi Market app in digital format.

    Prince Ewald the Brave, The Fate of Lenn, The Redemption of Jarek, and Their Village, Their Fortress are now available at 1.000 Pi each for the first three and 0.500 Pi for the lattermost (I figured it’s roughly half the size of the others). Your choice of epub or PDF.

    You can find information about Pi here. The Global Pi Market is a user app within the Pi ecosystem that was not created by the official team.

    For those interested in purchasing with more familiar currency, all of my available titles can still be found via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and the Kobo Store. Just enter Dylan Madeley in the search bar and see what comes up.

  • A series reading order

    A series reading order

    This year, I commence the project of rewriting and re-releasing my first three books. Once I realized I would do more than fix dialogue tags, I considered this a great opportunity to change the otherwise fragmented reading order of my releases.

    I’ll refer to the previous series chart, lovingly put together in MS Paint, to help you understand.

    The original release order and chronology

    An original series reading order, which begins with The Gift-Knight's Quest, then The Crown Princess' Voyage, then The Masked Queen's Lament, before showing you where two standalone books and three prequels fit in the series chronology.

    The prequel trilogy was always meant to be something you could read on its own. I realized long ago that I didn’t intend to write a seven or eight part series that needed to be read in order when the first book was not that widely read. Likewise, some readers refuse to enter a series unless it has a definite ending in its chronology. Mine had one called The Masked Queen’s Lament, but with five books having been released after it, there could be confusion over release order versus series chronology, timeline, and other things.

    Also, I found myself not promoting my initial trilogy because I wanted to lead with my best material, then invite people to look back if they were interested enough in the world presented. Along a ten year publishing journey, I like to believe I’ve improved at my craft. It felt dubious to say, “Just tough out the first books, and you’ll be rewarded later.” People may tough out the required reading in courses to advance their understanding or perhaps to pursue careers, yet my books are being offered as entertainment.

    I would find it difficult to tough out a film on the vague promise of better sequels; critical acclaim for those sequels (and, marginally, the encouragement of a widespread fanbase) might coax me. I am neither well known nor critically acclaimed. I have the power to roll up my sleeves and do more work, and that’s what I’ll do.

    One day, I decided to take my first trilogy off sale for an editing sweep, thinking I would just clean up the dialogue tags and accept the rest. I went as far as quietly fixing a few typographical errors in The Crown Princess’ Voyage and uploading the new version. There is much to be said about presentation, and much improvement you can make to a reader’s experience with the simplest corrections. Even then, I began to wonder. I looked to my first book.

    From page one of The Gift-Knight’s Quest I kept encountering things I would have done different, which would better express the ideas I intended to present. It was more than just a word choice here and there, particularly since I had already brushed it up for the 2019 reformatting/re-release (it amazes me that I didn’t touch the errant dialogue tags back when I was content to make simple changes).

    Now, the process is happening as it did with Their Village, Their Fortress. Ideas occur to me at random and inconvenient times, like when I’m about to shower. I’m compiling a Notes document, because I left too much to memory the first go-around.

    To be fair, I don’t loathe my first books, and many people have enjoyed them. Every so often, I find something in them that makes me proud. Overall, as gamers might say: “It’s a skill issue.” The most dramatically different of these re-releases should be the first book. The further along I get, hopefully, the more intact the original releases should be. I’ll find out when I get there.

    Three books still on the market (Prince Ewald the Brave, The Fate of Lenn, and The Redemption of Jarek) have already delivered a factual account of history resulting in the “gift-knight trilogy”, so what do the historical “flashback” sequences mean in The Gift-Knight’s Quest? I could already give a couple reasons why they would be incongruent with the prequels (though, for now, I will not), begging the question: what are they really and what purpose do they serve? There shouldn’t be as many of them if they aren’t meant to properly represent the burden of history on the shoulders of Derek and Chandra. They should occur frequently enough to serve their true purpose, which is less often than in the original text.

    Instead, more time should be spent considering the present of the story, who the characters are, and what they do. Every idea that has come to me so far is like that. The reimagining of some scenes and the necessary addition of others.

    Well, I won’t spoil everything. I just wanted to offer a taste of my work in progress.

    The new reading order

    Sharing once more, because the focus image appeared to cut off the simple chart legend. This was created in Canva, and the template was Blue and Green Modern Project Timeline Overview Graph by Aida.

    A series order chart suggesting a reading order for books by Dylan Madeley. The order goes: Prince Ewald the Brave, The Fate of Lenn, The Redemption of Jarek, Alathea: Goddess and Empress, current work in progress, next rewrite project, Their Village Their Fortress, and third rewrite project.
  • How 2024 Went

    How 2024 Went

    Writing, editing, and releasing an unexpected book was the highlight of my previous year. How did I get there?

    Some things were set in motion during 2023. About a year removed from my prior career doing shift work for a soap manufacturing company, and determined never to go back (to avoid further accelerated deterioration of my lower vertebrae, among other reasons), I found myself deep in an unsuccessful job hunt. That didn’t surprise me; one reason I took so long to abandon my prior career was the expectation of a tough job hunt, based on past experience. What stung a bit more was hiring a specialized career agency that helped revamp my resume, finally landed me in-person interviews, and coached me for them, only to encounter the same result. The agency contract expired and I had a spruced up resume, but no job, and not for lack of effort on either side.

    Then, a family member knew of a former coworker whose company was hiring at entry level in the middle of a crisis. They would train just about anybody to get some help quick. I still had to compete for my job, hot-dropped into a hectic environment with training on the fly, but I encountered the right opportunity at the right time and my efforts happened to be what the company required. I should never forget that suitable effort must intersect with other activating conditions to achieve a desired outcome, and I have very little patience for anybody who makes immediate negative assumptions about effort whenever the desired outcome isn’t achieved. We emphasize effort because we believe it’s within our control, but we should remain aware of other relevant factors.

    It’s been a profound privilege to have a family willing to keep me off the streets while strongly encouraging me to pursue independent living. At age 38, I had finally landed an opportunity that would allow me to afford the lower end of Toronto’s rent.

    The pivot between 2023 and 2024 was marked by finding my current living space, being approved for it, and setting my current life in motion.

    An assisted and efficient move later, I found myself with space and time. Living around six other people and two dogs (one dog, admittedly, being super chill) required a certain daily energy for me to adapt. Living alone presents the opposite end of the same balance issue: I get to socially disengage (and recharge) as needed, but now I must remember to make time for the minimum level of social engagement I require. Now I would consider every problem I had not been solving because I needed to prioritize finding/maintaining work and the move while coexisting with others. I have never been stellar at multitasking, and pushing it too hard too quickly can cause severe distress; yet I realize life rarely allows me to hyperfocus on one thing until it’s done properly before considering the next. In fact, any hyperfocus I can muster probably involves neglecting other important things for that duration.

    One issue had been lack of physical activity. Work used to involve standing, using my hands in pursuit of production targets I would have difficulty meeting; commuting was by public transit and often involved walking or standing. Put those together, and frequent physical activity was built into much of my day, though in a manner that has caused some ongoing issues. My first low-hanging fruit goal was to get moving again, but carefully, and within budget.

    Most of my social media images in the ensuing year are from kayaking two routes: toward Hanlan’s Island, or up the Humber River toward Bloor Street. Given a set launch point from Budapest Beach, and specific windows of time, I had a good warm season of scheduled activities which didn’t particularly hurt my back. Once things got cold, I first invested in an elliptical trainer, but I had let too many sedentary weeks go by and was no longer ready for that; I then invested in a walking pad which I make sure to use most days. I’m working my way up to being able to “run”, for elliptical trainer values of running.

    You might already have wondered where a new book fit in all this, especially since it wasn’t part of the plan. If there had been a book plan, it was created in 2015, not long after I self-published The Gift-Knight’s Quest. Before then, I didn’t even know what a sequel would be. I created a loose plan of six books by title. Most of those titles changed along the way, but the nature of the sequels followed by prequels were maintained.

    The Redemption of Jarek, my seventh title, was not directly part of this plan. The events therein were strongly implied by statements made by character(s) in the first trilogy, while events in sixth book The Fate of Lenn certainly begged the question, “Where did Jarek slink off to and why doesn’t he have any further role in the catastrophe to follow?”

    Perhaps I wanted this in my back pocket in case a fandom arose which demanded it. In contrast, perhaps the same motivators which pushed me to work on and release the prequel trilogy caught up with me once again: I don’t have infinite time to work with, and who else would I trust to tell my stories exactly as I would? If I have stories to tell, perhaps I had better write them while I can.

    When the first quarter of 2024 didn’t keep me busy with moving and setting up this new life, or paddling in a boat, I learned of a worse feeling. I wondered if I didn’t have more stories, and what that meant to my life if so. It felt profoundly empty to wonder what more I could do for seven titles that never caught on with anybody.

    Then, as if in answer to a prayer, something occurred to me around June. I could well have considered it while paddling in a boat or hand-washing dishes. Once I had even a shred of an idea, something I wouldn’t even call a full scene let alone a chapter or a story, there was no doubt in my mind.

    I had time and space. If I didn’t take advantage of any spark I could muster, and the time and space to make something happen, then how did I know whether my future would leave me the same time and space?

    Likewise, my recall capabilities aren’t stellar. I knew that at the very least the initial ideas should be written down because, yes, no fresh consideration is too important that I cannot possibly forget it. If I were lucky, I might recall it ten years later when it’s not such an opportune time.

    Maybe writing it down was the necessary lifehack. Recording detailed ideas was a cleaner and marginally more linear way of exploring them; an idea became a scene which begged questions which gradually fleshed out a story. A process which left something that I would be able to access as long as I can still read English.

    Life changed, as did my mood. Now I had a mission. Through July and August, things moved along so smoothly that I wondered if this had been the real story in my back pocket: something so thoroughly hidden that I have no record of it prior to June, nor had I been thinking about it due to the prequels. Something deliberately forgotten until the appointed time. Yet I have no way to substantiate that hypothesis, and didn’t feel like puzzling over that when I could write the story instead. I had a similar feeling while I created The Redemption of Jarek, as if I were recreating lost material from scratch.

    Cue Materia Primoris (The X-Files Theme) for comedic effect; then I break the fourth wall to meet your gaze, shrug my shoulders, and get back to work.

    It was going so well that I wondered whether I could release it for my birthday in mid-September, as a gift to myself. I’m glad I didn’t do that. I still keep two separate repositories of stages of editing and I could one day show you just how glad I am that I didn’t stop so early. If we’re only considering the edits performed after I began to use Atticus software to anticipate the paperback layout and ebook format (i.e. late in the process, excluding many date-in-title versions for Microsoft Word kept in a different folder), there are almost 40 separate run-throughs saved. The proper edits took me into the month of October.

    Everything seemed to unfold when it should. I don’t believe I could have finished it sooner, or if so, not properly.

    All this, amidst the backdrop of brewing sociopolitical upheavals on a global scale that haven’t yet touched me but will inevitably reach us all at the appointed time. Never a shortage of things to consider.

    Now we have entered 2025. I’m left to wonder what else is in my back pocket, if anything, and what comes next.

  • A New Year

    It seems to have been ten years since I self-published my first book, and only now have I done something with my domain name. You’re looking at it.

    My name is Dylan Madeley. You can learn whatever I put about myself on Amazon here. You can find a review of my latest release here. You can also check out my Facebook Page.

    My next goal is for any following blog posts to be far less slapdash. Until then, consider this an introduction and placeholder.