March 14, 2021

Jaysin's Song - the opening

Last week I started working on drafting the third book in The Last Wizard series – Jaysin’s Song. Book One – Tamesan’s Song – the original The Last Wizard – focusses on Tam coming of age in a small pre-medieval society where male warriors dominated the community and girls were expected to grow up to be women who served the men. Tam doesn’t fit the norm. Underlying the community is a legend justifying the men spending summers away from home, apparently on dragon hunts. Tam and her brother expose the lies at the heart of their community. Book Two – Chasse’s Song – follows a different coming of age for Tam’s older brother, Chasse, who has to learn to be a warrior, one whose duty is based on truth and honour. He helps his sister, his younger brother and a baby dragon escape the danger pursuing them, and learns who he must become. And, so, to Book Three.
 
Jaysin was a misfit in his village because he loves studying things and understanding how the world works. He showed no care in relationships with other children and certainly no interest in their games. But we learn in the second book that he has an amazing propensity for learning, for communicating with animals and for learning magic. Because his sister is paired with a dragon and can use dragon magic, and because his brother is an emerging great warrior, Jaysin feels he must create his own identity to step out of the shadow of his siblings. Rather than being suppressed by his station and treatment by his peers, he is determined to be better than anyone else in his ways. Book Three begins with Jaysin in his fifteenth summer, now having spent five years researching and learning and experimenting with sources of magic. He is keen to show others what he can do and thereby earn his status in the new city.
 
I have been writing plot notes for the novel, exploring how it can reflect Jaysin’s coming of age as an ambitious sorcerer in a much larger and even more dangerous world than he left behind when he escaped with his siblings from Harbin. Jaysin is different to his siblings for many reasons, and it will be fun developing a character who has an ‘edge’ to him – an interest in testing what is truth, what is good and bad, what is convenient, what brings recognition. He will test his siblings’ patience and their sense of what is right. And it will be challenging to keep growing Tam and Chasse and the dragon in the background to Jaysin’s story, giving them scope to adapt and learn and change through success, failure and suffering.
 
Today, the opening of this novel reached 4000 words, almost the first chapter done. It’s too early to explain Jaysin further. I have been developing a much larger world in readiness for his entry. I’ll write more about Jaysin, his challenges and the wider world in future blogs.