Questline: The Other Book

I know that if I keep switching which book I’m talking about working on I’m going to start sounding very uncommitted to this whole authorship thing. But, I do have one more book to mention at this time. It’s the one I’m actually working on writing at this moment.

Enter Questline.

This book originally came up as a thought for a fun, quirky serialized adventure that I was going to release in episodes on Kindle Vella. That was looking pretty good until I got done with my first month’s worth of episodes and got an email where Amazon said they were going to can the entire Kindle Vella platform and I had to decide what I was going to do with this story. To make a long story short, I decided another novella was just what it was going to have to be. I didn’t necessarily see any other platforms for serialized stories that I cared to get into at the moment. And I didn’t really have enough of a name or following yet to do that on my own website. Thus, Questline is now bound for novella-hood.

Now, what is Questline?

Questline is something of a fantasy parody. Parody means that it is something that pokes fun at some of the tropes of fantasy but is still celebrating the genre and embracing it. It just exaggerates some of the tropes and flips them on their head at points. The subgenre feels like it’s going to fit my quirky narrator tone like a glove.

This book came as an idea while I was working a late day at a friends house renovation last October. I had seen this Kindle Vella concept and was interested in trying out a serielized story of my own. I just needed to think of a fun, simple concept to test it out.

The idea started off as the concept: what if I wrote a story where the questing industry was a sham? Like, all of these monsters were just playing a part and the whole thing was fabricated?

Boom.

My imagination exploded into action. I started writing out thoughts that night after getting the kids to bed. By the biginning of November I had eight chapters made and an email from Kindle Vella telling me that those chapters were going to be homless by February.

Well, I toyed with the idea of still doing this story as episodes, which is why I kept my wording a little open-ended at the end of The Game where I gave a preview of Questline. I thought about putting it on my website here and doing it as episodes. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have the enfastructure or audience to justify that yet. So it is moving towards Novella status. I estimate this book will be about 50,000 to 60,000 words, but we will see what happens.

The story, which you can find the first three chapters of for free here, follows the adventures of Donivar and his brother Roland. Donivar desperately wants to be a Quester, one of those gallant figures crusading about for the cause of justice. Roland is there to make sure Donivar doesn’t become a martyr to his zeal, not really wanting to tire himself with too much gallantry, but interested in the lifestyle that status could lead to. Along with the brothers, we’ll see the perilous journey of Sal, a friend of theirs, who is eager to help launch them on their adventure, not realizing that she is forcing herself into one as well. Together, these three will uncover the devious workings of the mysterious Questline.