That lack of accomplishment is what fueled
SalQuest to begin with; the story is a
metafictional tale in which frustrated writer Salvador Roberts (that’s me!) is
thrown into a world composed of his myriad creations, a crazy-quilt combo of
his many settings, populated with the majority of his unused characters. The
tales forces Sal to confront his failures, from seeing just how broken the
combination of his worlds is due to lack of real development, and many worlds
not being prepared for the ludicrous threats inherited from others. Likewise,
being forced to confront the heroes and villains who’ve been left to rot on the
mental backburner, and are now forced into the absolute hellhole that is the
unhinged mixture of his settings. All the while, Sal must deal with his own
increasing mental instability, as its extremely clear from the beginning that
he is
not cut out to be a fantasy
adventure hero, not cut out to handled his own character’s problems, and is
drowning himself in constant guilt over having failed his creations as well as
himself.
There was a point where I actually had a decent roadmap of
where I wanted the story to go, as well as a full cast of characters already
decided on that Sal would meet and travel with, to try and figure out a way to
stabilize the world he was now trapped in, and at least bring some level of
peace to the surviving heroes who were struggling to keep everything together.
I’ll go ahead and spoil it, though: in the end, Sal would
discover, or at least be lead to believe, that the world of his creations was
only possible because the even that forged the world did so at the cost of
Earth itself. Upon realizing this, Sal utterly snaps. Guilt crosses over into
genocidal/suicidal abandon, and the story switches from
Salvador’s perspective to that of the heroes
trying to stop him as Sal becomes a force of destruction determined to destroy
reality. The story probably ends with Sal succeeding, eliminating the
artificially constructed chimera of his settings and managing to restore the
Earth. Then, traumatized by everything, he blows his head off with a shotgun.
Like I said, very depressing.
SalQuest was always more of an attempt to process my rancid
feelings about myself as an author, moreso than be an enjoyable story for
others to read. And at one point, I thought I had somewhat processed those
feelings through working on the older version of the story, decided I wanted to
stop miring myself in those emotions for much longer, and put the concept to
bed.
But here we are, in 2021, and I’ve got nothing else worth
showing for all my mental grinding since then, as far as genre fiction stories.
Even when it came to my erotica writing, done under another name, I’ve been
struggling like never before to accomplish anything. 2019 was actually very
productive on that end, but then 2020 happened, and while all my peers in that
sector kept on going strong, stronger than ever even, I have floundered in the
dirt, and despite clawing my way back into getting a few things done, I feel
left behind and bereft of capability in a way I haven’t since I first wrote
The Final Story of Salvador Roberts back
in 2017, during a bout of seething self-loathing at my failures.
And then the amazing web serial
Worth the Candle finished a couple months ago. Just as another web
serial,
The Fifth Defiance, got me
really galvanized to write what would become
Graven,
Worth the Candle
got me thinking again about
SalQuest,
and how the problems that inspired that work are just as relevant as ever. Moreso
now, because, in the time since then, I have felt my gumption for my older
projects all fall away, and the few newer projects I tried to get going die
before even getting started. Truly,
SalQuest
feels even more relevant now than ever to my personal development.
But, things have changed, my ideas have shifted, my emotions
have been refined a bit. I’ve resigned myself in some ways, while becoming
re-determined in others. While I wasn’t really that keen on my old plans for
the story, I decided to take a more free-form approach to at least starting off
this time around. The result is I’ve already veered wildly off course from how
I originally envisioned things, and I’ve now written
Salvador into a corner I’m not sure I can get
him out of. I could also just be burned out on the idea: I’m bad with long form
projects, and this is shaping up to be an actual epic, assuming I don’t whiff
the word count and truncate everything again.
This is also a story that’s going to need a ton of work and
may take a long time. The 45k+ words below are the results of multiple rewrites
and corrections as I went already, and plot-wise, I feel like I’ve barely gotten
started. As it stands, I’ve found myself falling back on cheap and easy to
solutions to not confront the trickier problems presented by the setting itself
and to avoid dealing with characters I still feel are too precious to have a
story like this be their debut, despite the fact that I’m unlikely to ever
actually write them anywhere else. Likewise, despite the story being about Sal
confronting his creations, I keep finding myself making new, original
characters for him to meet, just because part of me always wants to be making
new things. And furthermore, I’m not sure the setting as I’ve constructed it
here really works, being simultaneously an absolute clusterfuck of a world
combination, and also being stripped down to a very basic “one small nation
surrounded by evil empires” set up that I immediately considered too boring.
This idea isn’t dead, but I am forcing myself to stop here
with this version. I think there are some good ideas and moments in this, and I
hate wasting material, so I’m posting it anyway, unfinished. Maybe over time, I
can keep posting drafts as I go, as some kind of experiment in showcasing story
development. Maybe not. At some point, when I have a version I feel I can work
with, I’ll eventually post it as a real serial, and an ebook, but I don’t want
to get ahead of myself.
While I am unsatisfied with this version overall, and don’t
wish to continue it, writing it has at least gotten me closer to figuring out
what I really want to do with the story. I’m still undecided on a lot of
things, however, and it may be a while before I have anything further to show.
As such, for those whom I’ve discussed
SalQuest
with, here is at least something to tide you over, to give an idea of what I
was going for. Consider this a first or first-and-a-half (considering at least
half the chapters were already redone) draft of the concept.
On a final note,
SalQuest
is set up as a direct sequel to
The Final Story of Salvador Roberts. You should read that first. Don’t worry, it’s
shorter and much faster paced than
SalQuest
already is.
