The Redux List

Well, I'm back. As you can see, I've had good reason to be away. Her name is Dacy Mae Perschon, and she was born on Ash Wednesday; February 6, 2008 at 11:07 a.m. Being as she was born on Ash Wednesday, my wife Jenica and I have joked that we're giving up sleep for Lent.

A few weeks have gone by and life is finding a rhythm where I have moments (like this one) to turn my attention to Magik Beans. This isn't to say it hasn't been on my mind a great deal. I sat in my wife's hospital room the day after Dacy was born, dreaming up new possibilities for the story, but found more often than not that my mind kept returning to some of the inconsistencies from Book 1 that need cleaning up as I dive into book 2.

Hence this post. This is the Redux List. If you click on the title ("The Redux List") at the top of this post and bookmark it, you can come back from time to time to get updates on the alterations I'll be making to Book 1. I thought it best to keep the list all in one place rather than scattering it all over the flog (that's "fiction blog" for anyone who didn't know).

The list is already more or less comprehensive, but links to the changed pages will only appear as I make the changes, which will happen over the year as I work through the editorial process and write episodes for Book 2.

Redux List:

1. The Tree first appears without foliage (after all, it IS winter).
2. Andrew visits Ripper to ask about damage to the comic shop.
3. Blackout and Ripper come up with the idea to have a benefit concert to save the coffee shop.
4. At the concert, the music causes the Tree to bloom and grow foliage (setting up the idea of music which is a major theme of book 2).
5. The fund-raising concert makes enough money to keep the shop from going under (barely).
6. The Three Fates explain the Tree's growth to Lara, which sheds light on their concert going habit
7. When Lara, Blackout, and crew enter the Tree to rescue Andrew, Ripper brings his bagpipes instead of the tool belt. He explains that bagpipes were used in battle to frighten the enemy.
8. In order to focus her healing powers, Lara uses music to block outside noise (her Ipod).
9. It is Courtney and Silke who go to the front of the train on the approach to the North Pole, not Courtney and Lara. Blackout goes because Granny explains they will need the pyrotechnics, as her magic is not destructive, but protective and healing.
10. When the Leprechauns attack the train and Sunny is wounded, Ripper reacts in the only way he knows; music. He steps from the Train boldly and stands before the oncoming tide of Leprechauns. He begins to play a melancholy Irish lament, which stops the army in its tracks. Overwhelmed by the power of the music and their own shame rising from nostalgic memories of home, the Leprechaun army reject Finn's plan and give themselves up.
11. The damage Finn begins with the power of Spring starts a chain reaction of destruction; the ice continues to break, crack and explode, placing Jouloutorni, the city of Christmas in peril. Andrew's "kether moment" (to borrow Philosopher One's idea) which links him to the Tree permits him to halt this destruction by harnessing elemental power. Lara and Andrew together are able to heal the damage to the Pole and avert its destruction.

This set of changes feels most satisfactory to me, and allowed me to start thinking seriously about the second book without constantly thinking, "but that didn't happen in the first book." I had also felt that the wanton slaughter of the Leprechaun army was wrong from the moment I had written it, but was trying to keep my promise to myself to finish a "first draft" of Book 1 last year.

We can all consider the original draft to have occurred on a different branch of the Tree. And with all that set aside, tomorrow will see the second installment of Book 2.