Birthday Plans

I know I said that this particular blog is dedicated to my writing and you may be wondering why I have such a personal title for this post as my Birthday Plans, but I'm not going to be going into what exactly my birthday plans are.  I am taking the time to say that for my birthday I am taking off from my day job or rather taking a vacation and during that time I'm going to try and hammer away at the first novel, In the Shadows for the entire week off or 79 percent of my time off I'm going to try to devote to getting this first book done so that I can really start at getting into the second book and of course I'll update my few readers on here on how the novel is coming.  I'm still on Chapter 19 but I've written a few lays to add depth to the lore of the world, which I plan to incorporate into the novels; either in appendices or in the actual novels.   On that note to show I've not been completely idle at my writing for Ashes of the Fallen Series of books here is a sampling of a more revised form of the Lay of Keiken and Erienne;

In dawning days of Second Age didst dauntless Keiken appear.  

His hands held stalwart shield and mighty spear,

for war and fire filled forests and fields once fair. 

Villages burned brightly beneath its blaze in these bleak elder days.

And out from dreaded fear, out from the flames strode forth Erienne The Fair.

no spear, no shield, no axe, nor even sword, did she yet hold,

Only heart and head guided her hand against hateful enemies untold.

Ringed in the fire she fled into flaming forests,

holding tightly to sister's tiny hand.

So quickly somewhere along the way her sister's small fingers slipped away.

Sorrow greeted her as she stopped by river's sedge.

Fall's sad leaves drifted slowly in sorrowful forest where no birds sing,

By river's sedge she still stood teardrops slipping down her sallow cheeks.
_________________________________________

This is set in alliterative verse, not all the lays and songs are going to be in this format.  I was thinking of being overly ambition and actually setting the lays in the languages of the cultures they are from; but then I thought that such a thing would be of interest only to myself as the languages sources of inspiration are probably easily seen and I am no Tolkien, and also it would be far too time consuming that would probably be better spent on actually working the novels themselves.  These are being created by me only as backdrop for the setting and give flavor to the world of Ashes of the Fallen and it's sequel set of books I have planned and I'd really like to get to those sequel book series but first I have to set up the ground work for those books with the Ashes of the Fallen Story as that is the Beginning Point it has to start at for everything in the other books to make sense and to give the world a better grounding to the reader I think.  This is a huge project and I only plan on doing these two sets of novels series for this world.   Once done I don't plan on going back into the world of Ashes of the Fallen and it's companion series, especially not forward.