We recently announced the upcoming third season of Blood Magic, which will also be the final season, and I promised you in that post some thoughts on what might be coming next. While there’s still more than a year before it will be time for the next thing, that’s not too early to be thinking about it. However, please note that nothing is certain yet, and until I make a formal announcement around this time next year, all of what I say here should just be considered possibilities.
Announcing: Blood Magic Season Three
Last year around this time, I was having doubts about whether I should do a second season of Blood Magic, much less a third. The response to the first season had been lackluster to say the least, many of the episodes had been a struggle to write, and there was a significant opportunity cost to continuing to work on something that seemed to be a dud, instead of turning my focus to something that might be better received, like Fo’Fonas. This year, I am pleased to say that I did not have any hesitations or reservations about continuing with the third (and final) season of Blood Magic.
Blood Magic S1:E11: Old Blood, Part One Re-Release
s I’ve gotten deeper into the season one revisions, I’ve found myself less and less excited to do them, mostly because there was less and less to do. Many of the early episodes featured significant problems that I was eager to address through the revision process, but the later episodes are stronger, and more importantly, they are more complex in their continuity. While I know that there are ways in which I could improve them, doing so would require me to make more significant changes that would alter the series in more fundamental ways than I promised to make when I started these revisions.
Blood Magic S2:E10: Older Than Stone Release
I’d been looking forward to writing this episode for a long time. I’d dropped hints about the dragons in Lufilna before, most significantly in All Cooped Up and No Place to Go, and Rest for the Weary, but I had never come out and said “yes, there are dragons in this world, and here is what they’re like.” This episode was my opportunity to show off my dragons, and introduce them to the people of Merolate. It’s ironic, therefore, that as I was finishing the episode I found myself concerned that it was too boring.
Blood Magic S1:E10: Blossoming Re-Release
nice story. Most of my revisions, aside from cleaning up typos, were just cleaning up phrasing and dialogue, and tightening up a description here or there to make the plotting a bit more airtight. It’s always dangerous to justify things that happen in your story after they happen, which I found I was doing too much of in the original; there should be less of that in the new version.
Blood Magic S2:E9: Bread and Steel Release
knew, beyond a doubt, that it was going to be one of the most exciting and interesting episodes to write, because Vere is such a fascinating character, and we would finally get to spend a significant amount of time in his viewpoint. We've had brief snippets in his viewpoint, like in All Cooped Up and No Place to Go, and Fallen Angel, but we've never had an episode where the main events of the story revolved around the Guardcaptain. Bread and Steel was going to change that, with a story leveraging his particular talents and traits in service to the peculiar setup of Merolate's military.
Blood Magic S1:E9: Unbalanced Re-Release
Some of the episodes I've written for Blood Magic have been memorable to me, for one reason or another: the first two because I wrote them and revised them so many times before they became part of this series, the season one finale, Borivat's story in Cracks in the Ice, or even the recent Contaminant. In some cases it might be because of the amount of time I spent on the writing, or how difficult the writing was, or, less commonly, how much I personally enjoy a given episode. Should I admit that I remembered very little about Unbalanced before I did my pre-revision re-read?
Blood Magic S2:E8: Rest for the Weary Release
series, which rest, in my mind at least, mostly on the shoulders of Kiluron and Doil, with the Blood Magic itself, and the interactions of the characters and plots with it, playing a strong supporting role. This episode was the perfect opportunity to return, as it were, to the roots of Blood Magic. I think you'll find it a better reading experience as a result.
Blood Magic S1:E8: Who’s Afraid of the Dark? Re-Release
Aside from cleaning up continuity, I also made some minor technical changes to things like sentence structures, and word choice. Changes or no changes, I really enjoy this episode, and I am pleased to present it to you.
Blood Magic S2:E7: Contaminant, Part Two Release
how much I struggled with the writing, and why that was. I won’t rehash those difficulties here, but the result was that I was put far behind on my writing for this episode, barely even starting it before the month began. Plus, part two proved to have its own difficulties, some related to the troubles with the first part, and some entirely original, which led me to even write August’s episode out of order (which you will read about when episode twenty goes live next month). The short version of this post: Contaminant would really benefit from my new staging revisions methodology.
IGC Publishing 