AMACHI Project Journal: Oldie But Goodie

Amachi is an African female name that means: “Who knows what god has brought us through this child.”

Amachi is also the name of the main character and title of the fantasy novel that I am currently working on. I’ve been working on this story, on and off, since 2006, and can  give credit to my wife for helping me develop the overall storyline and a few sub plot’s and underlying messages within the tale.

It’s about a young woman, a warrior, named Amachi and her desperate search to locate and reunite the members of her family, lost to the chains of slavery. Of course, the story isn’t as straight forward and simple as that. Amachi’s entire race, the zi’Den,  have been enslaved and used for manual labor by Emperor Xiegiss, so being who she is and what she is, puts Amachi at odds with society at large and the world in general.

There are many issues and obstacles that Amachi will have to confront and overcome throughout the story, the most obvious being society itself, the threat of slavery, along with not knowing where to begin looking for her family; but also, there are other issues that will arise speaking to Amachi’s femininity.

As a young child, Amachi lost her family when slave wranglers raided her village. During the raid, she was spirited away deep within the woods by a Derjjuwa, a warrior of the zi’Den. Over the years, while evading capture, the warrior raised her. He taught her the ways of the Derjjuwa and trained her in the use of various Hand Arts, Weapon Arts, and Power Arts. So, now as a young woman, all Amachi knows is how to be a warrior. Along her journey, she will cross paths with certain characters and be pulled into certain situations that will call to the famine part of her. The part of her that she’s never had to address.

So, with that, and other things like actually finding some members of her family, and only discovering the fates of others, Amachi’s journey will evolve and morph into something bigger, affecting things outside the somewhat selfish parameters of her original goal.

One of the main reason why I’ve been working on this story on and off for so many years is because it has the potential, at least in my mind,  to be a very big story. And epic, and saga, lol. Don’t I wish! My last character count was about 60 or 70 characters, spanning three books. Not to mention the tons of cultures, locations, sciences, and technologies that I’ve had to develop to make the world “real”.

With my current attempt, I took at look at the outline and summary for the first book, and realized that I could really break it up into four or five smaller books. Each book telling the story of Amachi trying to track down a family member and the end result of her search. Amachi is only looking for her Father, Mother, and her older Brother and Sister. Each one of those journeys can be a book on it’s own, in a sense. We’ll see how it works out.

Right now, I’m reading through what I’ve already written, the Prologue, Chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2, to get reacquainted with the story. I’ll post some excerpts of what I already have for the story throughout the week.

JW