Website Database

For the past few weeks, I've been working on some new elements for my website - specifically the story timeline that spans both of my fictional novel series. It's been quite a challenge trying to figure out what to put in the timeline without allowing for spoilers, and I've had to have friends and family restrain my desire to tell the whole world my stories through the timeline as opposed to the timeline being just that - a timeline. I am a storyteller, after all, and if given the chance, I will explain the entire plot of my book from front to back - in detail. An actual timeline shouldn't dive that deep, at least not yet. After creating a baseline timeline, I can slowly add deeper elements to it as the months and years pass and my series grow.

So now that I have a pretty good idea what needs to be done with the timeline structure - killing my darlings is never easy - I am free to slide over to another project directly connected to my website: the database. I'm only calling it that right now because I don't have a proper name for it yet, but essentially the database is going to be a collection of information from both of my series and the stories/novellas between.

At first glance, the database might seem like an over-glorified glossary, but I can assure you it will be so much more than that. Right now, my thought is to have the database be broken into categories: weapons/artifacts, people/creatures, environments/buildings. Each item in the database will be plugged into one of those three pairs of categories, whichever most closely resembles the entry.

So, for example, the database entry for SilverTech Industries would fall under environments/buildings. The entry will include information on when the company originated and the circumstances under which it originated, what it specializes in - current projects and experiments, possibly a roster of notable employees, and references to any stories SilverTech Industries can be found in.

Another example is pulse technology, which would fall under weapons/artifacts. I'll go into a bit of history as to where pulse technology originated from, what types of weapons currently use pulse technology, and maybe a breakdown of which stories contain various formats of pulse technology, for example pulse shotguns and pulse grenades.

Yes, I know it sounds very detail oriented. But I think each entry will add to the stories of Black Earth and Expired Reality as a whole. And my plan is to continually add new entries to the database every week or so, and also to possibly self-publish them in a compendium maybe at the end of the year or when I have enough items to warrant a book.