(Working Title)

I'm Maria, a 19 year old costume design student who's also working on a couple of novels.

Can't believe I'm having to add this but if you contact me about beta reading for money, editing for money, making commissioned art for money, making a book cover for money, etc it's an instant block now. There are too many of you and you irritate me.

My current WIP is titled "Livanna" (a gothic romance inspired by Carmilla) but is tagged under it's working title so if you would like to find content specifically related to that book you can find the hashtags #blood in the wine and #bitw in the search bar on my page. When I am posting characters, I might also start tagging them so #Livanna #Livanna bitw (antag/it's complicated) and #Jacqueline #Jacqueline bitw (protag).

My other WIP is "The Curse of Your Kiss" so if you are interested in a sapphic, dark reimagining of The Little Mermaid, you can find content related to that in #the curse of your kiss and #tcoyk. The main characters of this novel will be tagged as #Delta #Delta tcoyk (protag) #Nerissa #Nerissa tcoyk (antag/it's complicated) #Amara #Amara tcoyk (Li/it's complicated)

To separate out my other replies, I will also be tagging those as #tag you're it and asks as #💌

I may post polls on here related to chunks of text, cliff hangers, chapter formats, characters, the title etc to gain some crowd feedback and adapt my novel to be more appealing to other people as well as myself.

I would love some mutuals so we can review each others work and help each other out!

If you would like to send any asks about my characters, the plot, or provide any helpful resources for writing, or even just say hi feel free to send a carrier pigeon (drop a note in my ask box)

Before anyone brings it up, I am aware some of my mood boards, etc, have AI images in them. I do not use generative AI so don't see an issue given that I'm not personally contributing to the overuse of artificial intelligence. I try to limit how much I copy and paste/use them however sometimes they are the only thing available for specific aesthetics, I will not be using AI to write or to create images, I am very adamatly against it.

No, ecosia, I do not mean hospital. Nor do I mean 2000s health care centre. Nor do I mean a medical centre. We're talking tiny little building in a rural area in the Victorian era. Tell me, so I can translate it already T_T

Any time I look up "doctor's" it just thinks I mean the plural of "doctor". I'm sorry that we call it such a simple stupid thing where I'm from, so much so that the internet doesn't know what I'm on about.

I'm actually losing my grip.

TW for death of a loved one

Hi lovely! Thank you for asking, also I love your username.

💟: how is your style different in this work compared to previous ones? has it more shifted for the story or just developed in general?

Currently I have three works on the go and the plan is to write them all in different styles.

The plan for my book Ettie is to write in a young adult style, the language will be a bit easier than my other two because it will be told from the perspective of a 15-16 year old. There is a major theme of naivety so I want this to come across in the writing style. Since this one will be focused on the characters, description segments will likely be more detached and shorter.

The Curse of Your Kiss will be a bit more elevated. That is going to be a dark fantasy novel. I'd love to pull inspiration from the way A Letter To The Luminous Deep was written, not in the format but the way the characters speak. There will bean equal balance of plot and character and description is important in this one, but I would also like to focus on action - especially since one of the characters starts out mute. Towards the end, description based on sight will stop, but I won't say why for now.

(No judgement, please. I'm doing the thing where you write and don't think about it, so I genuinely cannot remember any of the words I've put on the page XD)

If you are here to scam me, I will drag you to hell

If you are attempting to scam me, count your day

I hate scammers

In addition to scammers

If you are a "professional beta reader" fuck off

If you are an artist begging for commissions, go refresh yourself on who is meant to contact whom for commissions

If you are a professional author offering advice on narrative with 1 or 2 posts on your blog... You might as well be sellotape because I can see right through you

If you have no header, no bio, a stock image as your PFP, a job offer in your bio, "professional" in your bio, especially a combination of the above youre not getting aired. You're getting insulted

If you message me just "hey" or "hello" and you're a portfolio page, I'm gonna be blunt with you because I am TIRED of talking to scammers, spammers, bots and AI slop makers

Hello hello! Thank you for asking!

💜: where are you in the writing process?

I just hit 11294 words, I'm up to chapter three but am unsure on what to write for chapter three. I'm very scared it's going to be filler so I am doing my best to make the padding in between events interesting.

💕: what has your favourite scene been?

100% the dining scene. For an unedited scene, it reads quite smoothly. I was aiming to capture a similar feel to this scene from Curse of The Black Pearl:

With a little more trust. I was aiming for the fine dining, the hunger, the promise that manners aren't necessary here. I think I captured it to an extent, but again I need to polish the dialogue and differentiate the characters a bit more. I might post this scene for advice at some point but for now it's too precious to me, haha!

💗: what genre is it in?

The genre is gothic romance, however so far it's leaning more into romance. I don't want to go full horror, but the pathetic fallacy is going too hard to not carry the uneasiness into the dialogue and events of the book.

💖: are you planning on publishing it? if so, how?

Sorry, ice cream machine broke.

Thank you very much for asking!

🧡: what were previous working titles/ideas?

The book is now titled Livanna but was previously called A Chalice of Blood, based on the turning point in the narrative, Blood and Roses, which I felt sounded a little too rock 'n' roll for the genre and Blood in The Wine, based on the song by Aurora about sexuality, identity and acceptance. Another title I considered was "Osiria". Osiria roses are white with red at the ends/undersides of the petals, a motif I absolutely love for one of my characters. I've been going back and forth between the current working title and this one, but Osiria is also the name of a Chinese Restaurant (nothing against Chinese Restaurants, just not quite the vibe I'm going for), plus Livanna has meanings rooted in the plot so... kind of tipped the scales for me.

💛: what is the title based on?

The book I am working on is based on Carmilla, where the novel is named after the "antagonist" (a perspective I don't agree with, but that's another story). Another novel referenced within mine is Frankenstein, a book where the title is also the name of the monster, however the name is often (incorrectly) assigned to the creation. Basically, I think I'm being clever with hinting at who the villain truly is and isn't, I'm referencing the use of single-word titles in the gothic genre and ones named after characters, and I thought it sounded more interesting than the booktok-feeling titles I was playing around with before. There is an additional reason, but that's a surprise for people who are good at connecting dots.

💙: how has the idea changed between starting it and where it is now?

Oh, I love the question. The book was originally a comedy-horror-drama based on What We Do in The Shadows and it was set in the 1980s-modern day. Jacqueline was a pained familiar and Livanna was a stiff-upper-lipped vampire living in a household with her masters. Silas, a side character in this book, was originally called Onyx and he was a shapeshifter who was Livanna's familiar. The book is now a gothic romance with a more serious tone, more complex imagery and is a novel rather than a TV Show, which is what the concept was originally created for. Additionally, it is set in 1860s. Livanna is now a less tight-fisted woman and has become the love interest, Jacqueline is no longer a a familiar and is in fact a woman who found herself in need of assistance and found it in the wrong place. Silas is no longer a companion to Jacqueline, or at least, he should no longer be trusted.

(I know this isn't the heart question word for word but it's the vibe, maybe I should copy-paste next time but I am a pantser)

❣️: which scene has been hardest to write so far?

I think the most difficult part for me so far has been including moments where the character's faith gets involved in the narrative. As an ex-Christian, I find it quite easy to write in terms of finding the emotion, but there's a bit of guilt attached to it. For example, the line (sorry it's not super polished): "it is thought most unlucky to bring a crucifix into this part of the country.” [...] “Much obliged, but I believe I shall take that chance. After all, it would hardly be “lucky” to step into a new abode leaving God at the threshold." This was probably the most challenging part to write since I know what will happen later in the book and I feel like I'm setting her up for failure.

Linguistically, rather than emotionally, I have been really struggling to make dialogue sound natural and Victorian so a lot of it is jenky and the speech patterns aren't varied enough for my taste (exhibit A above). My plan is to go in when editing and scale it back. If I make it fully 1860s now, it's easier to dial it down to historically inspired than to make modern phrasing sound old.