The Fey Touched Triloy

I did spend quite a bit of time designing the Evelyn Manor, however, and seeking out a grey stone style, with antique windows. I even sketched out, by hand and in my wonderdraft program, the floorplan of the house.

And I didn't want to waste this location, so I'm including the trio's trip to the Evelyn Manor as a short story, written from Booker's POV, that I'll be offering as a preorder bonus.

It will also, hopefully, give readers a little insight into where Booker's headspace is at prior to the start of Darkling too.

But I digress, the Evelyn Manor, is a large estate house, with two main floors, and a large attic that has been converted into a training area. It sits on extensive grounds, that are no longer maintained since Cara's parents deaths, and the house itself has a haunted feel, marred by the tragedy of the Evelyn's becoming kavians inside it's wall.

He's grieving. Which, is incredibly dangerous for him as having already survived death-by-grief once, Booker's particularly susceptible to it's effects.

And while Lizzy thinks she knows the cause, and is trying her best to be patient with him, she doesn't understand all the layers of his grief until later in the book... and Booker, in response, is lashing out in ways he really shouldn't.

The fool.

He's only mentioned by name in the first book, Changeling, but he does make an appearane in the free short story, "Whatever Happened To Madeline Hail?"

Excerpt from WHTMH?;

"Brains, brawn, and beauty," Blackwood said slowly, "the trifecta of perfection." "What do you want?" "What makes you think I want anything other than access to your blood?" "We're not dead yet." "Ah, but you should be," the kavian leader purred, "if you hadn't used your abilities offensively. If you had taken flight as your instincts insist you should. If you hadn't used your abilities to fight your way out of the centre of the massacre... you would be a puddle of decadent silver blood coating the forest floor."

But I just SO adore writing his voice. It's a very silky, smooth sound and kind of slips through my brain and onto the page in an elloquent but incredibly creepy manner. And Sethan himself is very similar. His movements tightly controlled, his stance purposeful, as though every movement is a calculation on his part. I'm so excited to introduce him, on page, to the readers and to Lizzy!

And while I haven't revealed the cover for Darkling yet, if anyone's been paying attention, they may have noticed that when it comes to Darkling Links, I default to the Red Text colour, and there is a reason for that :D

The Blue was always meant to allude to the portals between Arbaon and the mortal realm, the portal tree's glow blue, and the fey themselves have always felt blue, and light, and ethereal to me.

In Darkling, the Tagline is "Fey go missing in the mortal realm. This time it's intentional". Lizzy, Booker and Andric find something hidden, and disappear for a while but this is specifically linked to the vampires, which is why I wanted to lean into the reds, and the more grounded feel of the reds.

And I'm more than happy to show a tiny, cropped, section because I'm just in love with the expression that Efa captured!

So, the Fey in my Fey Touched Trilogy are predominently pacifist. Arbaon, the realm of the fey, has no natural predators, and little violence.

They were hunted to near extinction by the kavians, before retreating to Arbaon, so on a whole, as a culture, they tend towards abhorring violence.

Having said that, the fey did nearly die out, and so they are reluctant (and fearful) of leaving themselves that vulnerable again.

And that's where the Sentinels come into play.

The Sentinels are fey who sacrifice their right to a peaceful existance, so they can train to defend Arbaon's borders should an incursion ever happen.

Generally, only female fey are allowed to apply since only female fey have wings, and much of their training is in aerial combat. With that said, male fey are granted entry into the Sentinel Ranks if they can hold their own against two trained Sentinels for five minutes.

As you'd expect, this is rare.

The Sentinels are all armed with Bardiche. Their range making them particularly deadly in the hands of airbourne attackers.

But Arbaon's portals are hard to find, and even harder to access, so while the Sentinels do guard the arboretums, and the paths that lead to them, most of their work is in the guarding of The Fey Queen, and the Six Appointed Fey of the High Court.

But I did recently, while blocked from actually writing, sit down and lay out the Arbaon Realm history, Royal Family, and a little more about the social structures within the realm, in a kind of worldbuilding document rather than just in my head.

So let's share some of it :D

Brigid Elestov had a tertiary fey power that allowed her to travel between plants of a likeness. For example, oak-to-a-different-oak.

When the Kavians began to emerge, she used her power, bolstered by all the remaining fey, to transport them from the mortal realm to a bubble realm that later became known as Arbaon.

For helping to save the fey race, she was named the first Queen of Arbaon, and this is where the fey culture took a sharp shift into towards being a matriarchy.

Their numbers were decimated, they had been hunted to near extinction, and Brigid's fear was that need to repopulate their kind would put their women in a weaker or more controlled position if she didn't make rapid changes to the new realms laws.

Lines of inheritance became bilineal; Where girls inherited from their mother's estate, and boys inherited only from their fathers estate. Provisions and agreements could be made to change that if there were no children to inherit from one side of the family, but in general this was agreed upon before a child was even born.

And while, generally, all children took on their mothers surname, in the royal family line, only girls in line for the throne could take the Elestov Name, and all other children would take their fathers instead.

Sethan Blackwood is the antagonist of my series, The Fey Touched Trilogy, and while he was only mentioned by name in the first book, Changeling, he is a much more active presence in it's sequel, Darkling.

Sethan does make another appearance in the free, prequel short story I wrote for my newsletter subscribers however (Whatever Happened To Madeline Hail?), and I greatly enjoy writing the smooth, biting, tone he leans into.

In terms of voice, he's always reminded me a little of Loki, from the marvel universe, but specifically when Loki is speaking to those he thinks are beneath him.

In looks, he's tall, slender, elegant, and although not a perfect face claim, I've likened him to Benedict Cumberbatch. I did create a face-morph of him before Gen-ai became a thing, but since Gen-Ai I don't like sharing that picture around anymore since it very much looks in that style.

However, what I can share, is one of the first times Sethan's voice is heard in Darkling, during a phone call that the POV character very much didn't want to make.

How about a little bit of worldbuilding, regarding the Vampire Race in the Fey Touched Trilogy.

So, I wanted the vampires to be very physical creatures, as a direct contrast to the fey.

Where the Fey's magic is the intangible, such as telepathy, telekinesis, wards, etc, vampiric abilities are more physical. Enhanced senses, faster speed, faster healing, but all of those abilities are powered by their consumption of blood.

Blood, for the vampires in my world, is like charging up a battery. They can live without it, but they are little more than humans. Even their long-lifespans diminish if they swear off blood entirely.

When human blood became toxic to them as a species, many vampires did swear off all blood, and died of old age, but the majority made the switch to clean animal blood and can survive for centuries that way, although not nearly as long lived as they used to be.

The Vampire Councils around the world are still cautious, however, that the contamination of human blood could spread, and restrict access of blood to a tightly controlled doseage of one vial a day.

I've been blocked on Darkling for a while, but one of the things that helped me get past that block was a new location.

I'm currently working through the third and (hopefully!) last draft of Darkling, and it's a ground-up rewrite, specifically so I can fold this new location into the story seamlessly (Alongside a character redesign! But I digress...)

And the new location, is a lighthouse.

The design, in world, is based on a combination of the Lighthouse I saw while on holiday (Left), and the design of The Lighthouse of Alexandria (Right, replica)

Initially, it helped get me past my block because developing it gave me somewhere for the characters to retreat to that wasn't, simply, the same place they had just come from.

But as I've looked at how to fold this into the plot in a way that doesn't look like I just plopped a Lighthouse into the story because I needed a new location, it's developed it's own unique backstory.

I don't feel like I talk about the height difference between my FMC, Lizzy Hail, and the MMC, her love interest, Andric Roche as much as I should.

Because there is a distinct height difference.

Sometimes, even when I'm writing, I forget about it a bit because Lizzy's personality is so much larger than life, but she's only 5'3 (aka 160cm), while Andric's a solid 6'1 (aka 185cm)

It's enough that when she leans her head forward, she can hear his heartbeat.

What? I planned it that way, you say? I don't know what you mean.

Honestly though, height charts are all well and good, but it only really hit home to me how utterly adorable this dynamic looked when I decided to see if there were any real life people with similar heights. For a kissing reference, you understand. I wanted to see just how much either of them would need to stretch to reach the other.

Don't check my google history; I'm a writer...

I got lucky in that, apprently, at some time in the past, Ryan Reynolds (6'1) and Scarlet Johannson (5'3) were together a lot.

But, for all my research surrounding this in relation to kissing, and future spice, I love it most because it can lead to moments like this...