#agorned

About me:

Queer, nerdy, married lesbian with a cat and a day job. Has grand ambitions of one day quitting her job to focus on her writing.

Current Projects:

Agorned

Middle fantasy novel series comprised of standalone stories which happen to be set in the same world as one another (with some recurring familiar faces sprinkled between them). Currently focused on the Freelancers' story - found family adventure with danger, deceit, queer romance and travelling.

Passions of Secret London

Spicy sapphic monster romance novellas set in London, featuring witches, vampires, shapeshifters, ghosts, fae, sirens, selkies and more - though not necessarily all at the same time. Depends how ambitious the protagonist is feeling...

Magic's Servant

A dark rural fantasy set in modern day Wales, featuring Talli, a teenager who is in way over her head. There's also a talking cat with a secret, shadowy manipulative demons, and immortal figures from Arthurian mythology locked into a vicious stalemate over the centuries.

Courier of the Fae

A small fantasy videogame about a human courier who works for the fae to deliver goods and letters between the fae and human realms. A heartwarming tale of forging connections, helping people and instigating a revolution against a narcissistic ruler petting corgis.

Links and More:

Agorned blog: here

Nerding out about fandom and writing fanfiction stuff: here

Archive of Our Own

Kofi

Redbubble

Tagged by @btranwrites an absolute age ago - many many apologies for the delay, I just get absolutely wrecked at my day job every Christmas season and had no time for anything for about three solid months!

If you want to take part, consider yourself tagged. But especially @red-pen-ally . Fairly certain if all of writblr keeps tagging you you'll write your whole book this year!

Anyway, here's the first seven nine sentences from the Freelancers' tale in Agorned.

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Most women were afraid to walk alone through the dark twisted streets at night. Then again, most women did not carry a six-inch knife in their underclothes. Plausible deniability would say that it was a hunting knife, its long, curved blade designed for skinning game and removing entrails. It just so happened to have that same ruthless efficiency when slicing into human flesh.

This knife had saved Anika's life on more occasions than she would care to count.

Would you want to live in one of the fictional worlds you've created?

Magic's Servant is essentially set in the real world (mostly Wales) and I moved out of Wales pretty much as soon as I could, so... probably not.

Passions of Secret London is London with lots of lesbian monsters. I'd very happily live there.

Physical strength is tricky. There are people with supernatural strength, but it doesn't often come up. For regular people who are strong, Notte (Agorned) is a pretty good contender. They've worked at a coaching in from a fairly young age as an ostler, so they're used to mucking out horses, carrying haybales and barrels...all very physical work. They also use polearms as their main weapon of choice - it translates a lot of the same muscle strength as using a fork. So they are surprisingly strong.

For magical strength, I suspect Myrddin from Magic's Servant would be the victor in any fight. Being half demon, half human gives him the ruthlessness and drive of a demon, with all the creativity and flexibility of a human. Then being groomed from childhood for the role of managing the flow of magic and being put in a position where he has access to as much of it as he could ever need. There are possibly people who could best him as their magic comes from a different source, but those people are a rumour, a legend, a bedtime story to scare demon children into behaving...aren't they?

Earth: What do you think is the foundation of your WIP?

For Agorned, found family. Throughout every story, there's a consistent theme of being different or lost or abandoned or persecuted and subsequently finding connections with unlikely seeming companions who share some of the same struggle.

For Passions of Secret London, exploration of identity and sexuality. From loving what is monstrous about your partner (and yourself) to working out how your relationship fits in with the world. I mean, how do you see your long-term plans changing when you get involved with a selkie with very protective sisters?

For the Welsh WIP (which needs a name, I can't keep calling it that), it's a bit of an exploration of my childhood/teenage years - the struggle of feeling isolated and not knowing who (if anyone) can help. It's about unwillingly being dragged into a mess you didn't create and don't have the power or tools to fix but somehow all the people who could fix the situation choose to be blinded by their own petty grievances.

Fire: What’s a scene that you are dying to write?

It's a dumb scene that's stuck in my head from Passions of Secret London. In this particular story, the protagonist (Scarlett) is short on rent. She finds out her landlady (Elizabeth) is a vampire - money flow is no issue once you've been around long enough and compound interest is working its magic, but blood is somewhat more difficult to get. Pretty sure you can see where that's going. Anyway, this particular scene is Scarlett asking Elizabeth for more details about the vampiric condition. For example, does Elizabeth need to be invited into Scarlett's flat explicitly? After all, it's technically Elizabeth's property, Scarlett is just renting it. And Elizabeth is just steadfastly ignoring the 'vampire' aspect of it and only addressing the 'landlord' aspect. Like: "Of course I can't enter your flat uninvited, that would be illegal. If I needed to gain access to that space for whatever reason, I would need to inform you at least 24 hours in advance and gain permission to enter." And Scarlett spends a lot of time trying to get her to answer candidly whether the obstacle to entry is simply legal or supernatural (becoming more and more exasperated the longer Elizabeth refuses to give a straight answer).

Shadows: What’s the darkest theme you’ve ever written about?

I've definitely written about darker stuff (suicide, abandonment, death, torture) in my teenage years but the best story that comes to mind is this: In the near future, we can record and playback sensations in a kind of VR setup. Touch, pleasure, pain, etc. The main application of this is in the medical field - 'doctors' are less trained in the external symptoms of disease and disability; instead, they train on recorded simulations of various pain so when they are hooked up to their patients, they can diagnose based on what it feels like. People being people, new doctors make this into a competition: putting themselves through the most harrowing records of pain and suffering and seeing who can endure the longest. There's a betting pool. It's entertainment. Doctors are valued less on what knowledge they have and more based on how much pain they can endure, since they would be able to diagnose a larger pool of patients based on their second-hand experience. While I now feel I didn't really come to a natural point when I first wrote this (the original story ends with an invasion and the outside forces commenting on how barbaric the practice is) I think if I revisited it now, I would like to point out the difference between enduring pain on a voluntary and temporary basis and how that pales in comparison to say...a chronic condition that you have little to no control over. That a doctor might make the argument that a patient's pain is 'minor' because they endured it themselves (with full control over when and how long to experience it) and that their patient doesn't need any real medical help (like painkillers or assistive devices), instead suggesting lifestyle changes and determination.

Space: Where’s your favorite place to write?

Oof, took a long time thinking about this.

Agorned: Big variety depending on regions.

For example, Anika grew up further north than most, and her family were very good at supplementing root vegetables and squashes with (not quite entirely legal) game, wildlife, foraged berries, nuts and mushrooms - knowledge which has helped her live rather self-sufficiently when travelling.

Riccardo grew up in a more southern, fertile climate, where bread, leafy greens, cultivated fruits, oils and soft cheeses were more common and meat was a very rare treat for holidays only.

Notte grew up in a small village on a busy merchant route, so while exotic spices, chocolate and coffee would be seen and possibly even smelt, they were too expensive to buy. Everyday food was often whatever leftovers the coaching inn (where he worked and lived) had going spare - usually large one pot meals like soups and stews that can be prepared in vast quantities and portioned out when ordered. Lots of grains and legumes, often fish on account of the river, occasionally chicken when there's a few too many roosters or the hens aren't laying anymore.

Sierra grew up in a religious orphanage/nunnery. They grew all their own food and herbs, preserving a lot for the winter. So pickles, jams and chutneys were a common part of meals, along with honey from the hives. Salted or smoked meat wasn't unheard of, but not especially common. Soups, porridges and casseroles were very common as they're easy to prepare for larger groups and easily adapted to whatever is currently in season.

Italian Wedding Soup: Your favorite pairing among your characters

From my Agorned WIP - Anika and Sierra. Anika has been travelling alone for a long time. She refuses to let people see her vulnerabilities, doesn't share anything from her past or even divulge where she's going. Anika doesn't suffer fools gladly and generally prides herself on self sufficiency. She doesn't need other people, and they don't need her.

Sierra is a nun with a secret, and the church would kill her if they knew of it. She knows how to hide in plain sight - bright, bubbly and devout on the surface, concealing her intelligence, ruthlessness and a large collection of stolen knives.

Anika (and the two companions she has recently and unwillingly picked up) is Sierra's ticket to safely remove herself from the monastery without arousing suspicion. But when they first meet, Anika doesn't trust the sweet innocent facade and even less so once she finds Sierra's stolen goods.

It's a slow process to build up trust, but as circumstances force them to travel together, they find more commonalities than differences. They're both women who are willing to bend the law and their own morals to preserve their own freedom and survive. They're both more intelligent than anyone ever credited them with. They've both learnt that investing your trust in other people is dangerous the hard way.

Sierra is the only one who can get Anika to willingly divulge anything about where she grew up. She's also the only one who can argue and win when Anika is being callous and blunt towards other people.

Anika is not just comfortable with murder as a potential way to solve Sierra's problems; she also just 'happens' to have a potion that is mostly medicinal but in higher doses would be a virtually untraceable poison. She's also the only one who can keep Sierra calm and stable when the worst happens.

Together, they can be quite dark and amoral, if that's what is necessary. But they can also be vulnerable with each other in a way they cannot be with the rest of the world.