Tagged by @wintersenwritings and @drchenquill! Thank you!
Lambswool--see my official intro here!
Genre: Gothic/dark fantasy/folk horror/historical fiction
Target audience: New Adult? That or adult. I don't think it's YA.
Tags: #lambswool, #tristan, #crispin (most used)
Progress: Zero draft, 27,073 words so far
12 year old Tristan Learmont is dying, and has spent his whole life confined in his family's country estate. Desperate to get out and live while he still can, he summons a demon, and the entity helps him to escape in return for Tristan's agreement to be bound to it in a pact. The demon takes Tristan on a whirlwind tour of dazzling dissolution, but soon desires him to do some very unpleasant things in the service of its nefarious plans for mankind...
Meanwhile, a different entity has been hiding from mortal sight on the earthly plane: Crispin, a Dread Lord child who crossed over from the outskirts of Hell and is now under the protection of a cunning woman. When the woman disappears under mysterious circumstances at a fairy market, Crispin is captured by a showman and the jig seems up, until...
Tristan is sent by the demon to find and lure Crispin to his demise. Dread Lords, entities that control the movement of spirits, are an obstacle to the demon's designs, and it abhors them more than anything. Tristan tells Crispin he merely wishes to learn more of magic and the Otherworlds. In return, he will help Crispin find the cunning woman. They journey across the countryside and beyond on their search, ducking into fairy hills, stealing victuals and performing questionable rituals along the way. Tristan leads Crispin exactly where the demon wants him, dressing him in disguise to hide him from mortal eyes.
Things get complicated when Tristan and Crispin begin to bond despite their initial distaste for each other. Things get even more complicated when more members of the Dread Lord brood emerge from the Other Side, fairy drama arises, the demon begins raising armies of the revenant dead, and Samhain approaches.
Setting: England, particularly Wiltshire, and possibly the British Isles more generally, in the year 1810. Also various Otherworlds.
Themes, tropes, and more:
Tropes: deal with the devil, found family, Regency-era fantasy of manners stuff, gothic tropes like isolation and family curses, history haunting the present, dark coming-of-age, folklore and fairy tales, mythology
Themes: breaking the cycle, the empowered child, even "evil" is worthy of love, coming into one's power, death, classism/beginnings of capitalism/other awfulness of society at the time, harvest, subversion of gothic curse trope (refusing one's doomed fate), hunger, black sheep/sacrificial lamb, journeying into/out of the underworld
Tristan Learmont: Youngest child of a wealthy gentleman. Has a terminal illness and has been locked inside his whole life. Obsessed with the occult and generally strange and unusual. Spoiled rotten.
Crispin: Youngest, and runt of the litter, of Dread Lord children. Like his family is undead and part-demon, but is far more human-like and emotional. Decides to try his luck among mortals and crosses over.
Demon: Ancient evil. Has been imprisoned under a prehistoric megalith for centuries. Wants to tear apart the fragile balance between worlds.
Witch (cunning woman): A young woman with far more magical gifts than she lets on to her clients. Has been trained with the knowledge of generations of witches. Lives in a medieval cottage and does business with fairies.
Lamia: Crispin's older sister. A true ruthless, demonic Dread Lord, she nevertheless has a burning curiosity for the mortal realm and what Crispin is doing there. She also has plans of her own for Crispin.
Emrys: An itinerant Sin Eater. He eats food over corpses to take their misdeeds into himself. Believes he is damned, but also that his job is necessary to prevent the dead from walking.
Tagging: @armentas, @writingizzy2026, @mk-writes-stuff, @josephinetaylorbooks and
