#libraryleopard

the plot keeps changing drastically but in the current iteration, it's a YA fantasy about a seer who disappeared from an empire that hinges its future on her. the empire hires a crew of thieves & nothings to find her, specifically in this weird & mysterious thalassocratic nation.

i wrote about 50K of a first draft & then scrapped the plot & also changed the main POV character. i haven't touched it in like a year, just letting the current iteration marinate in my brain. but here's a snippet from the initial first draft:

I recommend Sioned Davies' The Mabinogion published by Oxford World Classics! (This link is a UK Bookshop.org affiliate link; I earn a small commission on qualifying purchases, etc, but hopefully useful as a reference even to those outside the UK.)

The Animals We Became is a retelling of 'Math uab Mathonwy', the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, so that's the only prose tale that you'd "need" to read for backstory -- though the book's written to be as comprehensible as possible to those with no prior knowledge, and I've been testing it on non-medievalist beta readers.

Having a sense of the broader corpus may help you catch some of the other Easter eggs and details I've slipped in there, though I don't think there are too many of those that rely on, like, the actual events of texts rather than just the General Vibes Of Medieval Literature. Not a whole lot of Welsh prose survives, so the Davies collection will have you pretty much covered there. There's some influence from poetry slipping in to TAWB as well, especially Cad Goddeu from the Book of Taliesin (I read the translation by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams, mostly because it was the one that was available to me, rather than an Informed Choice).

My exact thesis title was Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence: Exploring How Fanfiction Has Changed Publishing.

I had six chapters:

Evolving Definitions, where I talked about copyright law and the many historical origins of the hobby.

A Brief History of Fanfiction in Online Spaces, where I explored the history of migration – from LJ to FFN and AO3 and Wattpad, etc.

The Lexicon of Fanfiction, where I talked about language and marketing with how it overlaps with current trad tactics.

Authors Behaving Badly :-D. This was wild because I got to fact-check so many online urban legends. MZB, Anne Rice, CClaire, the A/B/O lawsuit... Even 50 Shades had a lengthy footnote! I discussed a lot about ethics, both online and offline practices, where people draw the line between filing off the serial numbers and plagiarism, etc.

Surveys. I talked to five people who have a foot in both wolds, editors and freelancers and writers, and asked them on how they defined certain terms, spheres of influence, use of monetizing, etc.

The conclusion, which had a super fun feature about the Realm of Ruins disaster. I also went into detail about Big Bang Press, and what can be determined for the future. (SPOILER: Not much! Between the evolving online landscape and the increased monetization, we are in unknown territory!)