Hey Ghosti! I just wanted to say I'm a part of your patreon, and I absolutely love you and your writing!! I am utterly OBSESSED with ShipMates, I love the dynamic between all of them. How each relationship is different yet equal. Anyways, I'm super glad I found you through Momolady and TheTravelerWrites because you have become one of my all-time favs!! I was just curious: If you could pick one thing you personally would love to write but haven't yet, what would that be?
(Also, as a plus-size bisexual woman, I love the inclusivity and the body representation in your masterlist!!)
I really needed this, so thank you so much! You made my whole night!! Thank you so so much for your support, on here and on Patreon. @momolady and @thetravelerwrites are incredible writers and wonderful human beings, so I'm really touched you found me via their amazing work!! (everyone go check them out too if you haven't already!!).
Thank you for saying that too about my masterlist - I feel like I write the same thing over and over (especially when people ask for more specific readers, when I tend to write gender/body neutral more than most others these days).
I'm not sure there's anything I haven't written yet in terms of general topics, because when I'm not doing commissions, I pretty much just write what I want to write and hope the people supporting me (on here for free and on Patreon) also continue to want to read it!! However, I have a few ideas for novels/stories that I've not had the time or the energy to dedicate to writing.
One (which @mongoose-king knows about and got very excited for when I mentioned it!) is a complete reworking of the first incarnation of the Citadel idea I had over on @weaverofthreads. I decided I wanted to change almost everything in that, except for the idea of magically bonding an elite soldier with a fully-qualified mage...
More on that below for anyone interested: (it's kinda long-winded!!):
Background:
(much of this is the same as the first incarnation of the first novel over on @weaverofthreads but a lot of it has also changed...!)
The Citadel is an ancient 'university'-type institution where mages are trained (going from novice, to apprentice, then journeyman, and full mage. To become a master (gender neutral), they must study further (like a PhD kind of vibe). The Citadel is also where Greycloaks are trained, separately from the mages/scholars. These are elite soldiers, and once a person has gained their Cloak, they can be employed by anyone from the Crown to anyone willing to pay enough to retain their services. It's extremely demanding, and the dropout rate is very high, and the final Proving (test/exam) for becoming a full Greycloak is very tough. Those who gain their Cloak usually find employment as personal bodyguards to the rich and influential among the Great Houses and merchants.
The Citadel has a tradition of bunking first year mages with first year Greycloaks (or 'squires') to foster friendship and respect between the two very different disciplines taking place on site. It's a practice which dates back to the days when there were more mages, and when Bonding was a much more common occurrence. The process of Bonding is the creation of a magical bond between two people, and while extremely intimate, it does not have to be romantic in nature. It's given the same reverence and significance as marriage, but it's not automatically assumed to be romantic. A married mage may also Bond a Greycloak, and vice versa.
The Bond gives the Greycloak heightened senses, enhanced endurance/stamina, and durability to withstand wounds that would kill anyone else, and it gives the mage a much greater pool of magic and strength from which to draw during rites/spellcasting (though this varies depending on the natural 'core' of each person. Every living being has some degree of magical 'reservoir' or 'battery' within them, but only mages are able to access it to create spells/rites, whereas most people cannot). However, the Bond allows you to feel the emotions of the other person as if they were your own, and you can always feel a 'pull' to them, so you could locate them anywhere in the world. It gets fainter with greater distance. It's possible to 'block' it, with a lot of mental effort and practice, but if the Bond is magically severed, both parties die, and if one party is killed, the other dies. Depending on the strength of the Bond, this can be instantly, or within a matter of hours, but it always ends in the death of the other. Because of the intimacy of the Bond's nature, and the permanent lack of privacy in your own head/heart, it's not actually that common a practice anymore.
Characters/Story premise:
Gil is a physically disabled necromancer who grew up in the dockland slums, and whose magic manifested later in his life (at 15) than it does for most mages (usually around 10 yrs old), and as a result of some pretty severe trauma. He was then brought by the mage who attended the scene to the Citadel, even though he was three years younger than the age when most students begin their studies. Mages are pretty rare in the population, so until then, individuals showing magical potential are usually apprenticed 1-1 with a master to cover the basics, and their fundamental/'school level' education is also covered. Mages taking apprentices have the costs covered by the Citadel, and not every mage is in a position to take an apprentice. Gil didn't have any education at all after the age of eight, so he had a lot of catching up to do, but the mage who took him under her wing saw to that, and he's a Bright Boi, so he caught up academically, if not socially. He was given special dispensation by the Archmage to live at the Citadel, so he's already familiar with the place by the time the story starts.
Meanwhile Tomas is the second son of a duke, is very privileged, and has been learning sword-craft and how to run an estate since he was pretty much able to walk. He trained with his mother's Bonded Greycloak, and is an accomplished horse rider too, but he soon discovers that he's still got a lot to learn if he wants to acquire his full Greycloak status like his older brother. However, Tomas is still affable and open-minded despite his background, and is intelligent and particularly interested in history, even if he's not the most academic overall.
The story I want to tell begins with Gil meeting Tomas at the start of Tomas' first term (oh my god they were roommates), and because Gil is socially inept and anxious, he makes a blunder and the two hardly speak for their entire first year. Their schedules are very different, so they basically only overlap to sleep. After their first year, squires are then housed together in the barracks, in a separate part of the Citadel grounds, and so Tomas doesn't interact with Gil at all. Eventually though, they do meet again, and Gil is a bit less awkward, and Tomas a bit braver, and they become friends...
There's a solstice ball, a visit to Tomas' country home, a spirit and a family in need of closure after a traumatic event, and some estranged family drama, and eventual falling head over heels in love.
The reason I haven't written more than a few chapters of it it is basically because I don't have a 'Big Bad' for them to face or a real story arc, other than this spirit that needs addressing. Tomas' mother is a mage who doesn't like necromancy (she has her reasons, but it's mostly just prejudice), so there's a bit of drama there, but with the story's first incarnation in Weaver of Threads, the two main characters were gonna go off on this huge adventure in search of a lost art of magic, but these two don't have that...
Anyway, that was probably WAY more than you were looking for when you asked what I'd write that I haven't already XD. I'm sorry!!
Thank you once again for your support on Patreon, and I'm so happy you found me via two truly excellent writers! Thank you x
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I went back to ‘Weaver of Threads’ today, and if you’ve been following me for a while, you may remember my fantasy story with its rune-based magic system, with Kae as one of the two protagonists.
Well, I’m starting to rework it! One of the reasons I let it slide for so long is because I got ‘stuck’ with it, and I was too attached to all the hours I’d put into it already to let them go in favour of moving forward. So, I changed it. And by ‘it’ I mean… almost everything. 😱😰😅. Still, sometimes you’ve got to prune a tree hard before it puts out good, new shoots.
Let’s see if it rekindles the project! (Writing and plotting by hand on paper with a nice fountain pen also really helped free up the creative process. Try it if you’re stuck too?)
Some doodles, new and old. The top photo is a compilation of character doodles from Weaver of Threads, found in my book of scribblings in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2018. The bottom one is just random old drawings and paintings I found during a recent clear out. :)
ok... the rules were 'a snippet, or tell them something about it'
Here's an infodump worldbuilding snippet with young journeyman mage Kae, and Maeve, having a discussion a long way from the Citadel.
(For more, slightly outdated, information on this world, head over to my rather dusty and neglected sideblog @weaverofthreads)
___
Patiently, Maeve waited in the doorway for him to scrabble around, picking up this and that and stuffing it into a shoulder bag like an eminent professor caught in a house fire. When he was ready, he flushed, tripped over a corner of the rug, stumbled, caught himself, and then announced in a mumble that he was ready to go.
“So you really were researching weaving?” he blurted as he trailed her like an excitable and gangly puppy through the encampment.
She shrugged. “Not exactly. We were looking to expand the knowledge of early runic practice, to see if we could work out why the flow of magic can so unpredictable at times. For instance, why…” she trailed off and held out her palms to the sky, pausing her long-legged striding and opening herself up to the magic that surrounded them. Kae felt her drawing it in and it was all he could do not to gape. She wasn’t particularly strong in the craft at all. From the confidence with which she spoke and carried herself, he had assumed she would be a formidable mage, but in fact she was relatively weak, especially compared to him.
Obviously sensing this epiphany in him, she laughed but offered no further comment on it, instead continuing her train of thought. “Why out here in this particular spot, the magic is relatively strong, and I could, were I perhaps a little stronger…” here she cast him a sidelong look, the meaning of which he understood perfectly, “…I could draw almost infinitely on it, while fifty miles north of here, there’s almost nothing, except what a mage can draw from nature itself.”
He nodded.
“That’s what we were looking into. Plenty of mages have tried and created endless reams of theories, no doubt most of which you’ve read and dismissed already, but no one has ever proved it definitively.” She fell silent again for a moment as they began to walk again and Kae sidestepped a pile of horse droppings with surprising agility given how interested he was in the conversation. “So, among my other research, I spent a lot of time delving into the earliest records we had, some of which included mention of weaving.”
“I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “Unless I’m being really stupid, there’s nothing on it now, not in the index room or on the shelves… One text referenced the Travel Journal of one Finneus Kettering, where he apparently met some folks who claimed to have spent time among the weavers, but that is the closest I’ve ever come.”
“Don’t waste your time with Kettering,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. “He was one of the first people we found, and it’s a load of blithering old codswallop. Nothing but hokum and horse-fart,” she said, and Kae snorted.
“So… What did you find? Is it real? Can it be done?”
“Oh lad,” she chuckled. “Don’t go getting ahead of yourself. What we found wasn’t weaving, but some early form of hybrid between gesture magic and runic magic. I’ll show you what I mean when we get to my house, but tell me, have you ever heard of dynamic rune practice?”
“No,” he said, feeling uncharacteristically and unexpectedly stupid, but then something sparked in his memory. “Uh… actually, maybe? Is that when the mage carries or holds a rune that’s still connected to a static circuit?”
The project got put on the back burner when I thought of a massive change that needed to happen, and everything needed a re-write, and it all just got very overwhelming. But if there's actual interest, I could try and revisit it when I've finished my current, shorter projects like Gabe & Odessa, Dremora, and The Witch's Son...
Thank you for this, Anon. You took me completely off guard with this, and I was really touched that you even remembered the project!
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Something that I want to see more in fantasy would be characters in wheelchairs! Also, fat characters. Both is good lol
Totally agree on both counts!
In my in-progress novel, the main character’s closest friend, Fyna, is an engineer and researcher who built her wheelchair from a design she has worked on and refined over the years while researching at the university. She alternates between crutches and her chair depending on the day or activity. Her disability isn’t something that’s there for a plot point though - she’s just... Fyna, who also happens to be a wheelchair user.
Her chair is made of a lightweight metal alloy, and is really darned elegant, but is strengthened with rune magic to make it extremely robust too. The magic system in the world is based entirely on runes, and functions a bit like electricity (you need a circuit with connected points, through which magic can flow to elicit a reaction or effect), and her area of research is using a fairly newly-invented rune that functions like a resistor in a circuit and stops the system/circuit from overcharging with magic (there’s an in-universe reason for why that happens which is spoilery though). Fyna is sassy and snarky, good at maths, deeply passionate about her work, and is probably my favourite character, but don’t tell the main two that...
It’s like a sign!! One of my prismatic crystals in the window cast a rainbow right over the title of my novel. The fact that it contains lgbt+ characters and themes makes this doubly awesome.
