I was tagged by the lovely @gwens-fiction, thanks hon! 💖 

1. Do you know your characters’ MBTI personalities?  Not generally, but when I get bored sometimes I’ll take the quiz for one of my characters--the only one I remember at the moment is León’s, and he’s an ISFJ-T 💖

2. Favorite writing trope? Oh, I love just about every trope related to nuance and gray morality--evil virtues might be my all time fave!

Thank you @westywrites for making me this AMAZING figurine! This is of an original character I haven’t introduced yet.

His name is Draco!

@westywrites Thank you so much! He is perfect!

Thank you so much to @westywrites for tagging me!

1. How did you start writing and why?

I honestly can’t remember when I started telling stories, because I think I always have, but I never really wrote them down until about 5th grade. I took a writing class with two amazing teachers and they convinced me that I should write down my stories instead of just keeping them in my head.

2. What is your favourite line from your own work?

I don’t have a line that’s really stuck out to me as my very favorite, but I do have several I’m proud of. Here’s one that I’m really proud of from a poem. p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }

Like dissolves like, but that only applies to chemistry, do not make it a metaphor for life. I know you have a poet’s heart and metaphor is your strong suit, But sometimes chemistry is just chemistry and you are not a hurricane or a shipwreck.

3. Who is your writing idol and how have they influenced you?

A lot of authors have influenced my journey, but I think the author that I would say is my writing idol is Leigh Bardugo. I never really knew that I was allowed to write a fantasy that didn’t have dragons or wasn’t set in medieval Europe until the Grishaverse. I also never realized that I was allowed to write a character who looked like me until  read Six Of Crows, because Nina Zenik was the first fat protagonist I’d seen who wasn’t a punchline. Her writing showed me that there are a lot of things that I can write that I didn’t think I was allowed to, and that’s worth so much.

4. Which OC has the best family life, found or otherwise?

I think that Dema probably has the best family life. Her family is from the poorest part of the city, but they love each other and support each other and that’s something that a lot of my other characters don’t have.

5. Which OC has the most satisfying ending to their story?

In my opinion, Siora. Her story arc is a very full circle kind of thing, but in a  way where she ends up in a better place than she was in before.

6. If you’ve gotten feedback on your writing, who is your readers’ favourite character? If not, who do you think readers will fall in love with?

Only my best friend has read any substantial part of my WIP, and I think she said that Kyrus was her favorite, but I think that there’s a character for everyone to love.

7. Which tropes do you always find yourself wanting to write?

I write a lot of broken characters helping each other heal. Not a true love solves all problems thing, but the kind of love, romantic or platonic, that makes you want to get better. I love characters who find a family and a home with other people that help them to heal instead of tearing them down, and I think that shows up a lot in my writing.

8. What goes through your head as your writing a scene?

It depends, half the time I’m just in the zone and don’t really think about ti, and the other half of the time I have to force the words onto the page an in that case I’m usually really focused on my outline/where the plot is going.

9. How specific is your idea of your characters’ appearance, usually? Have you drawn any of them before?

Usually I have a pretty detailed view of the character, but sometimes it’s more of a vague list of physical traits. I’m in no way a visual artist, so I haven’t ever tried to draw my characters before. I have messed around with an avatar creator, though. I should post those some time.

10. What are you proudest of as a writer?

I’m really proud of myself for continuing on this path and working as hard as I am for it. I wrote my first manuscript when I was 12 for NaNoWriMo 2014, and I stressed about editing until an author I talked to told me I didn’t have to edit right away. So then I wrote another one for the next NaNoWriMo. And another the next year. And now I’m here, four years after I started, with a manuscript I’m in the middle of editing, a list of agents for when I’m ready to query, and I haven’t given up yet.

I was tagged by the lovely @dove-actually to find the words light, lost, threat, and wood(s). Thanks hon! 💖 These are all from Ocean 🌊

Light

Even with the room bruise-black, the only wisps of light curling around the edges of the curtains, I could feel how tense Vicente was. Clutching me like I might slip away. Like the snow was melting and the river would soon flood—our shallows would overflow. I’d seen the Willamette swallow people before. City rivers develop a taste for filth and blood, and I was both.

Lost

"My client's not a lost cause, no matter what your mom says."

"Maybe. Maybe you're just an optimist.”

“You’re the only person on earth who would call me an optimist.”

Ana laughed. “Seeing as I may well be the only sane person left on Earth, that doesn’t discount anything.”

Threat

I linger with this memory—part of me lives on here, in permanent bliss, ignorant of what comes soon. “Maybe I want you to be,” he whispered, “even if it’s an illusion—I know it’s temporary. I swear you’ll find out soon enough, and I’ll be the one to tell you.”  

Both a promise and a threat: an absolute. He brought my knuckles to his lips and dragged scars across them. “How much are you hiding from me?”

Wood

“There’s a reason you’ve been sleeping with a lawyer and not a model, Vicente,” I whispered. I couldn’t find any of my voice—as quiet as the silent bleeding of the clouds outside. “I’ve really enjoyed all this, but I think it’s time for you to tell me why.”  

“I have a height complex?” he joked, smiling—gripping tighter than before. I wanted to reach for him. Even with him touching me I wanted more, to trace the scars of his hands with my own callouses, to feel everything he’d felt. Instead I gripped the edge of the table, felt polished wood squeak under my fingers, wishing it would splinter under my shaky, pitiful grip.

I was tagged by the lovely @westywrites and the darling @mywritingnarwhal, thanks!!  Sorry this took so long!

“I called her a coward for running away, but what could be more cowardly than my not fighting for her to stay?”

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

And

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Signed, @westywrites

@westywrites

Some hard ones!

I'm pretty proud of most of the things that I write, but I'll share this little snippet from The Fairy because the Celestials series focuses a lot on how magic feels, and those are some of my favorite parts to write! I like this part because I don't write a lot from the point of view of a character who is neither a celestial mage nor a chaos mage and so perceives their magic completely differently. Also, it's a section that talks about magic without really being a spoiler LOL

Gheist and Seneria did not come into the forest passively, as they had the day before. Their magic covered them, resting over them like cloaks, on full display for the forest to see. It beat against her skin, muggy and oppressive like the worst of summer days, when storms loomed on the horizon but refused to break. The forest shrank back from that power, and Irina did too. How can they stand it? She was gladder than ever she had refused Seneria’s help. I don’t want that kind of power anywhere near me.

She knew where she was and she began to walk, as much to get away from the two mages as anything else. They followed her closely, their magic suffocating and overpowering. The forest did nothing but sit quietly, prey waiting for a predator to pass it by.

As for meta, well there's a lot of it LOL for one thing, I love fairy tales and folktales. If you think something is a fairy tale reference, you're probably right!

I use a lot of fairy tale tropes and set ups in my work. Even the entire idea of Dragon's Daughter came from the trope of the princess in the tower and the question "what if she was a dragon too?" My book The Ghost is also (kind of) based on a similar set up. The Deadlands is (partially) based on the Ballad of Tam Lin. Temitope is literally a fairy tale retelling. The Huntress of Anihwen was originally based on Welsh folktales, Into the Witch's Wood is a stilted retelling of Hansel and Gretel, The Swan Husband is based on certain ideas about swan maidens, a lot of my work is based on just the idea of the collective tradition of oral storytelling? If that makes sense!

Also, I love having characters say things early on that will make a different kind of sense later. Don't we all?

Margherita's line about how wolves don't have good imaginations in The Deadlands, some of Bracken's jokes at Iskandar's expense in Magic Black as Knight, so many of the things that Larkin and Arwyn say in Miracles…there's a lot of little secrets~

What drew you to writing? Like, what feelings, thoughts, experiences, etc. made you start writing?

Do you feel like that reason still contributes to why you write?

Signed, @westywrites

- signed, @westywrites

YEAHHH, it's gonna be so much fun!

I'm no science major, of course, but I have a few marine biology courses under my belts and I'm looking forward to trying to create my own FLOAT food web.