In The Wishing Blade series, there’s a rivalry (often unspoken), between Toranih and her older sister, Siklana. Though they care for each other (in fact, the one magical item Toranih actually likes and frequently uses is a light crystal Siklana made for her), Toranih has always felt like she was in her sister’s shadow… that, no matter what she did, her sister was always better. Better at academia, better at fitting in with social expectations, and better at earning their parents’ approval.
Once, when they were younger, Toranih and Siklana were instructed to create a small tapestry to showcase what they’d learned of weaving and embroidery. Toranih chose to painstakingly render a detailed depiction of a beautiful knife wielded by the legendary noble, Duke Nomca, who was known for his fairness and protection of those in need, including those without magic. (And of the beastmen, which gets shown in a story I’m currently writing). Toranih worked hard on that tapestry, and when her work was complete, the final piece was beautiful… if in its own pragmatic way.
She was quite proud of that work, and sure she had finally managed to achieve something her sister couldn’t. But when they unveiled their tapestries for their parents, Siklana’s detailed work far outclassed anything Toranih dreamed of achieving… and her hopes were dashed.
After that day, she refused to touch the loom except for the most basic of lessons, and she turned to Captain Brekartn for lessons wielding a weapon like Duke Nomca. Though any skill with knives eluded her, she soon found mastery in swords. The more she practiced, the better she became.
As the years passed, Toranih denounced the arts her sister excelled at—including magic—and instead focused her talents on the one thing Siklana showed little interest in—swordsmanship.
If all went well, she would one day become a guardswoman, while her sister would become an academy mage.
But, of course, life doesn’t go as planned.
Magic is stolen.
Siklana is left without the magic she’s become known for, and Toranih’s traditional weapons prove useless against the army of shadows invading the kingdom. Toranih finds herself forced to consider the role her sister once studied for—the role of a mage, while her sister is left wondering where she fits into this strange new world.
And there you have it, a little history between Toranih and Siklana.
Toranih’s reaction to the change of her world is the primary focus of Magic’s Stealing, whereas we see more of Siklana’s reaction in The Shadow War, and Siklana has a major arc in Magebane, the third book in the series.
* * *
A heinous plot is unveiled when magic is stolen…
See how Toranih and Siklana adjust in The Wishing Blade series:
Enjoy the magic and world-building of the Wishing Blade universe?
You might find some new books to read here!
*
Since Kobo and Kobo Plus don’t get enough love, let’s start with this promo:
The rest of the promos are the usual BookFunnel ones. 🙂
(Note: The giveaways above are hosted through BookFunnel. Authors will usually ask for your email address, and in many cases, the author will collect these addresses for their newsletters.)
In the world of Distant Horizon, telepathy is one of the strongest and most dangerous powers a person can have. While it’s generally used to read minds and emotions, telepathy can also be used to implant ideas in a person’s thoughts and, at its most powerful, possess them.
(Tim is very much not a fan of this when he starts dealing with the second Legion Spore in Spirits of a Glitch, and he first gets an idea of how the implanted memories work in Ghost of a Memory).
Lots of fun for me as the author, not so much fun for my characters.
However, a few telepaths, including Lady Winters (the insidious “Brainmaster,” but don’t let her catch you calling her that), know how to plant so-called “memory seeds.” Rather than having to be present when they attack, a telepath leaves a set of (usually) false memories inside their victim’s mind that are set to activate under certain conditions.
In Jenna’s case, Lady Winters inserts memories of Jenna being transformed into a sub-human beast, though she’s never actually been in a beastie tank.
Here’s a look at a scene in Fractured Skies where she’s attempting to confront the seed with Gwen, one of the rebel telepaths:
Are you ready?
I swallowed hard… or imagined I did… and nodded. Let’s get this over with.
She raised her hands to the black ceiling above us. The blackness grew lighter, shifting into green. Gwen faded into the darkness. Green liquid crashed over my head.
I was trapped in the glass tube of a beastie tank.
Thick bubbles shimmered around me as I flailed, screaming. The burning liquid, the deadened sensation of my hands and feet—I shook my head and begged to get out, but my words were lost in the breathing mask strapped over my mouth.
Look around you. This isn’t real. Wasn’t real? What wasn’t real? I pounded my fists against the glass. “Let me out!”
Look beyond the glass. What should you see?
I took a gasping breath. Beyond the glass I couldn’t see anything…
That was the problem. I should have been able to see something. A shadow of movement, the smooth structures of other tubes. Those images slowly formed in front of me… but not because my eyes had adjusted.
Recognizing that your surroundings aren’t what they are supposed to be allows you to take the first step in controlling your situation.
That voice… Gwen!
Over time the memories get worse, with the idea that the next time Jenna confronts her, Lady Winters could easily use the memory seeds to disable her in a fight.
This happens and, in a later confrontation, Lady Winters adds the memory of the Legion Spore’s transformation. With the latter seed, simply hearing the Legion Spore’s telepathic voices can trigger the memory, but crowded spaces (claustrophobia from being inside the transforming Legion Spore) can also cause the seeds to strike.
Ideally, another telepath would be able to remove them, which is what Gwen tries to do at first. But when you’re dealing with someone as strong as Lady Winters, removing the seeds can be a challenge, especially when traps have been laid to keep them from being removed.
Memory seeds aren’t the only trick telepaths can use to manipulate others, and once we get to Fractured Skies, Jenna learns that the seeds in her head may be a bit more complex than the average seed.
And once we get to Starless Night, well, the enemy she’s fighting might be herself…
* * *
Who can Jenna trust when she can’t trust her own mind and memories?
When I first created the world of The Wishing Blade, I had no idea how much I’d change of the story as it progressed. And how much I’d add. Like a whole ‘nother language… (Wheee, language creation!) I had only really considered the main series, and how some of its immortal characters lived throughout time, but not the lives of the characters from The Legends of Cirena series. Not Edyli and her sister in Stone and String, or how varied Litkanston might look.
Even major elements now, like the Cantingen Islands with its word magic, were only briefly mentioned and didn’t play a large role in the story. (Word magic didn’t even exist yet… I don’t think?) Pretty sure the islands weren’t directly mentioned in any of the early drafts, though I did find a later pixel version of the map that had them added in, likely as I expanded the story after the events of The Wishing Blade series.
I think this was “storyideamap26.gif” if that gives you any idea of my process. For reference, the map below is one of the first maps I ever made referencing Cirena, in all its pixel-y goodness.
(I later created the current version in pencil and ink and then polished it in Photoshop)
Notice that several features have changed from this version (storyideamap26) for The Wishing Blade series…
To the most recent version for The Wishing Blade series:
For example, scaling and spacing got readjusted. Neel, while still a city, also became a desert region.
Toranih’s estate doesn’t even get a dot on the map.
The Cantingen Islands (and pretty much every landmark) got redefined.
The Shadow’s Pass and the Pass of Cirena haven’t even been touched in the current series. (Though we might still see a version of these as the series continues).
The Midder Triangle (in my head now as “Midder’s Triangle”) also hasn’t been addressed… though some of the Legends stories that are in development (The Dark Forest of Aneth) are now making references to that goddess, and the concept of the Triangle might eventually make it into Litkanston lore if any of my current headcannon makes it into published cannon.
As the story developed, much of the plot and world-building changed. I guess that’s what happens when my first ideas for this series started 12 years before I published the first book (Magic’s Stealing). I was still in junior high, daydreaming in choir and whenever I had free time.
I set the idea for The Wishing Blade series aside for a while after high school, though I occasionally tried rewriting the concept without much success.
Then, after college, I tried reworking the story again, and finally published Magic’s Stealing in 2015.
It took a while to finally get the world to a place where I was satisfied, but I’m excited to see what changes as the series continues, and what plot points and characters stick around.
For example, Toranih’s sister, Siklana, plays a major role in the current version of the series, which was a big change since she was only seen in a couple scenes in the earlier drafts. She even has a major arc in the third book, Magebane.
I expect plenty more to change, though there are still major scenes that I look forward to finally writing.
* * *
A heinous plot is unveiled when magic is stolen…
See the result of my world-building changes in The Wishing Blade series:
(And yes, there’s at least one, if not two more books planned for the complete arc).
Hi there! Today I’m going to be talking about tackling two points of view of the same scene in different books. But there are going to be some spoilers regarding the Distant Horizon Universe. They’ll be minor, but if you’re trying to avoid spoilers, go read the books first, then come back after!
While the Glitch Saga (Glitch #1-3) follows Tim’s point of view within the Camaraderie, the Distant Horizon series follows Jenna’s point of view with the Coalition rebels.
At times, these scenes directly overlap.
For example, in Ghost of a Memory (Glitch #2), there’s a scene where Tim first takes the Legion Spore to attack the OA training base in Japan:
Master Zaytsev, we are required to alert you to a small, unidentified vessel leaving the area.
“Insignificant,” I murmur. We need to fix this glitch, not apprehend ships.
Master Zaytsev… The voices are curious. She has our memories.
I frown and bring the revolving set of images onto the main screen. Mechs. Helicopters… There’s a small firefight in the distant region, but most of the people on the ground now are Special Forces.
We are legion, it calls mentally, and I almost swear it’s happy. Then I see the fast fleeing vessel.
“Zoom in.” Nothing happens. I bite my cheek. “Legion Spore?”
No response.
I type the command, and one of the Legion Spore’s eyes shift and focus until they reveal a small, black car flying into the distance. My chest tightens as I manually scan the ground for signs of the rebels. I don’t see anyone, so maybe they escaped. “What were the memories?”
Not her own. Disappointment. Stolen memories, used to cause pain. Are we a device for pain, Master Zaytsev?
Long story short, there’s some behind-the-scenes information that Tim doesn’t have in regards to those memories the Legion Spore saw. During an earlier mission, Jenna fell victim to a telepathic attack that left “memory seeds” in her head, seeds which attempt to weaken the victim’s mind.
Jenna is all too familiar with the problem these seeds can cause, and the memories—painful images of being transformed into a beast and the Legion Spore—tend to attack at the worst times. Such as right in the middle of a mission.
In Fractured Skies, she’s at the same base when Tim brings the Legion Spore there to attack, and her view of what’s happening is a little bit different:
We are legion. Telepathic voices, overlapping but discordant, boomed in my head, overshadowing every other thought. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to plug out the sound, but that didn’t stop the wave of pain rolling through my skull. So many voices, so much pain…
I gasped, my eyes watering. Pain. I knew exactly what this was. The numerous voices and the sense of being one unit… “The Legion Spore,” I whispered. Chills ran down my spine. My body shook, all of my muscles feeling loose and scattered, as if there was nothing else around me but so many creatures, beastie and human, their bones knitting with metal. Their skin stretching to form a hull. A loss of sight, our vision was black, and all there could be was a terrible, hot, burning pain. We gritted our teeth, strained against our binds. The noise… that beating, beating pulse of hearts merging with clicking gears and digital clocks. Winding, binding, whimpering, crying…
“Jenna!”
We struggled against the metal grid. It held us tight. The bindings, the wires were part of our bone, part of our new skeleton, and radiation… terrible radiation unified us, our new sight—our powers, together, a legion of souls—
“Jenna! Listen to me!”
Listening. Commands… commands… Her senses, same as us. Her memories are ours… She is part of us. Meant to be part of us. She could complete us. Join us; we are legion…
“Jenna! Damn it, I need her to see me!” A firm hand gripped my chin and forced me to look into brown eyes—
Brown eyes… Lance’s eyes were green. Whose were these?
“She’s responding,” the face said. Slowly it came into focus, and I finally saw Quin, not the horrible visions. Cold sweat covered my aching body.
“Can we go invisible yet? I think we’re out of range, but still—” A fuzzy-looking Inese turned in the driver’s seat, looking back.
“Not yet. Let’s be sure we have her.” Quin held my chin tight so I couldn’t look away. “Can you hear me?”
I swallowed hard. My throat burned as if it was raw. “Yeah,” I whispered.
“Do you remember anything?”
“Yes.” I stared at his face. I should have been able to escape the memories. But how could I use Gwen’s teachings if I didn’t know it was a memory? It felt real, like only part of it was a memory, but part of it was new.
“What happened?” Quin released my chin and I looked around me. The base was out of sight and, thank the Community, so was the horrible vessel.
“A memory seed,” I said. “The creation of the Legion Spore. One of Lady Winters’ attacks.”
Quin frowned, his eyebrows quirked with worry. “You were saying ‘We are legion.’ ”
So there you have it!
A look at what was going on in Jenna’s mind when the Legion Spore spots the fleeing rebels.
This scene was fairly easy to match up, because we really don’t see a whole lot of overlap.
I think this might be the easiest way to work with multiple perspectives, because, while the larger event is the same, there’s not a whole lot of interaction.
In one of my other projects, I’m working on an alternate perspective for The Wind Mage and the Wolf, and there’s an entire scene of dialogue and action that overlap.
That one has been proving trickier, since I need to make sure that everything still happens the same, in the same order, and makes logical sense without contradicting the other.
For that one, I wrote the majority of the story, and left the overlapping scene for last. My current method for trying to bring them together is to strip out the fluff from the original scene, making note of what the POV character in the new story would see, and then rewriting the rest of the details from his point of view.
It’s tricky, but neat to play with different perspectives.
I’m finally getting around to repurposing some of my older newsletter sneak peeks and behind the scenes notes into blog posts!
To start with, we’ll delve into the lore of the Wishing Blade Universe…
I have a lot of fun when working on the world of the Wishing Blade, both with Cirena, and with the Cantingen Islands. While Cirena is the mainland, the Cantingen Islands are to its southeastern shore, though more distant than my map would suggest.
This is an older version of the map, but not the earliest version of the map.
First, Cirena does tend to be a bit Cirena-centric.
Second, my sense of scale when I originally designed the map was not great. But I was thirteen… so… yeah… Later map designs have gotten considerably more realistic.
Third, I already published it so I’m going to role with my mistakes and, despite Cirena being roughly the size of Missouri and still having a large degree of biome diversity, it’s totally fine because there are mythological reasons that I will eventually get to in later stories and that I’ve already started hinting at in the Legends of Cirena stories.
Speaking of which, one of the aspects I find so enjoyable when writing fantasy is the magic systems, and today, I’m going to focus on word magic. Mostly because word magic means I get to create a language. (For better or worse, because I probably should be writing when I’m busy translating in-world poetry into Cantingen. You get to see the results of that in Wind and Words.
Anyway, I thought it might be fun to examine a few tidbits regarding the Cantingen language.
Let’s look at Madia… the goddess of the dead. In Cirena, they call her Madiya… slight pronunciation difference due to regional separation.
But in the Cantingen language, madi is a verb that means “to plan,” “to set a course,” or “to plot.”
Conjugated, it looks something like this:
Madia – I plan
Madiat – You plan (a human “you”)
Madian – You plan (imperative, used for word magic purposes)
Madion – He plans
Madiol – She plans
…and there’s actually several other conjugated forms, but for now I’ll spare you the details.
So, Madia’s name literally translates to “I plan.”
Is it any wonder, then, that everyone from the Cantingen Islands is always going on about her plans?
* * *
A spell to infuriate the goddess of the dead…
Read more about Madia and word magic in the Stone and String series:
If you enjoy the dystopian world of the Distant Horizon universe, you might enjoy these books!
(Note: The giveaways above are hosted through BookFunnel. Authors will usually ask for your email address, and in many cases, the author will collect these addresses for their newsletters.)
If you enjoy the world and adventures of the Wishing Blade universe, you might find something to enjoy here!
(Note: The giveaways above are hosted through BookFunnel. Authors will usually ask for your email address, and in many cases, the author will collect these addresses for their newsletters.)
Long term, I’d also like to include free coloring pages, printable bookmarks, and that kind of thing. Let me know if there’s anything you’d especially like to see!
For today’s ebook giveaway, the theme is both fantasy and sci-fi, so if you enjoy the kinds of stories Isaac and I write, you might find something to enjoy here!
(Note: The giveaway above is hosted through BookFunnel. Authors will usually ask for your email address, and in many cases, the author will collect these addresses for their newsletters.)
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 