(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.)
At some point in 2019, I took to learning how to use Daz Studio in my spare time. Daz is a 3D modeling program that lets you purchase assets (poses, characters, clothing, backgrounds, etc) for your own use and then position those assets to create scenes.
There is also the ability to “morph” the basic models so they match how you envision your own characters.
The first character I customized was Siklana Covonilayno, Toranih’s sister from The Wishing Blade series:
Her hair’s a bit too long here, but this was a quick render to test the outfit and general background.
Here’s a closer look at her facial structure (customized from the Victoria 4 base model — which I’m still impressed I succeeded with since shortly after, I started working primarily with Genesis 8 models).
(At some point I needed a Daz PA (Published Artist) profile image, and this was one of my early renders I was happy with, so I used that. Later on I realized that she looks a little like me when the image is in tiny thumbnail size. Not intentional.)
At some point I might make some adjustments to Siklana’s design, mostly in redoing the character on a later model to take into account some issues and limitations I didn’t know about when first starting.
I continued to work with learning the program, and eventually put together a full scene with her.
In this case, she’s with her horse, Esara.
(The horse’s coat and mane ended up a bit darker than I was initially picturing for Esara, so I may need to do some tweaking if I do further images with her).
The idea behind this image, though only mentioned in The Wishing Blade series rather than actually seen, is that Siklana used to go outside of Cirena City to practice her knife-throwing skills in peace.
She would ride out to the forested region behind the city walls to a small, abandoned ruin. (This region was once Aneth, home to those who would eventually spread throughout Cirena. At the time, they faced attacks by the immortals, and many of their buildings ended up in ruin once they fled). This particular building would likely have been fairly recent in their history, though still abandoned. But now this side of the forest is relatively safe. The perfect place to go when someone wants time to themselves to study and throw knives.
Are there any characters from the Wishing Blade universe (any of the stories) that you would be interested in seeing?
* * *
Though Siklana starts as a side character, by Magebane she has a major character arc…
Sometimes it’s really obvious and you just point at that one and say “That one!”
For all the other times… We’re scratching our heads, trying to think if anything stood out while making revisions.
So when it came to figuring out the title for Galina’s story, we turned to the Distant Horizon Universe newsletter!
We proposed six ideas:
1. The Deception 2. Deceived 3. Quarantined 4. The Warning 5. The Outbreak 6. The Secret
But we weren’t 100% sold on any of them at that point.
So we asked readers:
Knowing that Galina’s story will be a young adult dystopian thriller in the same vein as Distant Horizon and Glitch, and having read the three sneak peeks from these newsletters, do any of those titles stand out to you?
Do you have an idea for a better title?
And we did get a few responses! (Which we very much appreciated).
Ultimately, we ended up settling on “Deceived,” which became part one of Galina’s Saga (which we later just called the “Deceived” series). Because, of course, we ended up having plenty more plot fodder itching to be written.
Which is why we now also have its newsletter-exclusive prequel, Initiated, and its sequel, Betrayed!
And yes. Figuring out those titles was also a pain. But at least we had the convention of the title to work with.
* * *
Now I just have to hope I can remember what I planned to title the next book in the series…
Today I thought I’d do a behind-the-scenes snippet for one of the Cirenan-Cantingen goddesses: Meshon.
Meshon is one of the older goddesses, and she has a strong presence in both Cirenan and Cantingen pantheons.
Though not considered a primary goddess in the Cantingen pantheon (who only recognize a small handful of deities in addition to Madia), Meshon is revered as Madia’s trusted messenger.
Meshon is often referred to as the Oracle, capable of seeing visions of the future and walking between realms–though her ability to cross realms means it’s not always clear which world her visions refer to, and that issue has landed many of her followers into trouble for trying to interpret her dreams.
Shevanlagiy/Ralendacin has held a grudge with the goddess for this very reason, and that grudge is clear in Magebane.
Meshon currently has a role in both The Wishing Blade series and Stone and String, and even plays small roles in some of the Legends of Cirena short stories, such as The Scars of Her Past… though she plays a much larger role in the upcoming Legends of Cirena novel, The Dark Forest of Aneth. (Yes, novel. It was supposed to be a novella but it has well surpassed that word count at this point).
Below is one of the test images I created for Meshon using Daz 3D Studio. Her design is still in progress, but this is fairly close to how I see her. 🙂
Meshon’s prophecies will eventually have a strong role in the next Stone and String story, and it’s her prophecy that references the coming of Ralendacin, the “Destroyer of Worlds” (Shevanlagiy in The Wishing Blade series).
I’d been sitting on the outline for Starless Night for a while… partially because I was cycling through projects, but also, because the prospect of the third Distant Horizon book was daunting.
I had a partial rough draft and an outline already written. (See the post from two weeks ago). But that outline was written before Isaac and I made major edits to Fractured Skies, thus changing the shape of where the story was headed.
Characters I thought were going to be dead were now still alive, and characters who lived in the role-play campaign ended up dead. (Still can’t quite believe Isaac convinced me to kill off that character… though it really did make sense for the story). And important plot points were revealed way earlier than we expected, rendering certain scenes in the third book no longer necessary.
Between all the character relationships and faction issues, I wasn’t sure where to start. Originally, I hoped to salvage bits and pieces of the previous draft to work into the revised version. But that seemed likely to cause more problems than help.
I stalled, hoping that writing Deceived would get me back in the swing of writing for the Distant Horizon universe. It did (and accidentally spawned a new series). I now wanted to return to Jenna’s story.
But it didn’t solve the wall I had been running into.
Then Isaac brought up the idea of cutting two very major plots that we had planned for the third book, and condensing the last two books back into one.
At first, I was resistant to the whole thing. I loved some of the scenes he was suggesting cutting, scenes we had discussed and honed a while back.
But…
There’s a saying that writers have to “kill their darlings.” (I kind of despise that saying, by the way). It doesn’t always hold true. But sometimes, eliminating a plot or a scene, or merging two characters, end up making for a better story. Or solves your problems.
I started thinking about Isaac’s suggestions. About eliminating those two major plot points and how it would affect the story.
And… um…
It worked a lot better.
Instead of taking a longer route to get to the climax by looking at various outside forces and their impact on Jenna’s brainseed, the focus is much more strongly related to the issues of Legion’s rise and the downfall of the Community.
Suddenly a lot of foreshadowing in Fractured Skies regarding artifacts, alchemist-enchanters, and the Elizabeth pendants had a direct tie back into the story. And the trimmed version made some of the future plans for this universe tie in more clearly, too.
I really liked the beginnings of the new outline and where it was going.
So I presented some of my new notes to Isaac and we began bouncing ideas off each other again, rather than coming to a stalemate about where the story should go.
So I decided to scrap the entirety of the previous rough draft. It exists as writing practice and helped to flesh out the world, but it was going to be simpler to start book three from scratch.
And that’s okay.
My hope was that my writing skills would have improved since I wrote the original draft, and starting from scratch helped reduce the amount of “revision smudge” likely to sneak in if we weren’t careful.
Best of all, we were having fun with the story again, and I looked forward to seeing how the pieces that we decided should stay would weave themselves together.
There were a couple directions we could take the end of Jenna’s arc, so we still had to figure out which one was the most satisfying and would make the most sense, especially since there was still going to be one more book after Starless Night, but it was now planned to be a four-book series instead of a five-book one.
((*Insert defeated laughter/crying here.* A note from present-day me who is in the process of revising this ancient newsletter email into a blog post… “Just four books? Sure… If I can figure out how to condense Changing Tides. Because last I checked, there’s still a whole missing middle section, and it’s already well over full-length. Either something major needs cut, or the book needs to be split into two.”))
So… what was one of those major changes?
Warning! Spoilers for Fractured Skies ahead!
It involved a return to the Community after Legion strikes.
The thing is, Legion isn’t entirely destructive. Though a lot of people end up with their life force drained to feed Legion’s ghostly legionnaires (hence sending teams to evacuate the area when it gets attacked), others choose to join Legion’s call to “control the chaos,” forming a cult that sees Legion as more efficient than the Community under Camaraderie rule.
Originally, we planned a sequence in St. Petersburg involving the destruction of the city, and after that, we didn’t see much of the cult (though Jenna did try to help with evacuations in other parts of the Community).
This time, we decided to explore what happens when Legion gets into the Community. The destruction-versus-life going on sort-of normally… while a certain prior (second-in-commands for Legion) becomes a primary antagonist, rather than being defeated early on. Which means this prior will return in Changing Tides.
And the HUGE thing we considered that we hadn’t before is how Jenna’s brain seed handles dealing with Legion.
After all, the brain seed’s creator also had a hand in creating Legion (well, the Legion Spore… since the creator didn’t expect it to be “killed”), and thus has a particular interest in Legion’s powers…
And acquiring said powers.
Normally, Jenna wants nothing to do with Legion. But while Jenna is under the brain seed’s influence, she has far more interest in Legion’s power than she should…
AND IT DOES NOT END WELL FOR THE RESCUE MISSION.
(Remember how I said there was a character who survived in the campaign but not in Starless Night?)
Anyway, that scene allowed us to really explore Legion’s influence, the Community, and the brain seed, in ways we had never expected…
And even ended up influencing the book cover design for Starless Night, as well.
I’m much happier with that book now. (And ugh… having a tooth pulled was literally easier than writing that particular book). But I really like how Starless Night wraps up. Redoing the outline was the right call.
So yeah. Ever completely scrapped an outline and tried again?
* * *
This series has undergone so many changes since we first started Jenna’s journey with a role-play game…
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(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.)
The process of writing a rough draft can be… well… a bit rocky. Surprisingly, at the time I originally wrote this post to send to newsletter subscribers, the draft for a novella I’d been working on (and later shelved) had been going surprisingly smoothly.
Well… sort of.
Originally, I planned on it being a short story. (If you’ve been following me long at all, you probably have an idea of where this is going.
At the time I wrote newsletter email, the story was sitting firmly in the “novella” category at 28,000 words.
And it wasn’t done yet.
The story finalized at finalized at 37,000 words. For comparison, Magic’s Stealing is a novella of 34,000 words, and Wind and Words clocks in at 22,000 words.
The good news was that I only had two or three scenes left before the story is complete. Then came the challenge of editing to create a tight plot (because extraneous scenes like to make their way into the rough draft while I’m still figuring out the details).
Then I got to go back and add in the translations for the various spells and sections in different languages.
Which is what I wanted to talk about today. Because seriously, I had sections in the rough draft that looked something like this:
He came out of the storeroom with a shallow bowl and a pitcher of water. “Be la mireyan naébiéeth so nocho Farris NAME chono li mirra da nac so wusna miduhan la be.” (CHECK PHRASE… add (not to exceed my focus))
In this case, I snagged the scrying spell from The Shadow War, inserted the correct name (and realized I didn’t have the targetted character’s last name), and made a note to myself to recheck the phrase and add in an extra qualifying statement.
Err… it looks a lot more coherent when it’s done.
The extra fun part of this was that I knew I’d probably have to do additional grammar work due to including the then-fledgeling conlang in the story.
He went back to the storeroom and came out with a shallow bowl and a pitcher of water. “Be la fayquelvi miruen, mireyan naébiéeth so nocho Farris chono li mirra da nac so wusna miduhan la be.”
Magic, not to exceed my focus, reveal the location of Farris in the form of an image in the bowl of water before me.
And as you might notice… I decided to omit the last name. Ideally, the caster would use the full name. But this character is supposed to be exceedingly strong at wielding intent versus precision (which is also extremely dangerous), so it’s fine. And words got added.
But that’s a little look into my rough draft process where conlangs are involved.
Originally I planned to release this story after Magebane, with the idea that it was going to be a bridge between The Wishing Blade series and the Stone and String series.
But Isaac pointed out some world-breaking holes in the current version of the story, so it’s been hanging out on the back shelf of one of my hard-drives while I tackle other books.
That said, I’d like to return to this one eventually…
* * *
Read the two series that this novella was intended to bridge…
Today I thought I’d preview a small section of what had been the outline for Starless Night, the third book in the Distant Horizon series. 🙂
Key word is *had* because if you’ve read Starless Night, you’ll notice this isn’t how the story starts.
In a couple weeks, I’ll have a post for you about that time that I completely scrapped an outline… and an entire rough draft.
But first… let’s have a look at what one version of my outlines look like! (Because it might not look like what you expect).
WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the Glitch saga and Fractured Skies!
Already read those books? Don’t mind spoilers?
Proceed! 😁
Here’s what the beginning of my outline looked like. It’s rough, not always in complete sentences, and my outlines often change before I actually begin drafting. (And usually change again during drafting).
I’ve made a few adjustments here for clarity, since some of my notes were vague since I knew who/what they referenced, but probably wouldn’t be clear outside of context.
* * *
Jenna waiting with team on lawn for COE arrival (solidarity/support from team). When Camaraderie ship arrives, Lady Black and Stuart are the first to come out. They make it clear they want to discuss Val’s… and her guards’… release. They walk in like they own the place, much to the COF’s annoyance. Lady Black mentions to Pops that last time they met (before he switched sides) her grandfather had been with them (remind readers that the grandfather is Lord Black). Meanwhile, Pops feels like he’s never met Stuart before, though Stuart assures him he has. Jenna remembers Stuart from the COE base and has the beginnings of a memory attack (Legion Spore memory), which fades. She’s confused, but thankful it doesn’t get worse. The team members out to greet the COE are Pops, Jenna, Quin (Quin: “this is a historical meeting… *Squee!*” Jenna: you’re far too excited about this.), Lily there because Quin dragged her there (besides, if something does happen, it’s an excuse… she’s a good fighter… (really trying to get her to be less down and just go talk to Jenna)). Awkwardness between Jenna and Lily (they go to target range later?). Gwen, along with South African (SA) forces (introduce Ambassador Jordaan). Jenna heads to garden while the COE goes on tour of area.
While in the garden, the tour stops by. Pops formally introduces them… (though Jen has met Lady Black before… when kidnapped. “Can you kidnap your own citizens?” “Yes.” “You speak your mind… I like that.” Jenna perplexed, not sure what she thinks of her. However, Lady Black is #sorrynotsorry about it. Still thinks having Jenna on COE side would have been better for Community. But there are bigger issues to worry about now). Lady Black is polite, reserved… and nervous, Jenna realizes. (Tries to read her mind with flower charm, gets a little bit of the truth… then after almost using her flower charm to try sensing her motive, gets rebuked by Stuart who asks her to politely control her telepathic searches).
They’re starting to move on to a private part of garden, and Lady Black brings up the time stones and concern for Legion’s advances (foreshadowing further issues). Jenna notices that the lady seems a little more—invested—in those time stones than she expected. Pops suggests they can discuss this later. He’s hesitant to share information. Lady Black points out Master Zaytsev had info (a guilt trip for Jenna… it’s a reminder of Legion’s interest in her and the brain seed). She’s getting some emotion from her flower charm (though not actively prying on Lady Black). Decides to go back inside to get away from them… but gets a private thought from Stuart, who comments on Jenna’s garden (favorably… the first step in gaining Jenna’s trust). (Ugh… Telepaths!)
* * *
The outline is mostly meant to remind me of the general gist of what’s supposed to happen in the opening scenes and the kind of emotions the characters have, as well as what needs to be foreshadowed for later. I often have scenes visualized in my head from day-dreaming, so this is just meant to streamline the writing process.
(And sometimes I’m literally telling myself the story as I write the outline, and then the draft is just fleshing out the detail. This particular outline is short per scene compared to some of my recent outlines.)
But here’s the thing. When I shared the original version of this post with my newsletter a long, long time ago, Starless Night was still being the problem book of the series. And so it would go a while without any progress because it wasn’t working.
Until, finally, I realized I needed to scrap my outline and start fresh.
In a couple weeks, we’ll get back to that. So keep an eye out for that post, coming soon. 😉
* * *
See the difference in how the story starts in Starless Night… (Though you might want to read the other two book first).
Today, I thought I’d take a look at one of the methods I used in writing The Wind Mage of Maijev, the first in the Legends of Cirena series.
This series started with me writing a “segment a week” based on voting from members of the Legends of Cirena Facebook group (now on a semi-permanent hiatus).
My writing partner, Isaac, did quite a bit of world development for the Legends era, especially in regards to the different districts and the shops. While this was meant for a personal tabletop roleplay version of Cirena, it’s also been really helpful for world development. (And I’ve still occasional yanked out the charts he made for reference in later stories that are currently in development).
In this case, Isaac took what I had already developed of Maijev (the general concept for the city, the larger world map, etc.), divided the city-as-a-country into districts (such as the Northern and Southern Quarters, of which the Southern Quarter is the primary area where The Wind Mage of Maijev takes place), and figured out who would likely frequent the region, the kind of prices those stores would have, and even which factions characters might run into.
Here’s a glimpse at the document he created:
Enen’s Study and Zora’s Market are the primary characters and locations I pulled for The Wind Mage of Maijev, though Cross Bones does get a brief reference.
Overall, having these charts has been really helpful in developing the Legends stories, since I can easily look to them to figure out what might be in the area and what sort of encounters a character might have.
For example, Livena, the protagonist of The Wind Mage of Maijev, has mixed feelings about Zora’s Market… especially since they sell a few items that probably shouldn’t be in Maijev. 😉
* * *
See how those charts turned into a story in The Wind Mage of Maijev, (and you can get the ebook edition for FREE from online retailers!)
I found this flash fiction nugget (your choice if it’s more like a chicken nugget or a gold nugget) while looking through my older Distant Horizon Universe newsletters. I originally sent this out on February 20th of 2020.
Since I’ve been having fun with flash fiction and poetry lately, I thought it might be fun to revisit now.
This little shorty doesn’t follow a particular character, but does take inspiration from both Distant Horizon and Deceived. 🙂
Students mill around her. Chatting. Heading to class. Nothing new.
But this place is a lie.
It’s that poster by the door that reminds her. Stark white with pale blue lettering.
Safety Security Efficiency
Her throat squeezes and she can barely breathe.
Lie-lie-lie…
A firm hand clamps on her shoulder. Soldier-agent-danger–
She recoils and her shoulder slams the wall, knocking aside the poster. She needs to hide–
“Woah, it’s just me.” A young man smiles at her, confusion in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She knows him. Knew him.
He doesn’t know her. Not anymore.
Still, she forces a smile and rights the poster on the wall. She can’t afford to lose the efficiency points. “Sorry. I guess I was thinking too hard about which building has my next class.”
Her heart pounds like a student slamming the walls of a transformation chamber.
“You weren’t gone that long.” He chuckles. “Which Community did you visit, anyway? We thought you’d failed the scan.”
It’s hard to maintain her smile. “I visited the European Community.”
A lie like those words on that poster.
“Neat. Maybe I’ll get to go sometime. See you around.” He waves as he reenters the stream of students filtering through the hall. “The Community is safe!”
She can’t muster the enthusiasm to say the usual response.
She never went to Europe.
She never knew where they sent her when she failed the scan.
But she found her way back.
They’re going to wish she hadn’t.
One of the things I enjoy about flash fiction is the questions they spawn, and the possible stories. 🙂
Who is she? Will she succeed in getting vengeance? What in particular does she want vengeance for?
Seeing as how she failed the scan, what are her powers?
Why, and how, did she make it back to the Community?
I didn’t have those answers when I first wrote it and I still don’t have them now… but it’s still a fun exercise.
* * *
Jenna and Galina both see the Community in new light after an unfortunate visit to a transformation facility…
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 