If you’ll permit me a minute to be cliche: this photo would not have been possible without you. When I started university in August 2019, the sum of all my author-y potential measured up to:
No finished manuscripts
A pipe dream of ever publishing my work
A scatterbrained outline of The Laoche Chronicles
Forty-four phone notes full of half-witted ideas
A grand total of 3 followers on my brand-new tumblr account
At the time, I had no grand plans of marketing my work, though I knew it would be necessary if I ever wanted an audience. I chose a degree in chemical engineering because I knew my baby platform and half finished stories weren’t going to cut it as a career in their current state as an 18-year-old, and I needed to have a day job if I wanted to pursue my end dream of self publishing. I was just hoping to survive my first year of engineering school, pass my weed-out classes, and hopefully make some new friends. That fall semester passed with sporadic progress on my book, and halfhearted attempts at breaking into the writeblr community, until I decided to try my hand at Inktober and made my first few acquaintances: Siarven and Abalonetea, who have both featured on this blog since then. It was also at this point, sometime during a Calculus III lecture, that I invented my pen name:
All was going well, and I was pleased with my incremental progress until the world ended.
The less said about the pandemic, the better. Writeblr truly kept me sane through working full-time jobs and taking 18 credit hours during the semester. When I was truly close to dropping out of school, I kept going, knowing I had these online friends to cheer me up after brutal exams and long nights of studying. The tag games and community filled the dearth of interaction left by quarantine and an insane schedule. During my summer internship in 2020, I finally had the time to finish the first draft of Storge and the confidence in myself to start a website. Rereading my first post is a surreal experience, in part because I still see myself as a little kid as hiding under the blankets with a flashlight, notebook, and pen, thinking “I wanna write a book!”
I woke up the next day crying to the sheer volume of kind messages congratulating me on meeting this milestone. Instead of feeling burnt out after reaching such a lofty goal, this gave me all the more energy to keep working. Since then, I’ve been so blessed to grow this community and this website. It’s incredible to see how far I’ve come, now being able to claim:
A finished manuscript of Storge
A 3rd draft of Runaways after going through 2 rounds of Beta Readers
8 short stories and an audio drama
An active mailing list
Over 1000 followers on tumblr, but more importantly, a thriving community of writers who support each other’s releases through ARCs, leaving reviews, enthusiastic questions, and a welcoming space for new writers to share their craft.
140 posts on this website and regular readers who care about my ramblings ❤
Now I’m on my way to my new job – I’ll be doing research and development in my chosen field with a team I really like, and the freedom to listen to books while I’m in the lab. This next month will still be a hiatus for blog posts and new writing as I pack up my life for a cross-states move, but I’m beyond excited to enter change. My hope is that I can start saving for editing costs and devote more time to my craft thanks to a 9-5 schedule and NO!!! HOMEWORK!!!!!!!!! Really, I cannot say enough how thrilled I am to never have to take another exam ever again, thank GOD. With a bit of luck and no small amount of grace, I hope I can publish and share my stories with you sooner rather than later.
Thank you for all the support and camaraderie these past years. In a way, I owe this diploma to you as much as to my classmates and professors. The night before graduation, I said to my friends, “I’ve been waiting for tomorrow for eight years.” Now I’m living in the future, and I can’t wait to write the next chapter.
Hi everyone!! No formal blog post today because I got slammed with classwork this week. I was planning to take a short hiatus for the months of May and part of June so I can deal with end of semester insanity but it looks like I’m going to have to start that a little sooner than I expected. I’ll still be on Tumblr and the queue will be running but don’t expect any updates on my website for a few weeks.
In the meantime, wish me luck on my ChemE car competition! My team was chosen to go to the regional tournament, and then my team completely flaked on me so I’m heading to Virginia this weekend on short notice to do the event on my own. When I get back, I’ll be diving into final project reports and exams, then going on a bunch of trips before I graduate and move to a new state to start work. I’ll be back to writing as soon as possible but with so many huge life changes going on, I need to take the time away so I don’t have to worry about weekly essays on top of everything else. In the meantime, you can browse through the archive and see if there’s anything there that catches your attention. Thank you for understanding! ❤
As writers, we’re always looking for cool new ways to develop our fantasy and science fiction settings. If you’re a scientifically minded type, this may be a blessing or a curse, as you catch worldbuilders’ disease, and try to justify all the things you want to add by the “rule of cool”. Alternatively, the incredible complexity of the natural world might leave you paralyzed, because for every weird trait you come up with, there’s probably already a creature that has it, right here on earth. I personally find it incredibly difficult to think of original new wildlife to put in my settings, when the oak trees in my backyard somehow never fail to awe me. Besides, I’m a physics and chemistry person by trade, not a naturalist.
So I’ve turned to alien worlds for inspiration – specifically exoplanets that NASA has already found and studied! Speculative biology is the branch of world-building in which you start from a hypothetical premise and then build a world from the ground up, considering how creatures and plants would adapt and evolve to fit in the setting you’ve created. In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite exoplanet systems with you. Hopefully, it sparks some inspiration!
Trappist 1 – Habitable planets all on top of each other
This is my all time favorite TED talk, because it lets us listen to the music of the spheres. Sound doesn’t travel in space, and the planets rotations aren’t in a frequency that we can perceive so it would be impossible to literally hear their orbits. Even so, because the system is so well tuned, I imagine that people from one of these planets would be able to hear and make noises in a much different, much lower range than ours. This implies that the creatures might be incredibly large, or maybe even have a way to broadcast their communication in radio (light) waves that can travel in space, as opposed to sound waves. There might be networks of communication connecting individuals all around the planet, and even between planets. They might also develop religions centered on the idea of holy ratios, with their feast days falling in turn with the planet’s alignment. Imagine the mythological origin stories of a culture where each planet is a god. How come they move so closely and so perfectly around each other, and around their shared sun?
NASA makes posters from the “Exoplanet Travel Bureau”, treating these places like vacation destinations. In their design for Trappist 1, they show people coming together to watch the alignment, like the way we gather to watch eclipses on Earth. In the background, you can make out Orion’s belt to the left, and our sun, a pale yellow dot in the top right.
Proxima Centauri-b
This star is a closest neighbor and lives in the constellation Centaurus. It’s also a flare star, which means it is prone to random and dramatic changes in brightness. It’s also part of a triple star system, with stars A and B being much bigger and more similar to our sun than this little red dwarf. The exoplanet, Proxima Centarui-b is a rock planet a bit larger than Earth in the habitable zone of the red dwarf, and so it might have life.
Life on a planet with a flare star might be extremely harsh due to the sudden “storms” of radiation. Animals on this planet might exhibit melanism – a hyper pigmentation of their coloring to avoid being burnt by a sunburst, and learn to take cover during one of these events where the world gets bombarded with X-Rays.
Civilizations might primarily be underground in tunnel systems where they’re shielded from the radiation, and where the dim light can’t reach. What might a cave dwelling society look like and when would they hazard visits to the surface? What if they could generate energy from the bursts to drive their technology, or predict sunbursts, migrating away from where they’ll hit the planet hardest?
Tidally Locked Planets
This isn’t a specific exoplanet but it is a concept I think is cool. Tidally locked planets don’t rotate like ours does, giving us a day/night cycle with the sun evenly heating the world. Instead, their rotation is locked in place, so one side of the planet is always facing the star. This results in one side that’s a never-ending hot, and one side that’s left cold and dark, with a thin strip of habitable area called the “terminator zone” in a perpetual twilight.
Anyone living on a planet like this would have to live in that thin strip of land that isn’t lava, or a frozen wasteland, which would also make all of those civilizations fundamentally interconnected, because you have to pass through to get to the next town, there’s no way to go around. There might also be expeditions into the hot or cold side to get rare resources, or a rail network that goes all the way around the equator of the planet. Any creatures adapted to live closer to the hot side would need to have special equipment to cross over into the dark side, and vice versa. Think about how many dualistic philosophies we have in our world between day and night, and all the symbolism associated with that. How would society work differently with the planet literally split in half?
Thanks for reading! Do you have a favorite method of worldbuilding? I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!
Instead of writing an intro I will be outside enjoying the gorgeous weather that has finally deigned to grace my town with its beauty. It’s incredible what some warm days and an hour of sunshine can do. Last time I wrote one of these, I had a migraine and chronic fatigue. Now I’ve had more creative energy in the past week than in the past 3 months.
Won by 1 point: 8/13 Goals
Become more active on Tumblr and try to help revive Writeblr community: Since all the Dramas with twitter and tiktok going around, Tumblr is flooded with bots, as well as new people who don’t understand how to use the site and get blocked on reflex. The writeblr community has also been feeling rather dead, as people move on and change blog topics, and so I wanted to try to bring things back to the way they were in 2019 when I first joined. I made a post asking for new Real Human Person Writeblr twitter refugees to reblog and introduce themselves, and it quickly blew up, so I followed it with a post about how to get started on tumblr if you don’t understand how the site works, which also blew up. I’m very pleased with the turnout and I’m looking forward to meeting all the new folks!
Website and IG scheduling: Tadaaa! Another successful month down.
Finish Tress and the Emerald Sea: I finished the book on April 4th which I’m saying is close enough because it’s before this list goes up lol. I probably won’t do a full review of this one because I’ve got other books to move onto but this is probably my new favorite of the Cosmere books by Brandon Sanderson. Tress is such an endearing and deeply relatable protagonist, the POV narrator is delightfully sassy, there are so many references to other books, and the story is like an inverse Princess Bride which is one of my favorite stories in the first place. I loved it a lot and I’m really looking forward to the rest of the Secret Novels coming out this year!
Look into the rest of the Adventurer’s Soul series: I’ve added them to my TBR after reading and reveiwing Pyreflies, but haven’t had the chance to start any of them yet as I’ve had a bunch of other books on deadlines. Looking forward to them though!
Finish Howl: Same as the above.
Finish printing out stickers/investigate commissions: The new stickers are back in stock and available on my shop!
When I was printing the Plotting Potion stickers, I had a funny misprint in which they turned out much pinker than I expected, and so if you want an Evil! Special Edition! Grape Flavored! Plotting Potion! I’ll throw an extra one in with your order until they run out.
I also put up a poll on tumblr asking if I should start offering commissions, and the verdict was that people were interested in theory, but didn’t want to actually spend money, which is understandable, considering the lackluster sales on the sticker shop anyhow. I want to focus on my personal work anyhow, so I will not be opening commissions at this time, but I’d reconsider the idea if there’s interest in the future.
Write short story for newsletter: “First Flight of Spring” is now live! If you missed it, you can still read this dragonriders story as well as the rest of the backlog by signing up for the mailing list here!
Optimize foundry for Planescape:For those unfamiliar, I’m running a DnD campaign set in the Planescape setting for a bunch of my friends and a lot of my creative work recently has been prepping that. Foundry is the virtual tabletop system we use to run the game, and I’m still learning the ropes. I don’t know if I’ll ever optimize it, because there are new updates and features being added all the time, but it’s been a great time experimenting with it.
Draw character portraits for planescape npcs: These are mostly finished! There are so many npcs I’ve mostly resorted to using piccrew but I’ve got two more side characters to finish.
Run two sessions of planescape: AND A GLORIOUS 2 SESSIONS THEY WERE. Any ttrpg player knows how hard it is to schedule and I have 7 people at my table and so it’s a feat that we’re playing biweekly at all.
Submit a short story to Nature Futures: Some of you may know that I’m an engineering student, and I do undergraduate research work with one of the professors at my university. In my lab group, there were a couple international postdocs who I grew close with last year, before they moved back to Europe. I briefly mentioned my writing to them but never discussed my stories in detail and we fell out of contact after they left the states. Out of the blue, one of them emailed me saying, “Hey I was looking for a journal to publish this scientific paper, but they have a short story column as well. You should go for it.” It was super encouraging and so I set out to write a 850-950 word hard science fiction story about a robot onboard Voyager 3 leaving home for the first time. It’s called “Pale Blue Dot” and I submitted my pitch earlier this week. I won’t hear back if I got accepted for nearly a month, but I’m very excited about dipping my toes into the publishing world for the first time ever. Wish me luck. Godspeed little robot.
Thanks for reading! I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!
Today I’m pleased to introduce you to R.K. Ashwick, one of my long-time friends on writeblr and the author of A Rival Most Vial which I reviewed last week, thanks to an advanced reader copy. I’m thrilled to have her on my blog today to talk about her upcoming release and publishing journey! This was such a fun interview and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed conducting it!
1. For a general introduction, can you tell me about yourself, how long you’ve been writing, and what you write?
RK: Sure! I’m R.K. Ashwick, a cozy fantasy romance author. I’ve been writing since I was kid, but writing seriously for almost three years now. In my spare time, I also draw!
2. Your new book, A Rival Most Vial, is your second self-published work. Was the experience going through the publishing process much different for ARMV as compared to your debut, The Stray Spirit?
RK: I’d like to think it was much smoother! With The Stray Spirit, I had to learn all about distribution sites, proper formatting, pre-order and release strategies, etc. With A Rival Most Vial, I knew a little more about what I was doing, which made it less stressful. Hopefully they just keep getting easier from here!
Etta: That’s good to hear! I know the publishing industry changes a lot year to year so I’m sure it’s a relief when the learning curve isn’t quite as steep.
3. I’ve seen A Rival Most Vial be compared to the popular cozy fantasy Of Legends and Lattes. I’ve not read that myself yet, but I’m curious, are there any other works that specifically inspired you to write ARMV?
RK: Ooh, good question! First off, I’m thrilled people are comparing it to Legends and Lattes. That style of slice-of-life cozy was definitely an inspiration, and it’s the biggest cozy fantasy on the lists right now. But weirdly, I was also inspired by cozy video games. There are several, like Littlewood, Stardew Valley, Moonlighter, and Potion Permit, that really focus on the everyday lives of villagers who live in an otherwise very large world, and I wanted to tell a story set in a place like that.
Etta: Oh that’s so fun! I’ve only recently started playing video games, but I remember during the Lockdown Years that cozy games like those were a big comfort and escape for a lot of people, so that’s delightful knowing it was an inspiration for a book that’s also a comforting break from reality. Thanks for the recommendations!
4. Now onto a question about the story itself: do you relate more to Ambrose, Eli, or one of the other characters? Who did you find easier to write and why?
RK: This one made me laugh because it’s absolutely Ambrose. Both Ambrose and I are major introverts and have similar feelings on things like parties and loud crowds. But I also can relate to the issues that both Eli and Dawn go through. Eli’s just trying to figure out what to do with his life- something that a lot of my peers are going through in their early 30’s- and Dawn is experiencing burnout, something that I and many of my co-workers have gone through. So while Ambrose may have been the easiest to write, there’s a little piece of myself in all of them (and I think many other writers can say the same).
Etta: Haha, that makes a lot of sense! I’ve gone on record before saying that I make characters by smashing my personality into little parts with a hammer and then giving each piece a name, so it’s funny to hear that yes, that is a similar experience to other writers. I found all of their struggles relatable too for the reasons you just described, so I’d say you did a very good job of making them each well rounded and real people, not just caricatures. Ambrose and Eli both feel like people you could walk up to on the street, going far beyond just a grumpy/sunshine dynamic.
5. You have so many lovable supporting characters in the other shopkeepers on Rosemond Street! Is there a chance we’ll ever get short stories about their lives and escapades, or more details in later books?
RK: Ambrose, Eli, and Dawn will always be our POV characters (Dawn will have POV chapters in books 2 and 3, with a secret unknown fourth person getting a POV in book 3), but I do hope I can deepen the side characters in future books! I’d also like to write some novellas that cover sillier elements of the street, like bake sales and such, but those are a bit trickier to market and fit into my writing schedule. Those may end up just being freebie short stories or reader magnets later down the line.
Etta: That makes a lot of sense! I loved all the scene snippets where they were bantering together, and so I’m happy to hear we’ll be seeing more of that. I’m sure a bake sale would be a lot of fun, with Sherry completely taking the cake (ha). I’m also very curious to see who the secret POV character will be but I suppose I’ll have to be patient about that.
6. Now for a fun worldbuilding question: If you could have any of the potions mentioned in the book, which one would you want to try?
RK: Oh man, it’s gotta be the birthday commission potion- but, like, souped-up. I don’t want just low-level levitation and sparkly dragon wings. I want full-on flight, I want fire coming out of my hands, I want the works! None of this ‘safe for kids’ garbage. I’m an adult, gimme the real stuff, Ambrose.
Etta: Hahaha! I laughed out loud at that last line. big mood. There’s a potion commission for the next book then!
7. You’ve done a number of Alternate Universe stories with the ARMV characters before it got published – I remember one about pirates that you co-wrote with someone on tumblr, and then a crime modern-day setting called Icefall. Do you mind talking a bit about how the process of writing these helped you develop the final version of ARMV?
RK: Sure! Yeah, at the end of the day, I wrote three AUs before publishing ARMV: Icefall, a modern day crime AU; The Pirate and the Potioneer, a pirate AU; and Potions & Pirates, a crossover AU with a Tumblr friend (at least, I think that’s the title). And you know what, I forgot about the college AU. That’s four. They were all just for fun, and mostly came out of the fact that I was obsessed with writing about Ambrose and Eli. (Still am.) But it was fun to experiment with Ambrose and Eli’s behavior in these scenarios: if Ambrose were a villain and already had welcomed a found family into his life, how would he comport himself? Would he fall for Eli faster or slower? And conversely, if Eli was a pirate captain with his career and community already in place, how would he approach Ambrose? What sort of pirate and leader would he be? I think considering these scenarios helped me further cement the OG Ambrose and Eli. (And they were just fun.)
RK: Oh, also: they love each other in every universe. That’s a given.
Etta: That’s a lot of fun! It’s neat to see how these different versions of the same characters were able to help you cement their personalities so solidly in the book, and I’m glad it was so helpful for you! It sounds like very useful strategy for all writers, especially with getting unstuck from a writers block, so I should try it with some of my own stories as well.
8. Do you have any favorite headcanons/flash-fiction pieces that didn’t make it into the final cut? (Other than the AUs and if they aren’t spoilers)
RK: Hmm. Off the top of my head, nothing’s really coming to mind- but there are things that I’m excited to explore in future books and stories! There’s a lot I haven’t mentioned about the sinkholes, the other merchants’ backstories, potion conventions, and more.
Etta: I’m excited to read about them in the future as well!
9. You’ve described the world of ARMV being inspired by DnD in your promotional materials, and I think you mentioned you play in a campaign yourself. Did any of the events in those games inspire parts of the story, or did any cameos from your home games make it into the book that you’d be willing to share?
RK: YES I’m so glad you asked this! While no events in the book are taken from past campaigns, I absolutely tried to fit in as many character names as I could. Sir Terrance, Tiegan, Hickory, and Widdershins all came from my friends’ DnD characters, and I tried to make non-named nods to other characters whose names didn’t quite fit. I’m hoping to add more references in future books, too.
Etta: Oh that’s delightful! I’m sure your friends will be thrilled to read those cameos. Did you tell them you were adding the little tributes or will it be a surprise for them?
RK: I did tell them, yeah!
Etta: How fun!
10. If there’s anything you wanted to talk about that we haven’t touched on yet, feel free to tell us about it now!
RK: I do have one little treat tucked in the center of the book that doesn’t typically come up in my posts! I wanted to have some artwork in the book, kind of like those special edition books at the Scholastic Book Fair that had posters and cool art in the middle. So, I illustrated one magical blueprint for each shopkeeper on Rosemond Street and added them to the book after Step 19. I had a lot of fun making them, and I think others are enjoying them as well!
Etta: Oh yes!!! I loved those!They all show such character – Ambrose’s is all neat and organized complete with little hazard labels and Eli has funny doodles of dragons next to the scorch marks. It’s such a fun way of bringing the story to life just a little more, and there’s no reasons kids should get all the fun illustrations. I’m thrilled you’re bringing them into your books 🙂
RK: Thank you! I’m really excited about the illustrations for books 2 and 3 as well.
Lastly, where can people find you and your work on the internet?
RK: Sure! rkashwick.com has all my book info in one place, including purchase links. You can also find me on FB, Insta, and TikTok under rkashwickbooks!I’ve also got a monthly newsletter where I send out stories, artwork, and updates on my work! Right now, the reader magnet is a short story about teenage Ambrose’s first potion convention.
(etta here, that facebook link might not work because I don’t have a facebook and can’t get to the profile, but I promise the page exists)
Thank you again to RK for agreeing to do this interview with me and for sharing such thoughtful answers! If you enjoyed this, be sure to go check out her other work, and read my review of A Rival Most Vial from last week. If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip on my Kofi or donating using the secure box below. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!
Two potion shops, one heated rivalry…until hate bubbles over into something else.
Any adventurer worth their sword knows about Ambrose Beake. The proud, quiet half-elf sells the best, and only, potions in the city—until a handsome new shopkeeper named Eli opens another potion shop across the street, throwing Ambrose’s peace and ledgers far off balance.
Within weeks, they’re locked in a war of price tags and products—Ambrose’s expertise against Eli’s effortless charm. Toil leads to trouble, the safety gloves come off, and right as their rivalry reaches a boiling point…
The mayor commissions them to brew a potion together.
The task is as complex as it is lucrative, pushing both men to the limits of their abilities and patience. Yet as the fires burn and cauldrons bubble…they find a different sort of chemistry brewing.
My Review: 5/5 ⭐- Humor, Heart, and a healthy amount of scientific shade
The best word to describe this book is “Delightful.” It’s a quick, entertaining, and exciting read, perfect for if you need something cosy to curl up with in the car on your way to a mandatory family field trip. It takes place in a world inspired by your typical sword and sorcery fantasy settings, and takes a closer look at what the NPCs are doing while your party is off saving the world. The strength of the worldbuilding comes not from elaborate politics or original species, but from the charming minutia of daily life – the dumplings at a favorite tavern, mail getting postponed by griffin migrations, contending with the whims of the local government, which sinkhole to scavenge for the best moss, and of course, the eponymous rival potion shops vying for customers.
The protagonists each have unique and memorable personalities, voices, and mannerisms that make both sides of the rivalry sympathetic and lovable. There were a couple moments at the very beginning when I wished they would simply talk to each other like grownups, the not-quite-a-fight scene giving me a bit of secondhand embarrassment for poor Ambrose and his busted knuckles. However, their original misunderstandings stem from differences in their backstories you learn later in the book, which puts everything into perspective. Both of their arcs were heartfelt and well-resolved, and the romance was really fun to read as well, as they both come to terms with their feelings, and then navigate a new relationship with career plans in mind.
The side characters are also wonderful in their own ways. Dawn’s friendship with Ambrose is a driving side-plot, and it’s interesting to explore how these very different personalities interact and support each other. Banneker is wonderfully weird and confident in his role as comedic relief, as well as a supportive friend. Sherry and Grim are the protective parents of the ragtag found family. I found it a fun subversion that the orcish Grim works with delicate jewelry, while the little old lady is the village blacksmith and armorer. I also would be remiss to end this review without a mention of the fantastical technobabble about potion reagents and procedure, or the fantastic illustrations. As a chemistry nerd myself, it was a blast to read about people who do the fantasy-version of my line of work. Even the chapter titles are the steps in a potion recipie!
Thanks for reading! Be sure to check back next week to read another interview with Ashwick about the creation of A Rival Most Vial! I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!
When Lizzy’s mother is the next to vanish, she’s expected to grieve and move on. Instead, Lizzy wants to find out what happened, but the answers she seeks can’t be found in the fey realm of Arbaon.
With the help of her best friend, Booker Reed, Lizzy’s determined to retrace her mother’s final steps… straight through an illegal portal and into the mortal realm.
Whatever leads she expected to find, it wasn’t an academy of vampires, and a world stalked by their rabid cousins, the kavians.
Forced to rely on the vampires for protection, and secluded away behind the high walls of Speculo School, it quickly becomes clear not everyone is pleased with Lizzy and Booker’s investigation. With danger building the further they dig, the two fey need to decide if the closure they seek is worth risking their lives for.
But the longer they remain amongst the vampires, the more Lizzy begins to suspect that her answers instead lie with the deadly kavians.
My Review: 4/5 Stars – An engaging urban fantasy story that focuses on what family means
This book took me a little while to get into (mostly because of school interfering with my reading) but I’m glad I gave it a chance. Though the first part failed to catch my attention completely, because I ended up really enjoying this story. The greatest strength of this book is the relationships between the characters – especially Lizzy and Booker. They’re truly ride-or-die friends and it’s obvious from the beginning how much they care about each other, and though they have their clashes, they’re loyal to the end. I was wary of their vampire friends, Cara and Andric, at first, but I grew to really like them as well throughout the book as they proved their trust. I also appreciate that none of their interactions turned into a weird love triangle/quadrangle situation, including with the other minor antagonist/potential love interest/resident mean girl, Mia Harris. Their interactions were always a lot of fun and the switching of POVs worked well to facilitate the story. Maddy’s absence haunts the narrative and Lizzy’s grief and desire for answers is the driving force of the story. Even though we never meet her, it’s clear the impact she’s made on Lizzy and Booker’s lives.
I found the world-building confusing and a bit lackluster at first, but by the time the whole deal with the kavians was explained, I was already invested in the character’s stories so it was worthwhile. Urban fantasy is always a tricky space to play with – the creatures you use must be recognizable to the usual tropes and traits, without falling into the realm of cliche, and I think Holmes strikes a simple but effective balance here, and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the series!
Thanks for reading! I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!
This past month went really quickly, and not just because it’s the shortest month. My school schedule is in full-steam-ahead with senior projects, research, running too many clubs, and spending time with my friends before we all move away at the end of the semester. As I write this, I’m dealing with a migraine thanks to a freak snowstorm, and I’m very much looking forward to spring when the weather is more consistently warm and I can go outside again.
Won: 6/9 Complete
Run at least 2 sessions of my Planescape Campaign: Yes, this got off the ground! This is my first time DMing a campaign, I’m using an unusual setting, and my players are all experienced DMs, and so I was very nervous to start this game, but they all seem to be enjoying it so far!
Brainstorm newsletter stories for the year: I spend a lot of time playing DnD and it’s often a source of inspiration for tropes to recycle in my original fiction. I’m tempted to write out the backstories of my NPCs from the Planescape game as short stories of their own, or to novelize events from other games as a form of character development. I’m not really thinking about what’s going to be the most marketable, but what’s going to be the most fun for me to write. Most newsletters only have one “Cookie”, a single story that recruits people to sign up for updates and exclusive content. By releasing new stories quarterly, I’m going far overkill, and I’ve decided that not all these stories need to be “trendy” or “attention-grabbing”. It’s ok if they’re just plain weird.
I’ve been wanting to experiment with a more lineless art style, and to hone my shading and environmental storytelling in my art, and so these are some of the pieces I finished this month! The first is an illustration from my Avatar the Last Airbender campaign, during a particularly dramatic moment. The portraits are of Madeline Hyland, from the band The Amazing Devil. I used screen caps from their Love Run music videos as my reference.
Read “Whatever Happened to Madeline Hall” and Changeling for ARCs: Half done! I am finished with the prequel, and started Changeling but have not finished yet due to time constraints.
Read Tress and the Emerald Sea: I am about halfway through with this one as well!
Read Howl: Not started. I was too ambitious with my reading goals this month, but it’s at the top of the list for March.
Read ARMV for ARCs: Same as Howl!
Thanks for reading! I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!
Spring on the continent of Kameria is a dangerous time. With merchants flooding the roads to hawk their wares, the perils of their travel have many casualties as Keda soon learns.
Parents killed by the restless dead she’s picked up by an organization she’s never heard of and passed onto the mysterious protector, a woman who asks to be called Tante. But as they travel deeper into the woodlands, more dangers make themselves known as the two of them try to find a place in this world for the now orphaned girl.
In a world full of magic, monsters, and uncertainty, the world isn’t terribly kind to those who born into it that aren’t special.
3.5/5 Stars – Not to my personal tastes, but worth it for the ending.
This book follows a mute and recently orphaned girl named Keda on her travels with Tante – a warrior and a member of the Pyreflies – as they try to bring her to safety. It’s a dark story in a harsh world, but it thrives in its handling of disability representation, found family, and hope. Keda starts as a helpless and traumatized child, unable to speak with strangers and addicted to sleeping draughts to stave off the nightmares that vividly recall the night her parents died at the hands of zombies. She’s handed off to the gruff ranger and dragged halfway across the continent in a series of tragic misadventures that test both women to their absolute limits and prove their strength.
Keda very quickly won me over as she demonstrated a quick wit, curiosity in spades, and a level of resourcefulness that’s admirable in someone who was previously a pampered noble merchant’s daughter. Despite her new disability, she learned to communicate through writing questions on her slate or in a notebook, and coming up with signs and body language to express herself. Tante takes her seriously throughout the adventure and teaches her to be more capable and self-sufficient. Her trauma is handled realistically and tactfully, showing that moving on from grief and loss is not a simple or easy or short process. Likewise, Tante immediately became my favorite character. I love love love world-weary mentors who never lose their compassion and sense of justice. Unraveling the bits of her backstory was a satisfying build-up of both her character development and her relationship with Keda as she started opening up more. Their dynamic at the end of the book is delightful and I cannot wait to read more about all their adventures together.
My main gripe with this book is the lackluster world building – though it exists for good reason. Lynnette Bacon-Nguyen tries to subvert the stereotypical fantasy cliche of an orphaned chosen one stumbling into greatness unassisted, and show what it’s like for an ordinary person in a grim dark setting. I think this idea works very well in the intention – Keda’s character arc feels like a slower-paced walk through the first few steps of the Hero’s Journey, and it certainly accomplished its goal in showing that everyday life in a grimdark setting sucks. That being said, I think it could be possible to illustrate these with a more original setting, or even just a new spin on the same creatures we’re already familiar with. The restless dead are scary, sure, but at the end of the day, they’re your run-of-the-mill zombies. The magic system has potential – I want to learn more about the religion and the churches, about how they interact with the magic of the world, and what it takes to learn magic. These things aren’t directly a part of Keda’s story, but even as a soft-magic system, I still would have liked it to be more fleshed out to help immerse us into the world of the story. It could be hard to get through the story sometimes when so many depressing obstacles keep getting thrown at these poor characters who are just trying their best to survive.
That being said, the world isn’t entirely grimdark. They receive help from the people in various villages they stop in, and go out of their way to put the restless dead back to rest so they cannot hurt any other people. The pyreflies and certain members of the church stand as a glimmer of hope in an otherwise miserable world. While I struggled to get through the middle of the book, the resolution of Keda’s character arc and the setup for future books in this series made it all worth the while and makes me excited to read more.
Thanks for reading! I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing! 🙂
This was a crazy month full of winter break excitement, odd jobs, starting school, and crazy amounts of scheduling. I’m trying to stay committed to my very important resolutions of A) not burning out, and B) having fun, so I tried to set softer goals in a wider variety of creative outlets so that I could follow where my energy took me, and it worked pretty well! In February, I’m going to prioritize reading, but keep doing these very gentle progress checks to keep myself on track. 🙂
Won – 6/8 Goals
Figure out the Runaways Timeline Situation – I had a puzzle to face regarding the two types of time dilation that occur in some fairytales. In one direction, hours in the faerie world could become seconds in the human realm, meaning that you could go adventuring for years and only miss an afternoon back home – similar to Narnia. In the other direction, hours could become years, and leave you, like Rip Van Winkle, returning unaged to a home where all your loved ones are long dead. I decided that the Seelie realm should follow the first rule, giving the girls time to rest and train at the midpoint before the action ramps up again, and that the Unseelie realm should follow the 2nd rule, to raise the stakes!
Make skirt – Last semester, I picked up a few yards of red wool and cream-colored satin to turn into a half-circle skirt as a winter break project, and I finished it as a weekend project. And look! It has pockets!
Start my Planescape DnD game – This is my first time ever running a long campaign, and I’m running it for the best DMs I know, so I was nervous leading up to the first session and did a lot of research into the universe and all the different planes to set up a dramatic storyline for them. We’ve had 2 sessions so far, and everyone is having fun! Because this is taking a lot of my creative time, I may end up sharing stories about the campaign here, in lieu of the usual writing content in the future.
Blog and IG for the month – Done as usual!
New blog plan for the year – I talked about this a bit in this previous post, but my plan for this year is to feature more book reviews and author biographies to encourage me to get back into reading! I have a lot of ARC reviews queued up, so be on the lookout for that!
Thanks for reading! What are your hopes for the year? I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG! If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip or buying stickers on my Kofi. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!
Etta Grace: Author 