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@elfwing Haha relatablee. That’s pretty much what happens with most my historical-fic stuff too haha. But if you ever finish it, that sounds really unique and interesting!! I’d love to read it!!!
@annabelle I absolutely will!!! I’d love to have you read it XDAghh struggles XD There are sooo many books I want to write and so little timeee T_T
Ohhh that sounds so cool!!! I’d love to read it!! My book Smoke and Mirrors (which you can read on my blog for free, if you want the link! I’m posting two chapters a week!) has mermaids in it as well, and although it’s not entirely set in the Mermaid world, there are some pretty big scenes involving them!! I’d love to take your test!! I’ll let you know the results XD
Ohh that sounds really cool though!! And yeah hahaha I got youu, I’ve tried helping my sister with some story ideas of her own, but like you said, 9 year olds can be hard to work with XD And don’t worryy!! I love long posts XD I’m so glad I’m not aloneee XD
"It's easy to be caught up in stardust and whispers when reality is so dark and loud."
@annabelle I got Ocean Mermaid!! That was such a cool quizzz I loved it!
"It's easy to be caught up in stardust and whispers when reality is so dark and loud."
@joy-caroline
You have given me permission to rant about my books? Gramercy!
(If you do not see the warning in that last word choice, you are blind, my friend, BLIND.)
I am greatly anticipating portraying addiction and sin with the serfs. Seriously, I’ve been thinking it was odd that the dark lords would be just letting Alwin and the other serfs meet with the knights. Then I realized that was exactly it: there is nothing they would not stoop to to keep them apart (within their power, of course). This punishment is exactly one of the things that Alwin struggles with, and it’s probably the reason he falls so much on the way out of bondage (figuratively and literally).
His life as a knight is rough, but it’s better than how he grew up.
Poor Alwin. He’s amazing, and his reward will be rich.
Well, that’s the freshest of the news from that part of the Kingdom.
In Eirtan, Viktor has taken a personality test, and turned out as an INFJ-T. Apparently that’s the same type as Aragorn and Galadriel from LotR, whatever that means. XD
But looking at that test was really helpful in shaping my character development. I’ve gotten a better hold on who exactly he is and what it is he wants.
Oh, and I almost have a working cover finished for Eirtan!
ANYWAY, WFR sounds wonderful, and those are great themes and characters . I love that title, by the by. I have so much trouble settling on titles…
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
Researching randomness way back before the arbalester and the handgonne made armor pointless is a joy, and may it never be squelched by school research papers! XD
Seriously though, I lose half my interest in history when gun powder enters the scene, and it takes a good ole civil war or world wide revival to stoke the same height of interest again.
I’m pathetic. XD
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
Hmm, there has to be conflict between the characters? I don’t think my one little romantic sub plot passes. 😉
But since it’s based of a few real love stories, it’s not exactly the super dramatic thing, and therefore while it plays a major role, I would not call the series a romance saga. It’s more like what you’d find in Men of Iron, Sir Kendrick, or The Viking Quest. Or at the dinner table.
The only drama involves a MC struggling with the battle of her life, a young knight who by helping her fight is coming to understand the call on his life, and a few deadly sword fights. No drama at all. XD
By the way, if you want tips on portraying grief, have you considered using trigger reactions? Basically the part of the grieving process where after initial recovery events/objects ‘trigger’ the whole cycle to repeat? It might be a good way to work in grief but not have a Maryanne Dashwood continually dwelling in the darkest part of her memory.
Anyway, you probably have that all sorted out, and I’m sure it’ll turn out fabulous. (For the reader, of course 😉 )
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
- Rank: Eccentric Mentor
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Thank you! I’m currently working on the first draft of WFR – about 26k words in. I’m expecting for the novel to come out to around 40k.
Come on, I LOVE a good mermaid story.
Maria has to deal with her “best friend” Isaac, who wants to be more than a friend but she doesn’t know it, and her new acquaintance, Alex, for who she has real feelings.
OOooooH so is there a love triangle involved?? Personally, I am not a fan of love triangles (mainly because they tend to involve a lot of dissing among the members of the triangle, as well as some borderline cheating 😬). BUT I would absolutely love to finally read a YA novel with a love triangle that is beautifully written and actually serves to advance the plot and character arcs.
So I label this series as Young Adult, but I’m going back and forth between that and Middle Grade. Most of the main characters are all teens, but I’m also not sure that older kids would be interested in a book about mermaids. So far my only friends who have been truly interested in it are eight-to-ten-year-olds. But then there’s some slight adult content at the end, and the whole boyfriend thing is kind of not what you’d call “middle grade”, so I’m still trying to sort that out.
If I may offer my two cents… it sounds to me, at least from what you’ve shared, that your series is definitely more of a YA read. I don’t think the mermaid factor would at all deter teens from reading your series. More of us are into mermaids than you probably suspect – Exhibit A, I love mermaids. XD
Have you read Coral by Sara Ella? It’s a YA novel with plenty of mermaid content, as you can probably surmise from the title. It wasn’t one of my favorite reads, largely due to personal preferences, but you might enjoy it. It definitely serves as proof that mermaid content wouldn’t turn YA readers away from a story.
Anyways, when a novel’s main characters are mostly teens and there is slight adult content as well as romance that goes beyond the “first crush” thing, more likely than not, that novel would go into the YA category. Your eight and ten-year-old friends may not be so interested in the story if they kept turning the pages and discovered there’s a lot of content in it they can’t relate to.
You know the story best, of course, so you’d definitely be the one to make the final ruling, but those are some of my thoughts based on what you’ve shared! 🙂
Right now I’m working on the third draft of the first book, Identity. The second book is called The Keeper of the Phantom Reef and the third is called The Girl of Yesterday. I haven’t determined the rest of the titles yet, especially since I don’t know when the series will end. I’ll just write it until I get tired of it, then move on!
May I say I LOVE those titles? Especially The Keeper of the Phantom Reef. I’d definitely read a book with that title. XD
Okay, so I think this rant has gone on long enough. You will probably be super bored out by the time you get to this point, so I don’t blame you if you’ve stopped reading already. (Although, you wouldn’t be reading this if you’d stopped reading 🤔)
NOT AT ALL! Remember, I expressly gave you permission to rant about your WIP for as looong as you’d like in this topic. (You don’t know how often I’m dying for a chance to rant about my WIP.)
- Rank: Eccentric Mentor
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Your wip sounds amazing! All the best with it! 😀 i love those kinds of stories, those types of characters. i have a soft spot for them,
Thanks! Eliza’s is probably my favorite POV I’ve ever written, and Russell is exactly the kind of Christian I want to be. I learn so much from those two. Isn’t it funny how we often learn more from our characters than they learn from us? XD
Wow, I haven’t been on KP since October! so much happened since then lol. I finished the last draft of my novel on New Years Eve, 30 minutes before midnight, thus fulfilling my one goal of the year lol.
Beta readers are going through it, I found an editor for once its eveeeentually ready for final edits, and someone to do the cover and im looking up stuff for publishing on Amazon.
CONGRATULATIONS, GIRL!!! *claps, cheers, and tosses confetti* When you publish, please do let us know so we can all go read it!
(And also let us know if you need help with a blog tour or anything. Because I would absolutely love to help spread the news on my blog, as I know many other bloggers here on KP would.)
My WIP is kinda hard to rant on without a full book of its own of writing becaaaaaause its sort of all 11 books; im going through all of them to make them consistent, so it’s been a while since i actually continued. I’m making a timeline for the series as well as a world timeline from the beginning of counted time in their lands and other things, architecture for all, and how they percieve historical events in all 15 cultures and attempting languages for half of them and miserably failing T_T
Aw man, I relate to that timeline/lands stuff. I don’t write fantasy, but it’s so hard to keep all that stuff straight even when you’re not inventing it right out of your own brain.
I killed off a few of everyone’s favorite characters along the way, threw a kraken into the mix in my book just to have some fun, added back stories and secrets to give more opportunities for foreshadows and meaningful deaths, MWAHAHAHA- er…
How COULD you??? *glares* As a writer, you love killing characters, but as a reader, there’s nothing you hate more. I still haven’t forgiven @jenwriter17 for killing off my favorite character in her Ignite duology. 🤣
(Have you read The Goblin and the Dancer by Allison Tebo? That book has an EPIC kraken. Not to mention that Allison is only one of my favorite authors EVER, so I totally recommend any and all of her books to anyone. I’d have to say my favorite of hers is The Key to the Chains. But we’re getting off topic here… XD)
Back to the ugly/beautiful business of killing characters. @annabelle and @elishavet-pidyon, y’all are also quite evil authors. (Killing off Alwin, @elishavet-pidyon, what a low blow. Smh.) *whispers* But I really can’t stand in judgment over you; I’ll be very surprised if someday I somehow manage to write a book that doesn’t include a character death. XD I’m planning to kill off a character in WFR, and there’s a funeral scene and everything.
Something y’all will probably find funny: I was telling my principal about that funeral scene a while back, and I had to promise her I’m not morbid because she looked rather shocked 🤣
- Rank: Eccentric Mentor
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WFR sounds like an amazing book!
Thank you! *bows*
A few things I love about my books;
The themes good/evil, sacrifice, redemption, trusting God even with death, and His presence even in the worst of storms, how a good God can allow bad things to happen, faith even when it seems useless, there is nothing that He can’t forgive. So, yeah, I have a lot of themes to weave in, but it is a trilogy which I want to be powerful.
Those are awesome themes! Seriously, we must be twins when it comes to themes. Those themes are definitely present in WFR and in pretty much every other story I write.
The excellent excuse to research tons of random historical facts! I mean RANDOM historical facts!
I love historical research, too! Might be why I write historical and Biblical fiction…
Anyway, my current WIP is a Medieval Fantasy series (at least the first two are. The last one is almost modern). MCs in the first book are Zlatan and Vulkasin (wolves). Second book’s Wilkins and Spion (foxes). Third book’s Mitchel and Anastasia (cats).
Fun! Those are really unique titles. I love it.
- Rank: Eccentric Mentor
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Ahhh I loveee that idea for your WIP!! I’m plotting a story set in the 70s myself. I feel like there aren’t enough young adult novels set in the not-to-far-away past XD
Thank you!
What’s your 70s novel about?
- Rank: Eccentric Mentor
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I took your quiz and got Ocean Mermaid. That was a really fun quiz!
- Rank: Eccentric Mentor
- Total Posts: 1379
I am greatly anticipating portraying addiction and sin with the serfs. Seriously, I’ve been thinking it was odd that the dark lords would be just letting Alwin and the other serfs meet with the knights. Then I realized that was exactly it: there is nothing they would not stoop to to keep them apart (within their power, of course). This punishment is exactly one of the things that Alwin struggles with, and it’s probably the reason he falls so much on the way out of bondage (figuratively and literally).
I think that’s really interesting that Alwin falls on his way out of bondage. I like the way you’re addressing addiction in your series. That’s something a ton of people struggle with a lot, and we need more books that address it honestly, compassionately, and wisely.
His life as a knight is rough, but it’s better than how he grew up.
Poor Alwin. He’s amazing, and his reward will be rich.
Yay! The Good News is the best part of your allegory after all, am I right?
In Eirtan, Viktor has taken a personality test, and turned out as an INFJ-T. Apparently that’s the same type as Aragorn and Galadriel from LotR, whatever that means. XD
Hmm, I didn’t know that about Aragorn and Galadriel! (Though then again, I haven’t actually read LotR except for The Hobbit – I have seen parts of the movies though, and I know bits of the story.)
Oh, and I almost have a working cover finished for Eirtan!
Awesome! I can’t wait until I get a cover designed for WFR. Won’t be for a while though.
ANYWAY, WFR sounds wonderful, and those are great themes and characters . I love that title, by the by. I have so much trouble settling on titles…
Thank you! I KNOWWWW… I love Russell and Eliza so so so so so so so SO much.
Honestly, it’s funny about WFR’s title. As soon as I decided to write the story back in December, the title Where Faith Remains just popped into my brain right then and there. I did try to consider a few other titles, but Where Faith Remains just stuck and wouldn’t leave, so I gave up on the other titles, knowing instinctively that Where Faith Remains was just the right one. It felt so right, and it still does. Which is funny, because usually I struggle mightily to come up with titles. For the Life of Sacrifice Series, I’m still not sure I’m totally sold on the titles I chose for each of the books. But there’s plenty of time to get that figured out, I suppose!
@joy-caroline Absolutely!!
It’s set in a south Texas rural community of farmers, about a girl and her brothers and the mischief they get into haha. The main character is a prankster, so there’s a lot of humor involved, but mostly it’s a coming-of-age, with a small dash of romance XD
"It's easy to be caught up in stardust and whispers when reality is so dark and loud."
Ooh! @joy-caroline I’ll do this!
So I actually haven’t written a word of Into the Forbidden Cavern yet. I’m still doing the worldbuilding. (I actually created an alphabet for my Dragonmen species a few days ago. I’m not Tolkien and never will be, but I thought it’d be fun to see what I could come up with.)
Want to hear all about it?
There are four sentient creatures that live in the story’s universe: humans, dragonmen, ailurids, and raptaurs. The other three all look like humans in some way, but the dragonmen have the wings, tails, and fire/ice-breathing agility of dragons; the ailurids–whose name comes from the Latin for “cat”–have catlike ears and tails; and the raptaurs are “raptor centaurs”–literally people with claws, fangs, and everything from their waists down is like a dinosaur’s.
The story’s premise is about a human teen named Torrent. Her mother died when she was young, and her father was drafted into a dictator’s army and never returned, so she lives with her dragonman guardian. But when her cat leads her into a cavern she’s never explored before, she meets a group of rebels, and when she joins them, she finds her father just might be alive, and becomes determined to rescue him.
So…..yeah, that’s how it is so far. No spoilers, partially because I haven’t even gotten to that part yet.
My favorite character? Has to be Torrent’s robotics teacher, Alan Rinzler. He’s a cyborg, and a dragonman, and he’s all-around awesome. Also he ends up being a part of the rebellion, which means we’ll be seeing a lot of him in the story…..The first ITFC story I write might actually be a short story/novella about how he became a cyborg. I might put that story on a separate post, though.
Where'd I get ya this time? The liver? The kidney? I'm runnin' outta places to put holes in ya.
Yes, I would love to read your story, if you would like to send me the link to your blog! I haven’t actually read a good book about mermaids in a long time…
Thanks for checking out the quiz! I just threw it together as a last-minute blog post, so I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. xD
WELL, I only need conflict between characters if it’s only a romance and/or drama story. If romance isn’t the main genre and the romance is just a subplot, then that’s fine.
Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like drama to me.
Thanks for the tip! I have actually *ahem* never really written about a character going through serious grief like that, so I need all the help I can get figuring out how to do that.
@joy-caroline
Yeah, I know what you’re saying about love triangles. I’m still working on mine, but I’m thinking I need to make Maria think a little bit more about which boy she actually likes better because as of right now all she does is just pick one, easy-peasy.
You’re probably right about it being a YA novel. But when I walk into the YA section in bookstores or libraries, all the stuff there normally has a lot of witchcraft or a lot of just bad or gloomy content. My book is not like that at all, so that’s why I’m not sure it will fit. But I have read some YA novels that are less dark, so maybe it’ll work.
I haven’t read Coral, but I’ve wanted to read it for a long time. My local library doesn’t have it, so I have to buy it, that’s why I haven’t read it already.
Thanks about the titles! The first one, Identity, was really hard to come up with. I’m still not sure it fits with the rest of the titles I came up with because it’s a single-word title and the others have multiple words. The second title, The Keeper of the Phantom Reef, was actually invented by a friend of mine, so I can’t take full credit for that.
Yes, I often dream about days when I get to talk to all my friends about how my WIP is going. Most of them don’t ask, so I try to grab every opportunity I can to talk about it. Thankfully, I’m still able to rant about it at the dinner table, where my parents and siblings will listen to me (but also get bored to death in the process xD).
Thanks for taking the quiz! As I said, I kind of just threw it together at the last minute, so I’m glad it turned out okay.
Wow, your WIP sounds awesome! I love fantasy, although I’m still learning how to write it. I like the four creatures you came up with to live in your world, too.
In the words of Jinto Queb, "Hurry, reading is fun!"
If any School-Papers come a squelching I’ll be ready!
I will remember that. XD
There is waayyy too much literature that isn’t literature in YA fic. We need more good books!
@joy-caroline
Thank you! Those are my absolute favorite themes EVER. You have to publish your books soon, cause I would definitely like to read them.
Ah, historical research (especially when unnecessary) is one of the joys of my life. As a consequence I have this urge to make everything in my books accurate. I am also vaguely into Historical renacting, so anything from clothing to weapons to cooking customs may interest me.
Thank you again! Name origins and meanings fall under the research category.
I am sort of struggling with titles right now. For instance the actual titles for my books are Heart of Gold Heart of Stone, Fox of Cypress Fox of Pine, and Land of Shelter Land of Storm, but I can’t figure out what to call the series. *Sigh*
First Grand Historian of Arreth and the Lesser Realms (aka Kitty)
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