<–The State of the Writer: 6/12/22         The State of the Writer: 7/10/22–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

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Finished Projects: 2

• Book Review: The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (Montague Siblings #1) – 6/18/22
• Book Review: The Lightning God’s Wife by Grace Draven (Master of Crows) – 6/24/22

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Project: Story/Series
Working Title: The High Archon (The Truth Seeker Chronicles)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 11,282
Status: Reorganizing & Worldbuilding
Progress: Figuring out more terms and definitions

It took me a bit to locate a good source for this picture, and I actually had to find one that’s the same model in a different pose.  There is also artwork based on this by Âu Trung at Artstation that I almost took for the actual image.

So who is this anyway?  She’s a minor character from the first novel in the series who’s only mentioned once or twice lol; however, as I was fleshing out the details about my protagonist’s father, I realized I was writing a lot about her and granting her more importance.  I realized I needed to make a page for her, too, but then I ran into a problem…

“I have only seen his lady wife once, little dove, but it was enough to know that she was uncomely in a way that made her lucky to be noble.”

So this is the issue with attempting to find inspiration for “unattractive” characters, especially for thin, blonde, white women, so I either have to just base some of Lady Semley’s characteristics off of the image; shift her description to match it; or play around with the protagonist’s potential bias.  Tbh when I found this image (and others) it immediately struck me as the character.  I was like “Yes, that’s her,” and even though she’s a minor entity in the whole of the story, I tend to think of multiple scenarios with my characters that I could possibly explore later.  It’s going to sound like I’m copying Marvel is if I say I do “What ifs,” but that’s the foundation of my stories.  It’s always a “what if?”  My first novel was “what if a dark/fallen angel did absolutely horrific things for good reasons but still felt bad about it?” which of course grew from my love/obsession of Final Fantasy VII and Sephiroth, which of course has it’s own “what if” in Northern Lights, and I know fucking Squeenix won’t even go that route, though they absolutely could with this timeline shit but- *HEAVIEST SIGH*

Anyway…before the bias angle I thought “Well…maybe he’s just being a poor judge of beauty,” which is fucking hilarious given he looks like the hottest goth boy mixed with dark angel that you’ve ever seen (not that he cares about what he looks like but still).  The bias would happen because he’s the bastard son of the lord married to the lady pictured above whom he saw when he was a child, so that could absolutely create such a ill-spirited description in comparing her to his own courtesan mother (yeah, it’s a lot; there’s also the idea encapsulated in this story, which was also a reference for my Defense-*AHEM*), and I cannot fucking believe I’ve gone on about this for so long lol.

I’m working on defining some more terms and I may possibly have come up with a name for the world this takes place in.  I don’t want to say it just yet in case it changes, but it’s the first thing I’ve really liked.  The sketchbook I bought has been absolutely amazing in helping this.  I was able to draw a map of sorts of the cosmogony of the universe I guess?  It’s not remotely to scale and looks like ass (I can’t draw for shit), but it’s a great visual aid.  I’m also working on defining more terms around it.  I might make a post about some of these terms, though I still have to figure out which language I made up they’re going to fit into.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I made a separate notebook on OneNote for the series.  I had it in my Stories and Poems one, but since it’s a series I wanted it to have it’s own place.  Now I can put everything connected to it there.

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Project: Story Audio Recording
Title: Northern Lights
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction
Length: Novel
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Status: Editing
Progress: Adding in sound effects

I made a little bit of progress with this.  I still want to test out “whisper” undertone thing at some point, but I’ll worry about that after I finish adding in the sound effects.

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Project: Research & Essay Organization
Status: Organizing Essay Notes
Progress: Working through notes for FFVII & ASOIAF comparative essays

I don’t recall if I mentioned this, but I did make a separate tab in the Essays and Research notebook for just the FFVII/ASOIAF comparatives.  All of the essays have been gone through, and I did some organization on the Videos tab.  Next step is to figure out which books are used in multiple essays so I know what to either concentrate on reading or obtaining.  Like if one book is used in the majority of essays, that’s what I should work on reading/getting notes on.

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Project: Author Website
Status: Pending
Progress: Planning

I made a Facebook page on my Author Websites tab on OneNote so I can plan this out.  I scheduled working on this on a weekly Sunday cycle so today I suppose lol.  Not sure if I’ll get time to do it today though.

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In Progress

• Game Reviews: Final Fantasy VI – I think I might still be adding some notes in?  I have some information and videos linked to the OneNote page that I feel I should do something with.  I might move them to the Essay and Research Notebook to deal with later.  Ah, I kept them there in case while editing I figured out why the hell I had notes about the Legend of Zelda “Tetraforce” theory, because if I move them it’ll be out-of-sigh-out-of-mind for my ADHD brain lol.

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No book reviews in my drafts right now since I posted two, count them two these past two weeks and I’m supposed to work on one today, but I usually try to get the status post out first.  The next one is going to take a bit longer than the last short I review.  It’s Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, and I’ll have to organize my notes for it before I even start.  I can at least do the setup for it.

I have a feeling I’m probably going to wind up re-writing my first novel before I go back to the WIP.  I know how my brain works, and I have to build up a foundation before I raise the towers.  I’m working on establishing the world of the entire series right now, and it’s possible I’ll be able to work on The High Archon from there once that’s established, but stories tend to evolve as you write them, and I’ll have to either tie THA to TST or vice versa.  Since I absolutely plan to change a whole lot in TST, it’s not too farfetched to retcon stuff based on what I do with the current project, but I don’t know what future me will do until past me gets with the program if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I supposed I should try to get something else done today.

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<–The State of the Writer: 6/12/22         The State of the Writer: 7/10/22–>