those same words her mother had whispered to her played on repeat in delphineās head as she sobbed in front of her familyās graves . the weight of the schuyler family legacy a heavy weight on top of her shoulders , a weight she had welcomely burdened , butĀ a weight she was terrified of none the less.Ā
that fire inside of her had never burned brighter . delphine did her best to put it out.
eleven years later , delphine is now living with her uncle in the small town of calicoĀ , a quiet mining town that doesnāt see much crime save for a handful of street robberies andĀ ā suspicious figures ā prowling itās dusty streets . so when the local gun smith and a bank teller turn up with a bullet between their eyes and matching missing chunks out of their flesh , saying that the people of calico had lost their minds would be the understatement of the century .Ā with rumors passing through the town like a plague and delphineās uncle obsessing over finding and arresting theĀ āĀ red devil,Ā āĀ delphine can feel that hunger for ambition creeping back in and hovering over her like a second shadowĀ , the familiar warmth of that forgotten fire spreading through her veins.
lost her parents and younger brother in a devastating fire when she was eightĀ .Ā she was soon after adopted by her uncle and has been living with him ever sinceĀ .Ā thoughĀ ,Ā sheās growing tired of only being known as the sheriffs pretty niece.
a huge animal lover . her uncle gave her a silver dapple pinto missouri fox trotter for her thirteenth birthday and sheās delphineās pride and joy . her and irene are practically inseparable and if anything happened to her delphine wouldnāt know what to do with herself.
absolutely adores playing music and singingĀ ,Ā sheĀ views music as a form of escapism and whenever she needs to de - stress sheāll find a quiet spot and jam out on her harmonica or practice her singing.
after the tragic death of her parents by the hands of the claiborne gangĀ ,Ā mahalia and her twin sister were abducted and forced to work in a prostitution and gambling den in order to pay the debt her father failed to pay off.
a formidable gambler who may or may not have an addictionĀ .Ā will not hesitate to kick your ass at poker and drain you for all youāre worth by using the dirty tactics she picked up from her years at the gambling den.
has to use a cane due to her bad knee which was fractured by the leader of the claiborne gang , arthur claiborne . loves beating the shit out of people with it because she finds it funny.Ā
Blood Red: Favourite piece of dialogue from your wip
answering for TDAB. I haven't actually started writing yet but in my outlineĀ I've included a lot of dialogue that I want to put into a certain scene, and any of the banter between Abi and Josef is automatically a favourite. Some of my fave prospective lines of dialogue so far though, are
āI canāt attract a single boy in seventeen years and the one time I do, heās a trickster spirit who probably wants to kill meā
āThe dead donāt feel pain, Abi. Lesson one.ā
āIsaiah, this is my friend Josef Oshiro, I believe Iāve mentioned him.ā Isaiah regards him carefully. āIndeed you have. I believe you told me he was an annoying prick who sent you on a wild goose chase with only loose ends.ā Josef looks at her accusatively, and she smiles at him. āYes, well that was after meeting him the first time. The goose chase is more or less over, though heās still an annoying prick.ā
āIf I die, Abilene Whitlow, I will haunt you for the rest of your life. And Iāll find this Josef guy and make him haunt you as well for being so stupid. And Iāll make the entire Afterlife give you hell for years.ā
Strawberry Pink: Ship trope you have in your book
Ghost Shipping: Shipping a live character with a dead character, self-explanatory when half your story is told in the afterlife
Abi and Josef also fit theĀ āpure, naive baby with the jaded baby who wants to protect themā
also kind of enemies to lovers but only in the sense that they spend half of the book antagonising each other and arguing over everything
Bubblegum Pink: If you could only write one genre for the rest of your life, what would it be?
as much asĀ I'm loving writing with the real world, I love fantasy too much to only ever write somewhat contemporary. I think I could write a million fantasy stories because thereās not really a single limit to what you can do with it
Daffodil Yellow: Does worldbuilding come easily to you?
kind of, I do love world building and do a lot of it, particularly for furyās reign, that I just add to as I go along, but I do getĀ āworld building blockā where I have no idea whatĀ I'm doing at all or seemingly canāt come up with any good ideas
perhaps a 16,000 word outline is excessive bUT the outline for TDAB book one is now complete!! no idea what the actual word count for the first draft will be but so far the book will be 37 chapters long, and hopefully between 70,000 and 90,000 words. excited to get started!Ā
I laugh at my scars. The scratch on my ankle, a side effect of wasted tripping into Beckās collection of fireplace pokers. āThose were my grandfathers.ā Yeah, Beck, everything in your house is an heirloom. Valuable only to you.
Then, my ring finger sports a pink, wavy indent. Some second-cousin once-removed dared me to stick it in a burning candle wick. What was I going to do, say no? I held my hand over it a moment too long, watched her sneer widen into terror as my skin melted. I snapped a mental photograph of that face, take it out for a laugh. Scars are comedic souvenirs carved into me for my own mistakes.Ā I charm the most pretentious, self-serving of rooms with these stories. I own them.
Standing in the white-tiled chamber, I have a hundred fresh cuts from head to toe. My body is drenched in blood, as is the floor, as are the bodies rag-dolled around me. Did I do that to them? What have they done to me? My hands are sliced like a mosaic. These better not leave a fucking scar. Iām not a beast to be branded. Iām fucking livid. I am murderous.Ā
My name is Nemesis.Ā This is my villain origin story.Ā
His thoughts wandered back to Laudan, wrapped in luxurious armor that hid the scars he had been allowed to touch. Except they werenāt from the Heressia, but from the sword blows of countless rebels. Now he knew his secret. A truth so heavy that he could share it with no one.
[Vaelenās PoV]
themes & tropes ;Ā ā the unraveling of reality, non-spaces & supermodernity, a rag-tag group of assholes, unreality & ghosts, mythology, the unchosen ones, losing humanity, the apocalypse, the hellhole that is your early twenties, lgbtqia+, loss
synopsis ; ā channing carries her heart in the pocket of her coat. and sometimes it hurts to be alive, but thatās alright, the world is ending anyway. with reality coming apart at the seams, the past has crawled back in, slipped through the cracks. insidious. it haunts. chases mortality to the edge. leaves it heaving, aching, breathing. but not for long. and channing carries her heart in the pocket of her coat, hoping that someday, sheāll have someone to share it with.
ā taglist (ask to be -/+) ā¦ psd by @castoraphicsĀ
WIP (Re-)Introduction | The Dead are Bitter (working title)
Imelda once asked me if I ever felt afraid of my connection to the Afterlife; if I ever tossed and turned at night thinking of my own mortality, my own finality. I said I had never, because the spark of humanity is never completely extinguished. Light and laughter carries on with the soul, memory keeps one alive even after death. And how scary could it be, really, to cross from one threshold to the next just as billions before I have done? Death is the sole constant of life, so it has been since the first moments of consciousness, and so it shall be until the last. It is not death that scares me, it is what comes after it.
Synopsis
When a near death experience as a child left Abilene Whitlow orphaned and vulnerable, she discovered her ability to cross between the land of the living, and the land of the dead. Now eighteen years old, she works at a shop run by a self-proclaimed psychic, performing seances and comforting mourners with messages from the deceased, while in dreams she walks with friends long since departed. It is all routine, all normal, until she hears the frightened soul of a long dead teenager call out to her, and increasingly frequent visions of a man with bright green eyes begins to haunt her in both worlds. Something nefarious lies in wait, hidden between the fabric of two dimensions, and Abi must track down the dead boy before itās too late, the both of them the only ones capable of stopping what threatens to bring carnage from the dead to the living.
Genre
YA/Supernatural/Urban Fantasy/Elements of Horror
P.O.V
First person (for now anyway)
Series or Standalone
Duology
Status
Outlining
Word Count
About 80,000
Taglist (adding my regular FR taglist but let me know if youād like to be removed from this one <3): @storelmykva | @ketterkind | @ahusaka | @noloumna | @the-ichor-of-ruination | @sprigofbasil | @vanzhuo | @samplewriting | @dorogayas | @ashvayr | @rkmoriyama | @moariin | @serpentarii | @scioltezza | @write-like-babs | @sautrns | @hiraethas | @inheriting | @medusaswrites | @mayawritesbooks | @zmlorenz | @honeywharf | @sondials | @herondalelucies | @alternativeforensicscientist | @carumens | @klywrites | @caelum-writes | @ladywithalamp | @priwrite | @thenondescriptwriter | @enchanted-lightning-aes | @guulabjamuns | @kowlazovdi | @writingbyjillianĀ
WIP (Re-)Introduction | The Dead are Bitter (working title)
Imelda once asked me if I ever felt afraid of my connection to the Afterlife; if I ever tossed and turned at night thinking of my own mortality, my own finality. I said I had never, because the spark of humanity is never completely extinguished. Light and laughter carries on with the soul, memory keeps one alive even after death. And how scary could it be, really, to cross from one threshold to the next just as billions before I have done? Death is the sole constant of life, so it has been since the first moments of consciousness, and so it shall be until the last. It is not death that scares me, it is what comes after it.
Synopsis
When a near death experience as a child left Abilene Whitlow orphaned and vulnerable, she discovered her ability to cross between the land of the living, and the land of the dead. Now eighteen years old, she works at a shop run by a self-proclaimed psychic, performing seances and comforting mourners with messages from the deceased, while in dreams she walks with friends long since departed. It is all routine, all normal, until she hears the frightened soul of a long dead teenager call out to her, and increasingly frequent visions of a man with bright green eyes begins to haunt her in both worlds. Something nefarious lies in wait, hidden between the fabric of two dimensions, and Abi must track down the dead boy before itās too late, the both of them the only ones capable of stopping what threatens to bring carnage from the dead to the living.
Genre
YA/Supernatural/Urban Fantasy/Elements of Horror
P.O.V
First person (for now anyway)
Series or Standalone
Duology
Status
Outlining
Word Count
About 80,000
Taglist (adding my regular FR taglist but let me know if youād like to be removed from this one <3): @storelmykva | @ketterkind | @ahusaka | @noloumna | @the-ichor-of-ruination | @sprigofbasil | @vanzhuo | @samplewriting | @dorogayas | @ashvayr | @rkmoriyama | @moariin | @serpentarii | @scioltezza | @write-like-babs | @sautrns | @hiraethas | @inheriting | @medusaswrites | @mayawritesbooks | @zmlorenz | @honeywharf | @sondials | @herondalelucies | @alternativeforensicscientist | @carumens | @klywrites | @caelum-writes | @ladywithalamp | @priwrite | @thenondescriptwriter | @enchanted-lightning-aes | @guulabjamuns | @kowlazovdi | @writingbyjillianĀ
In old times, the city of Liangyi was the seat of an ancient god.
re-reading this chapter and like 95% of it needs rewriting lmao, but as always this is just a first draft so I gotta be less of a perfectionist about it for now. Hope you enjoy Jinās first chapter <33
themes and tropes: adaptation; coming of age; dysfunctional family; friends to lovers; identity crisis; mental health; my trauma made me funny; rivals to lovers; we are not taking ourselves that seriously but we definitely should; young adult
format: full-length play
status: writing
goal: 150 pages
synopsis: Penelope struggles to deal with the loss of her transgender sister and with her own seuxality. Her mother alternates between denying that Shannon, Penelopeās older sibling, existed at all and that she died. Penelope also deals with the complexities of dysfunctional family interpersonal dynamics, behaviors, and relationships with one another.
Beatrice makes herself out to be a caricature of who she is by embracing all the rumors people have said about her and being exactly who they think she is: that she smokes, drives a classic motorcycle, whips through sexual partners, is careless with herself and others and has no work ethic. Why she does this is a mystery for Penelope, who catches glimpses of who her best friend actually is.
Fabian similarly struggles with family issues. He was adopted at thirteen and never quite feels like he has a footing in his new family, at school, on the varsity track team. He sees himself as a transient being, with no real identity beyond his name. He has demons from his past to confront and will sternly ignore that anything is amiss inside himself.
wip page
taglist of people + their blogs who inspired me to get back on track with writing this (ask to be +/- to the high rise/hard fall tag list!):Ā @dulcuas; @adaparkwrites; @writingamongthecoloredroses; @highlycosmic; @swanxlake; @honeyscript; @writingbyjillian; @weasleyvictoireā; @lousylovedā; @aelenkoā; @atelierwritingā; @starshotsā; @hcneyvinegarā; @hannahs-creationsā; @booksnotbookiesā; @semblancheā; @sprigofbasilā; @rhiannonleewritingā; @furysreignā