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[project-nightshade]

The working titles for the chapters in Apartment.

[project-nightshade]

Happy Mother’s Day!

In honor, I give you Erynn’s mother, and Phael’s mother. Sadly, they are both no longer around by the time the books roll around, but they are not forgotten. The important roles they had in the past are often mentioned throughout the story by various characters.

Johalanna:

Erynn’s biological mother

Former queen of Haladavar

She lived with depression and anxiety, which became severe enough to negatively impact her life once she took a role as a region leader.

She loved long, detailed, jokes. And definitely had a loud and infectious laugh.

She was also very skilled in the art of lettering. If you know where to look, you can see some of her work in the castle.

Very compassionate ♥

Saphielle:

Phael’s mother

Former Council member 🌙

Didn’t particularly dislike humans - she was overall very accepting of Arishore interacting with other regions.

But she was difficult to please and not entirely friendly.

To those who knew her, she was loyal and fiercely brave. She would jump into the midst of a battle if it meant she had the chance to protect someone close to her.

Picrew used: The Lady of Hera )

COA taglist: @etjwrites , @alwolfesblog , @project-nightshade , @bexminx , @ruth-lund ,

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Sascha Lockhart | COA 1

Thief?         Liar?        Murderer?

Sascha’s attempt to leave behind his dark past and live as a better man truly begins when he crosses paths with Phael, the head of the Council of Arishore.

When Phael is held captive and tortured at a camp where Sascha is working, he is forced to take a closer look at what he is doing with his life. Is participating in the war going to make him a better man? Or is he doing just as much wrong as in the past?

When he sees Arishore’s leader stricken with pain and grief that he would not wish upon his worst enemy… that’s when things change. Sascha eventually sabotages the entire camp and allows Phael to escape.

Little did he expect that he would cross paths with Phael many more times, and that Arishore’s leader would remember him.

–

The lovely supporting OC’s in COA have been getting a lot of attention in my edits, so I’ll be re-introducing some of them! (Also probably Cohnal, who is one of the three POV OC’s and somehow I never talk about him).

COA Taglist: @etjwrites​ , @alwolfesblog​ , @project-nightshade​ , @bexminx​ , @ruth-lund​ ,

[project-nightshade]

Her head hurt.

And it wasn’t because she had hit her head on the rafters three times.

An arm’s length away, Erynn was an unmoving shadow in the darkness. He hadn’t moved since pressing his head into the overstuffed pillow, his body turned away from her.

As expected, he had offered to go elsewhere, his voice hesitant as he told her he meant to respect the privacy and personal space of others. Well, he had begun to say friends, but had swallowed the word uncomfortably and offered her a winning smile instead. It made her heart head hurt.

She had opened her mouth to mention the numerous times he had casually ignored her personal space – but didn’t have the heart to tease him. Instead she calmly explained that she had shared much less with much more people. The words felt wrong, but it was true.

It was also true that she was afraid if he left tonight, she’d find him near death the next day,

or not find him at all.

[project-nightshade]

T A G : Last Line

I was tagged by @stuffaboutwriting for this tag game - thank you very much for thinking of me, Kelsey!

Here are a couple of the last lines I wrote for The Pirates of Sissa, added while I was editing the second chapter:

Her words grated at the already brittle subject. Her words – coming out of her mouth – her, a pirate – all he had been able to think of were his parents, burning to death, murdered in hatred and anger, and suddenly all he’d seen was red.

A bit of a charged passage, but it comes from one of the more difficult scenes to write in the book, and it’s been such an interesting experience to get into the minds of these characters before they begin to actually respect one another.

I’ll be tagging @crypticsx, @andiwriteunderthemoon, @isanyonetoknow, @project-nightshade, and @fiama-l-hernandez.

Hope you enjoy, and if by any chance you’d rather not be tagged in future, please let me know ^^

[project-nightshade]

Hey, I’m interested to be an early reader or beta, when will you be accepting those roles? Thanks and I’m so so excited to read your book !!

Apartment - Update: DRAFTING COMPLETE March 30, 2020

Last night (early this morning, really), I completed my eerie suspense novella Apartment. You might have seen my initial reaction post here, which wasn’t much because I wrote it while half-asleep. This post is a more in-depth look at my experience writing Apartment and where I feel I’m at with it now.

Keep reading

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Hope you’re doing well too :)

Before they were Council members…

Phael was a little more out of control prior to becoming head of the Council, beyond studying and arguing with anybody at Blackwater, he often caused general chaos while on escapades with Ziel. He also spent time trying to reverse the bad decisions his father made - which he was surprisingly successful at.

Ziel, being Phael’s best friend, usually got dragged into his escapades and unwillingly caused a bit of chaos himself sometimes. He read and studied often and far beyond what was necessary, and tutored the younger members of his village. Always a favorite among the children, he sometimes gave them audience to unique beautiful displays of magic. When his brother wasn’t off on official messenger business, he enjoyed spending time with him.

Haryk was a scrivener, who for some reason also had vast knowledge of chemistry. So needless to say, he occasionally took on tasks that required such knowledge. When that wasn’t keeping him busy, he enjoyed taking to the woods to hunt.

Ren spent long days and nights studying to become an architect. Not understanding how to give himself a break, he also liked to create and solve puzzles, riddles, and anything that offered a good challenge. 

Ceja comes from a family of high standing and connections to Blackwater. Her family tried hard to control her and decide her path in life, which led to her becoming very good at hiding behind a facade and getting away with doing what she pleased… which involved a lot of traveling, learning to play various instruments, and spending time with Xander.

Lyre was the local introverted writer of his community. He wrote stories, poems, songs, you name it. In his spare time he enjoyed helping with the care of animals.

Xander, like Ceja, comes from a family of high standing. However, he got on with his expected roles fine. On the flip side, he created a hush-hush “community” of wizards who worked to ensure humans lost or trapped in Arishore would be able to leave safely. His favorite pastime was hanging out with Ceja.

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…

Rather than someone who people sought out, Mathias became one to avoid. His temper was short, his words sharp. He would reflect on the many times he thought that perhaps he had been too harsh. He wished he had been more vocal about how much he had cared.

Ziel paced in his room most nights, his chest tight with suppressed sobs. He wished it had been him instead.

Viern hurt for his brother most of all. He hurt when Ziel pushed him away and provided only fake smiles. It was almost like losing him all over again.

Ceja tried not to think about it. The Council still had to function - she couldn’t let herself fall apart. But her mind often wandered when she noticed the several empty seats during Council meetings.

Lyre spent days and nights checking on his friends. He’d find them when they didn’t want to be found, just to make sure they weren’t alone. He stopped writing, finding himself unable to scrawl coherent sentences and smearing the ink with fallen tears.

Ren wanted to find the truth. The how, the why. But there was no clue to follow, no literature, no person to turn to. So he stopped asking questions. He lost his drive.

The scar on Scarlette’s palm served as a painful reminder. But also as a reminder that she was somehow connected to all of it. And that made her determined to chase down answers. 

[project-nightshade]

Warrior of the West ladies!

Simona, Thomasin

Etty, Wren

Used this!

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T A G : WIP Quotes

Rules: Pick five quotes that your characters have said about your protagonist, then five quotes your protagonist has said, and then tag five people! 

I was tagged by @livvywrites for this game! I’ve never played it before, so thank you so much for thinking of me! ^^ 

All of my works are multi-POV, and I have more than one protagonist in each, so I hope it’s okay that I’m just going to pick one and go with it. For this time, I’m going to pick Vadra from my fantasy WIP, The Pirates of Sissa. I don’t have 5 quotes for each, because I didn’t want to give some important plot points away and the others were a bit boring and confusing out-of-context. 

Quotes characters have said about Vadra:

Keep reading

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I don’t know what writeblr needs to hear this, but the best thing I did with my writing is get rid of negativity.  

And I don’t mean this in a way of not acknowledging your frustration or anger or anything.  But mean this in a way of taking care of yourself, cultivating your dash, and watching your mindset.

For me, watching my mindset is really hard.  It’s difficult to change a pattern of thoughts from “my writing sucks” to “I’m still learning and growing and that’s ok”.  It makes a difference though.  I look forward to writing and interacting with writeblr more.

I’d also suggest cultivating your dash.  I can’t handle a lot of negativity in my life as I deal with a lot on a daily basis (not to mention my depression).  I don’t reblog posts anymore that talk about how shit writing is or how tiring it is unless it has a good ending or goal.  Otherwise, I feel like I’m inviting negativity and changing my dash with more positive posts has really helped with changing my mindset.  

Most importantly, you need to take care of yourself.  Maybe this cultivating and slow change works for you.  Maybe it doesn’t.  But always make sure you eat and hydrate and take a little time for yourself throughout the day.  

I love you all and I look forward to seeing the stories you create!  Go!  Have fun!  Take joy in your worlds and OCs!  Even the tortured ones.  

[project-nightshade]

IT’S FINALLY HERE! WIP Introduction for Apartment!

I’m really happy with how it turned out. I played around with a lot of different designs before settling on this. I didn’t want to have the same design as my excerpts, which I’m actually considering redesigning!

Apartment is my eerie, slow-simmering suspenseful novella (maybe novel) about three neighbours that must work together when their isolated apartment building comes under siege. 

(This is a really simplified summary of the story - a lot of stuff happens before that, a great deal of tension build-up and general creepiness and suspicion. As with everything about this WIP, there’s a lot more than meets the eye.)

The main characters are James, Angela, and Alex. Despite living in the same building, they’ve never met each other - have never even seen each other. Of course, all that is about to change. I’ve also introduced a character called Eli in previous tag games - very briefly and without a lot of information about who Eli actually is. ^^

As I’ve said before, everyone is very suspect. 

EXCERPTS & TAGS UNDER THE CUT

Keep reading

[project-nightshade]

Resources For Writing Dystopian/Apocalypse Stories

Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress || Request

Dystopian Resources

Characteristics Of A Dystopia

7 Tips To Writing Dystopian Fiction

380 Best Dystopian Novels Of All Time

How To Build A Dystopian World

Dystopian Cliches To Avoid

Ultimate Guide To Writing Dystopian Literature

Realistic Political Strife

Political Corruption

Dystopian or Not Dystopian? 

The 10 Most Important Dystopian Books and Films of All Time

How To Create A Dystopia

The future of energy

Waste management in SF

Enclosed ecosystems and life support

Near-future scenarios for us & our planet

Dystopian Prompt Generator

Totalitarianism

Propaganda

Apocalypse Resources

Writing Apocalyptic Stories

A Study In Physical Injuries

GunHoo

Snipercountry.com

Tips for writing blood loss

The Writer’s Forensics Blog

Poisonous Herbs and Plants

Apocalypse World

Cliches To Avoid

Mass Depopulation Conspiracy Theory

How Long Would Infrastructure Last?

What Does Nuclear Radiation Do To Human Bodies?

How Does Nuclear Radiation Do Its Damage?

What Would Happen If Humans Just Disappeared?

Preindustrial Society

Nuclear radiation for writers

Climate change and cli-fi

Mutation myths in fiction

Plagues in science fiction and fantasy

Rogue viruses in science fiction

Apocalypse Generator

World Building

A Politics Of Worldbuilding

Government Worldbuilding

The Five foundations of Worldbuilding

Dystopian World Building Worksheet

Apocalypse Hypotheticals

Climatology

Planetary Geography

Water Geography

Rational Wiki

BioMedNet

Phys

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[project-nightshade]

1.0

It was a lovely summer evening. The birds were singing, the trees were rustling, the cats were tanning, the ants were busy doing what ants do, and I was staring at the ceiling bored out of my head and too hot to move. A normal summer evening.

What I wouldn't give to have it back.

It was a sudden thing, like the rug being pulled out from under your feet. The earth rumbled, the ceiling crumbled, and everything we knew was erased, as though toppled aside by some giant hand.

Alright, so it didn't happen quite like that. It wasn't out of the blue, and it wasn't unexpected. But, since I figure I'm the only person left to tell the tale, that's exactly how it was to you.

We fell face-flat on this new existence.

Who are you to say any different?

[project-nightshade]

A Guide to Making Up Diseases (as Explained by a Biologist)

So listen up y’all, nothing drives me crazier as both a writer and a scientist than seeing alien diseases that make no fuckin’ sense in a human body. 

If you’re talking about alien diseases in a non-human character, you can ignore all this.

But as far as alien diseases in humans go, please remember:

DISEASE SYMPTOMS ARE AN IMMUNE RESPONSE.

Fever? A response to help your immune cells function faster and more efficiently to destroy invaders.

Sore/scratchy throat? An immune response. Diseases that latch onto the epithelium of the throat (the common cold, the flu) replicate there, and your body is like “uh no fuckin’ thanks” and starts to slough off those cells in order to stop the replication of new virus in its tracks. So when it feels like your throat is dying? guess what it literally is. And the white spots you see with more severe bacterial infections are pus accumulation, which is basically dead white blood cells, and the pus is a nice and disgusting way of getting that shit outta here.

(No one really knows why soreness and malaise happens, but some scientists guess that it’s a byproduct of immune response, and others suspect that it’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy)

headache? usually sinus pressure (or dehydration, which isn’t an immune response but causes headaches by reducing blood volume and causing a general ruckus in your body, can be an unfortunate side effect of a fever) caused by mucous which is an immune response to flush that nasty viral shit outta your face.

Rashes? an inflammatory response. Your lymphocytes see a thing they don’t like and they’re like “hEY NOW” and release a bunch of chemicals that tell the cells that are supposed to kill it to come do that. Those chemicals cause inflammation, which causes redness, heat, and swelling. They itch because histamine is a bitch.

fatigue? your body is doing a lot–give it a break!

here is a fact:

during the Spanish 1918 Plague, a very strange age group succumbed to the illness. The very young and very old were fine, but people who were seemingly healthy and in the prime of life (young adults) did not survive. This is because that virus triggered an immune response called a cytokine storm, which basically killed everything in sight and caused horrific symptoms like tissue death, vasodilation and bleeding–basically a MASSIVE inflammatory response that lead to organ damage and death. Those with the strongest immune systems took the worst beating by their own immune responses, while those with weaker immune systems were fine.

So when you’re thinking of an alien disease, think through the immune response.

Where does this virus attack? Look up viruses that also attack there and understand what the immune system would do about it. 

Understand symptoms that usually travel together–joint pain and fever, for example.

So please, please: no purple and green spotted diseases. No diseases that cause glamorous fainting spells and nothing else. No mystical eye-color/hair-color changing diseases. If you want these things to happen, use magic or some shit or alien physiology, but when it’s humans, it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense. 

This has been a rant and I apologize for that. 

[project-nightshade]

you know what trope i just go maximum apeshit for every goddamn time?

when a character has to improvise a weapon under urgent circumstances.

im talking characters in handcuffs using them to garrote enemies

characters swinging objects that are WILDLY un-aerodynamic (a table, a a garden gate.)

or throwing objects that are wildly un-damaging (an inflatable chair, a bunch of flowers)

throwing something soft and light over someones head as a brief distraction

using the ENVIRONMENT against their adversary (pulling a rug from under them, slamming a door in their face)

using weapons that are broken or not working properly, or using them the ‘incorrect’ way (using an empty gun as a bludgeon, Elizabeth Swann pulling that sword off the wall but it still being attached to the wall display)

swordfights using anything BUT swords

people macgyvering wildly ‘low-tech’ improvised contraptions to defeat massively high-tech and well organised attacks

loading a blunderbuss or shotgun with something commonplace and either not-at-all dangerous or surprisingly lethal (sand, cutlery, buttons)

i love this trope so much

[project-nightshade]

Writing systems in the world

A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication. There are about 4,000 languages that make use of an established writing system.

All writing systems require:

at least one set of defined base elements or symbols, individually termed signs and collectively called a script;

at least one set of rules and conventions (orthography) understood and shared by a community, which assigns meaning to the base elements (graphemes), their ordering and relations to one another;

at least one language (generally spoken) whose constructions are represented and can be recalled by the interpretation of these elements and rules;

some physical means of distinctly representing the symbols by application to a permanent or semi-permanent medium, so they may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also been devised).

Generally, threre are three major types of writing systems: alphabets, syllabaries, and logographies. There are a number of subdivisions of each type, and there are different classifications of writing systems in different sources.

Alphabets use a standard set of letters representing the consonants and vowels of a spoken language. The correspondence is almost never one-to-one. Usually several different letters represent one phoneme and/or several phonemes are represented by the same letter. Alternately, a sequence of two or more letters can represent a single phoneme. Abjads differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, and in abugidas or alphasyllabaries each character represents a consonant-vowel pairing.

Syllabaries consist of symbols that represent syllables (which are considered to be a basic building block of the words).

Logographies use characters corresponding to words, morphemes or other semantic units.

Alphabets typically use a set of less than 100 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have several hundred, and logographies can have thousands of symbols.

Segmental systems

A segmental script has graphemes which represent the phonemes (basic unit of sound) of a language.

Alphabets

Alphabets, or phonemic alphabets, are sets of letters that represent consonants and vowels. The word “alphabet” is derived from alpha and beta, the first two symbols of the Greek alphabet.

Alphabets currently in use include Armenian, Cyrillic, Georgian (Mkhedruli), Greek, Korean (hangŭl), Latin/Roman, N’Ko, and Tifinagh.

Abjads

The first type of alphabet that was developed was the abjad. An abjad is an alphabetic writing system where there is one symbol per consonant. Abjads differ from other alphabets in that they have characters only for consonantal sounds, although vocalization is used in specific contexts, such as in religious books and children’s books. The term “abjad” takes its name from the old order of the Arabic alphabet’s consonants ‘alif, bā’, jīm, and dāl.

Arabic, Hebrew and Thaana are the only abjads currently in use, but Samaritan and Syriac are used to a limited extent.

Abugidas

An abugida is an alphabetic writing system whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate other following vowels than the inherent one. The graphic similarity of most abugidas comes from the fact that they are derived from abjads, and the consonants make up the symbols with the inherent vowel and the new vowel symbols are markings added on to the base symbol. The name abugida is derived from the first four characters of an order of the Ge'ez script used in some contexts.

Abugidas that are currently in use include Bengali, Burmese/Myanmar, Cree (Nêhiyaw), Dehong Dai (Tai Le), Devanāgarī, Fraser, Ge’ez (Ethiopic), Gujarāti, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Inuktitut, Kannada, Khmer, Lao, Malayalam, Naskapi (Innu Aimun), Ojibwe (Anishinaabe), Odia, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, and Tibetan. 

The ones used to a limited extent are Balinese, Batak, Bilang-bilang, Blackfoot (Siksika), Buhid, Carrier (Dulkw’ahke), Chakma, Cham, Dhurwa, Ditema, Gondi, Grantha, Hanifi, Hanuno’o, Hmong, Javanese, Jenticha, Kaithi, Kerinci, Khoiki, Kirat Rai, Kulitan, Lampung, Lanna, Lepcha (Róng-Ríng), Limbu/Kirati, Lontara, Lota Ende, Manipuri (Meetei Mayek), Mon, Mwangwego, New Tai Lue, Ranjana, Rejang, Sasak, Satera Jontal, Saurashtra, Shan, Sharda, Siddham, Sorang Sompeng, Soyombo, Sundanese, Syloti Nagri, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tikamuli, Tolong Siki, Tigalari, and Varang Kshiti.

Syllabic systems

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words.

Syllabaries currently in use include Cherokee (Tsalagi), Hiragana (Japanese), Katakana (Japanese), and Yi (Nosu).

Logographic systems

The symbols used in logographic systems often represent both sound and meaning. These scripts can also be called semanto-phonetic, logophonetic, morphoprhonemic, or logosyllabic.

They may include the following types of symbol:

Pictograms and logograms

Pictograms or pictographs resemble the things they represent. Logograms are symbols that represent parts of words or whole words.

Ideograms

Ideograms or ideographs are symbols which graphically represent abstract ideas.

Compound characters

Compound characters include a semantic element, which represents or hints at their meaning, and a phonetic element, which shows or hints at their pronunciation.

The semanto-phonetic writing systems currently in use are Chinese (Zhōngwén) and Japanese (Nihongo), while Naxi is used mainly for decorative, ceremonial or religious purposes.

Directionality

Scripts are also graphically characterized by the direction in which they are written. Egyptian hieroglyphs were written either left to right or right to left.

The early alphabet could be written in multiple directions: horizontally (side to side), or vertically (up or down). Prior to standardization, alphabetical writing was done both left-to-right and right-to-left.

The Greek alphabet and its successors settled on a left-to-right pattern, from the top to the bottom of the page. Other scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, came to be written right-to-left. Scripts that incorporate Chinese characters have traditionally been written vertically (top-to-bottom), from the right to the left of the page, but nowadays are frequently written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, due to Western influence.