#abfhmm

[antique-symbolism]

A BRIEF FAMILY HISTORY OF THE MAGICAL MUNDANE || a contemporary fantasy 

Jacket Asanbosam has eagerly awaited their father's Sanguine Quarter celebration ever since they were a little kid. A vampire's 250th anniversary is already the biggest blowout a magical family could throw, and with the Asanbosams, every event is a boisterous family reunion. There's just one problem -- obviously, Jacket's sister Tala is invited, too.

What better way for Jacket to distract from the impending anxiety of confronting their estrangement than to invite their best friends Holly and Bash as their +1 and +2? Turning the roadtrip into a sightseeing tour of magical America will be more than enough to get their mind off their troubles with Tala, but the three friends will soon find that the Asanbosams aren't the only family with secret tensions bubbling below the surface.

[blujayonthewing]

"#oc tag: my character's dad" okay but this is so real. Back when I was working on ABFHMM, one of the MC's dads got so cool that I thought about writing a whole spin-off book

kjghkdgjf MOOD, also please tell me about this cool spinoff dad

[antique-symbolism]

The original concept for my old WIP, A Brief Family History of the Magical Mundane, was a modern fantasy roadtrip to magical hotspots around the US to document research for a college internship.

This was a very fun concept in theory, but the work ended up really outgrowing itself. It had strong character arcs focusing on family betrayal and reconciliation, but with no support for that thematic material in the plot concept.

I'm currently brainstorming a re-concept where instead of roadtripping for a project, Jacket is roadtripping to a family reunion (specifically their father's 250th vampiric anniversary), and bringing Holly and Bash for driving help.

I'll still need excuses for some of the various stops they make along the way that drive the tension in discovering and unpacking familial history. But I feel like making the focal point of the narrative a family reunion when the central theme is all about the complications of family is a really good start.

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Where does the road trip for Magical Mundane start and end?

This is something I still have to decide! I was really winging the original story so there was not a lot of consistency in places visited. In the original draft, Jacket's father lives in New York City, so if I keep that detail then that would be the endpoint (or at least the point at which arcs converge and climax, though this is also another Whole Thing because I think either this story will be two books or it's just gonna have multiple climax points).

In any case, I'd like the roadtrip to be cross-country, so starting somewhere out west is probably a solid move, unless I move the end location.

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How likely would it be that Jacket would want to show Bash a bunch of cool magic places to go around to - both to introduce Bash to the magical world before the big party, and to help distract Jacket and Holly from the. Extremely Imminent Family Drama about to fall right into their laps

Oooh yeah, that's a good idea! It relies on me deciding how connected Bash already is to the magical world -- certainly he will at least know about it. In the original draft he was pretty knowledgeable.

But when I decided to write out two major characters who were the audience conduit for introduction into the worldbuilding, I thought about making Bash someone who had knowledge of magic but little connection to it, like a family heritage without current practice.

"Distraction from imminent family drama" is always a go, though.

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How do you choose the magical hotspots? Based off of current folklore and legends? Making some up from scratch? A mix?

Oh, thank you for asking this, because this is a concept I fully intend to carry over from the WIP's original concept!

In A Brief Family History of the Magical Mundane, I want to play with the idea of "liminal spaces" -- places that are transitory in nature or places where time or space seems somehow altered. Think: airports, empty gas stations just at sunset, deserted hotel hallways, cities at night that are so bright and busy it reads like daytime, back alleys in touristy historic towns.

The idea is that these are the places where the magical realm and our realm exist most closely, and where magic can bleed over. Sometimes these places are only magical during certain times of day or in certain situations or they can only be utilized for one specific school of magic. Part of having magical skill is knowing how to make use of these spaces and when it will work.

[antique-symbolism]

Free space! What’s something about ABFHMM you especially want to share, and/or probably no one will ask something that would specifically bring it up?

ABFHMM summary here!

On my mind lately has been the use of vampirism as a metaphor for chronic illness.

In the story, while vampirism confers biological immortality and the ability to cast charisma-based magic without materials, it also comes with some extreme side effects. Abstaining from drinking blood won't kill a vampire, but it will prevent them from access to their magic, and more importantly, cause general symptoms of illness such as body pain, nausea, and fatigue.

The three most important vampires to the story are Jacket, their sister Tala, and their father Kofi, and each has a different relationship to their vampirism and to the consumption of blood. A couple of parallels you can draw include:

Jacket's general experience of the complete and unmitigated side effects as a total abstainer;

Tala's grief over the loss of major activities, relationships, and abilities in her life due to the drawbacks and transition from human to vampire;

and Kofi's acquisition of medicine blood through willing donors who he helps with other things in return (a mutual aid network, if you will)

I think it's important to note that vampirism is intended as a metaphor for many things in this story and is no way meant to be a 1:1 parallel. I think if you read it as a 1:1 parallel of anything, it falls apart. I'm inspired here by the way Steven Universe uses fusion to talk about so many different facets of identity, community, and relationships, and am going for a similar wide array of available parallels.

[antique-symbolism]

I don’t think I realized ABFHMM had vampires too! Did you have the idea for it or MR first?

Ohh get ready for some Juliana Deep Lore... ABFHMM was what got me so interested in vampires in the first place! I initially made Jacket a vampire for practical reasons, not because I was particularly fascinated by vampires themselves. Then the more I started delving into the many things vampires could be a metaphor for* and into all the fun ways you could play with the lore, I just got more and more invested until it became My Thing.

I wouldn't have the idea for MR until about two years later!

*In ABFHMM particularly, vampirism is used to explore a variety of different ideas, including chronic pain and illness, what ordinary people choose to do with power when it's suddenly given to them, bodily autonomy and informed consent, and the question of how immortality would affect the experience of grief.

[antique-symbolism]

Hiii! I saw the description for Magnolia, stay true and was so intrigued that I had to follow you right away. Where do you share your writing?

Also, for the ask game- I forgot the numbers, but

- Where does the title come from?

- What music do you listen to while writing/to get you in the mood?

Either for MST or the other one that sounds AMAZING, A brief family history…

Glad I found your blog 🙂 xo

Hello, welcome, and thank you so much! That's super encouraging to hear, and I always love getting to meet new followers! 

I’ll answer your questions from the WIP game here, and in a separate post I’ll tell you how to find my work, so this doesn’t get too long.

Where does the title come from?

Magnolia, Stay True is based very loosely on Harry Houdini's real-life investigations into fraudulent psychics in the mid-1920s. The title is a play on a secret code phrase ("Rosabelle, believe") that Houdini and his wife decided on before his death so that if ghosts and mediums turned out to be real after all, he could contact her and she'd know it was him and not a scam. The code phrase "Magnolia, stay true" comes into play in the story but I'll keep a little mystery alive as to how. :D

A Brief Family History of the Magical Mundane used to be called Cat and Cleo's Guide to Cross-Country Liminality but as the plot evolved I felt like prioritizing two out of the five characters in the title was misleading as to who and what the story was mainly about. I wanted something with similar flow, and I particularly wanted to highlight two things about the story: that it was about the personal history that families share, and that it was a fantasy story but ultimately one about realistic interpersonal problems.

What music do you listen to while writing/to get you in the mood?

I’m still working on the playlist for Magnolia, Stay True, but you can find what I have so far here!

The playlist for ABFHMM is old! From 2018, can you believe it? You can find it here. You can also find playlists for each individual character comprised of songs that they would canonically listen to: Cat, Cleo, Bash, Jacket, and Holly.

[antique-symbolism]

Decided that in my roadtrip magic WIP (ABFHMM) I’m going to call a vampire’s 250th vampiric anniversary their “Sanguine Quarter” because I think it sounds appropriately celebratory with the dual meaning of sanguine, and because it has a good ring to it

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I think I was doing something kind of interesting with vampires in CCGCCL/ABFHMM and I miss working on it

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trick or treat!

You caught me off guard! I had not prepared for inbox trick-or-treaters! And I don't know if this is a writeblr trick-or-treat or a regular one, but luckily I have an idea that works for both.

Inspired by @ragsy I will snakepost, and all green snakes remind me of my character Haa, a shapeshifter from ABFHMM

So YOU get an emerald green tree boa! Happy Halloween!

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How to Find My Writing

A new follower asked me today where to find my writing, so let me give everyone a quick overview of how to navigate the writeblr side of this messy combination writing-and-personal blog.

I have one main writing tag for everything, then a tag system for particular projects. The title of a project is the official tag for updates and excerpts, “story tag [title]” is for posts which inspire me or remind me of the work, and “oc tag [character]” is for posts about a particular character or posts that remind me of that character.

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Main writing tag

#my writing

Miniature Roses

#miniature roses

#story tag miniature roses

#oc tag minnie

#oc tag ruzena

 Magnolia, Stay True

#magnolia stay true

#story tag magnolia stay true

#oc tag mags

#oc tag genevieve

 A Brief Family History of the Magical Mundane

#abfhmm

#story tag abfhmm (new tag for reworked project)

#story tag ccgccl (old tag for original project)

#oc tag jacket

#oc tag bash

#oc tag holly

[antique-symbolism]

taking part in athenas ask a thon! Have your ocs ever created their own stories, creepy horror stories or campfire-like stories?

I wasn't aware Athena had started an ask game, but I'll have to check that out and send some back!

Bash from ABFHMM definitely loves to make up a good story and would be the first to start one around a campfire. His would start spooky but lead up to a lame punchline that would have him in stitches at his own joke.

While they're from separate works, I think Minnie from MR would go right along with this and the two would Yes And each other until the rest of the group was either groaning in despair or chiming in themselves.

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I said like two weeks ago that I was going to do Camp NaNo in some small measure then promptly forgot kdfjslfs

I still want to hop on board though. I’m both really anxious about the nebulous future but also really looking forward to a particular trip at the end of the month and I want something to ground me in the here-and-now (and also something to do on the airplane in a few weeks)

I am restating my goal at 5000 words of prep (outlines, brainstorms, free-writes, posts about the work, etc), because I feel like just counting anything I do on the project is a lot less pressure and a much better way of diving back in after a break from writing during a stressful period of my life.

I’ll be working on ABFHMM so feel free to ask any questions!

[antique-symbolism]

During October I'm going to outline both Magnolia, Stay True (the sapphic skeptic/medium 1920s romance y'all were unexpectedly really into) and A Brief Family History of the Magical Mundane (formerly CCGCCL, the college kids on a magical roadtrip story which I need to completely reconceptualize)

THEN I'll decide which one I want to write for November, perhaps even on Day One of NaNo.