#this sneak peek has my lovely paladin and battle mage

[bigmammallama5]

The volume 2 @broadsandbroadswords zine is still on sale!!

Go reserve your copy before July 30th!

[thecryoftheseagulls]

I'd like to know about You Left Your Mark and Dragonfire (you doing original work is so cool!)

You Left Your Mark is a crossover fic I’m writing right now – what if VLD took place in the same universe as the Being(s) in Love books by R. Cooper? Or, basically, what if Keith was a werewolf and Shiro was his fated mate? (Spoilers: there are at least two other Paladins in this story that will turn out to be Beings or at least more-than-ordinary humans, as well!)

Chapter One is up on AO3 already, and chapter 2 is almost done and should be posted in a few days. Here’s a sneak peek of chapter 2 though!

Someone in the back snickered. A scent, acrid like jealousy, but with an overripe plum smell of dark pleasure, satisfaction, wafted in Keith’s direction from whoever it was. There was a word for that feeling, for the kind of person who smelled like that. Keith couldn’t remember what it was.

“No, sir,” Keith said.

The Major gestured back at the board, a sweep of his arm with his palm held up. Well then, we’re waiting, it said, without speaking.

“He piloted the mission to,” Keith swallowed, and guessed, “Europa?”

Major Klein frowned. Keith could smell disappointment and some concern.

A week ago, Keith had been the kid who could always be called upon to know the answer to questions about the history of astroexploration. Maybe he didn’t know much about general history or advanced mathematics, but he knew about spaceflight, and his hands already knew their way around the flight control in simulations. Sometimes Keith thought he’d been born to fly.

A week ago was an eternity.

Dragonfire is a brand-spanking new concept, like, it’s barely a month old.

So if I could have my dream job, right, it would be to help write video games for a living. But I don’t have a writing sample ready for job apps, which is kind of a problem if I ever want to do anything about it. Dragonfire is a visual novel concept I’d like to try my hand at making with Twine as practice.

It’s an ex-chosen one story. The player character is a fire mage in a world where people with magic and magical creatures have been persecuted for a long time. It was foretold that they would save the magical world, and they did. The story opens six months after the war is ended, when the player character wakes up from a magical coma they’ve been in since the final battle. From there, it’s basically a romance with two paths:

You can romance Kai, a water mage/healer who is the first person you see when you wake up in the hospital. A True Cinnamon Roll, too Good For This World, soft, kind, maybe a little too Pure for someone who has burned and bled and ended a world, like you. But he fought in the war too, and he would strongly disagree with you if you tried to tell him you think he’s a better person than you are. He is basically your nurse through your convalescence, but maybe he becomes something more.

Or you can romance Faye, an ordinary human who is your best friend. She’s all harsh edges and a sharp tongue, A Face God And Walk Backwards Into Hell sort of person, you know, pretty ready to dismantle the system whenever you say the word. She’s had your back through the whole war, but she’s become important to the new government that’s slowly been forming without you while you’ve been in a coma. You’re afraid you might be drifting apart now that she has all these new responsibilities, but maybe there’s more to your relationship than just friendship.

Honestly I don’t know what I’m doing with Dragonfire or how soon but I’m hoping it will be a good writerly exercise while I’m teaching myself how to use Twine, too.