Thank you to everyone who dropped by my blog last week for any of my new weekly content. And thanks to those who dropped by on Monday for Diana Dawn’s guest post.

Last week, I spoke in detail about my author origin story. This week, I want to bring it to the present and talk about my current WIPs.

If you’ve followed me here or on social media for any length of time, you will have heard me talk about two stories: The Starlight Prince and The Adventures of Josain Jovenne.

The Starlight Prince is a science-fiction romance about a witch on Earth, Madelyne, who casts a spell to find her true love. At the same time, across the galaxy, an alien prince, Kalas, takes part in a ritual to find his fated mate and is shown a vision of Maddie. Kalas then travels to Earth to claim his bride.

The first 25k of The Starlight Prince will be released on November 19th as part of the Beyond Starlight: An Alien Fated-Mates Collection, with the complete story coming on February 25th, once the collection is no longer available.

For those who don’t know, I wrote and serialized about 30k of Maddie and Kalas’s story as a paranormal romance under the name Wings, Witches, and Wonder.

In January, I began to feel Wings wasn’t quite the story I wanted to tell, and due to the dopamine-seeking nature of ADHD, I had lost interest in serialization. At the same time, I saw the sign-up form for Beyond Starlight and thought the story I wanted to tell between Maddie and Kalas would work well as a sci-fi romance in that collection.

In both versions of the story, there were some key factors I wanted to preserve. First was my love interest, Kalas. As I mentioned in my previous post, oftentimes, my stories are inspired by celebrities or fictional characters I have a crush on. Last year, when I conceived the idea of a witch ‘awakening’ a man from stone with a magic spell, it was because I’d just finished watching Part Two of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, and I was totally in love with the character Kars.

Kalas took on many of Kars’s characteristics, such as long, majestic hair, taloned nails, fangs, and the ability to transform. In Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, Kars becomes the ultimate being and grows wings. For Kalas, I took it a step further, having him able to transform into both a winged being, similar to a harpy, and then further still into a feathered wyvern.

In making Kalas my own original character, the whole species of Kralians, their planet, and their crow deity Korvarith Thalun was born.

And from that, a second story was born, but more on that in a moment.

I mentioned some key factors from Wings that I wanted to make sure translated over to The Starlight Prince, and one of those factors was Maddie being a witch.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve always had an interest in magical beings and worlds. Since learning more about myself, I have realized why I am drawn to the more fantastical. As I’ve mentioned before (and plan on expanding on in another blog post), reading and writing for me is an escape, and I find it easier to escape into a completely new, magical world. It’s why I like fantasy movies and games too. Fighting dragons or orcs helps me better forget about the true horrors of the real world for a while.

But there’s another reason why I’m drawn to magical characters, specifically witches. Along with fantasy media, I grew up watching the 90’s X-Men animated series, and I’m now an enjoyer of X-Men comics. Mutants in the Marvel Universe, much like witches in many of my stories, are outcasts. They’re hated and feared. They’re ‘othered.’ When I played the game Dragon Age 2, I felt especially drawn to the mage character Anders and his fight against the oppression of mages.

Why?

Since accepting I have autism (and likely ADHD), I’ve been able to identify that I create these ‘outcast’ characters as a projection of myself. I’ve always felt different. Sometimes only a little. Sometimes a lot. Even now, with great friends, an amazing family, and a fantastic hubby, sometimes I feel … I don’t know exactly how to explain it. But I feel ‘not like everyone else.’

This doesn’t bother me as much as it once did, and I revel in my uniqueness, but as a neurodivergent person, who also identifies as queer and non-binary, I still deeply empathize and relate to the marginalized and oppressed. I recognize my privilege compared to others but at the same time acknowledge I am different. And that’s okay.

Marginalized characters find their way into my stories, so I can hopefully make readers think, “Why is Maddie hunted for being a witch? She’s not evil.” And then hopefully, connect my marginalized characters to marginalized people in the real world. If readers can recognize Maddie shouldn’t be hunted for being a witch, hopefully, they can recognize that their neighbour/colleague/random person in the store deserves to be treated fairly even if they are gay/trans/a different religion/a different race, or whatever other asinine reason people have for ‘othering’ those not like them.

I dream of the day Charles Xavier’s vision for the future comes true, and there’s peaceful co-existence between all people.

Maybe I’m an idealist, but it’s better than the alternative…

Anyway, back on track…

As The Starlight Prince and the universe it’s set in grew, I started to think of other stories in the same universe. I wanted to create a ‘reader magnet’ - a short story that introduced the world and characters of The Starlight Prince without spoiling too much of the story.

And thus, The Adventures of Josain Jovenne was born. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that TSP was in part inspired by Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, so the title of my reader magnet should seem familiar. I couldn’t help myself. There’s always time for a Jojo’s reference. ;)

As well as inspiring my title and main character’s name, another Jojo’s character also inspired the appearance of Josain, with my main character sharing the same green hair and space buns as Jolyne Cujoh.

At first, all I had was a Jolyne-like character, who I instantly knew would be a space adventurer. But I needed more of a story than that. I knew I wanted to show Kralis and hint at the story to come in The Starlight Prince, so I had Josain visit Kralis for Kalas’s coming-of-age ceremony, where he completes the ritual that shows him a vision of Maddie.

But I needed more story than just that, and also wanted my magnet to make it clear to prospective readers that my stories are spicy. As I said, as much as I am drawn to the magical and fantastical, I’m also drawn to romance.

As often happens, while looking for inspiration, I was fixated on another fictional character -- Aemond Targaryen from House of the Dragon. I instantly knew Josain’s love interest had to have long white hair, wear leather, and be a bit of a bad boy. And from that, I conceived the character Savrion.

Savrion quickly became his own person too, especially as I made him a Kralian like Kalas. He has his own unique backstory, and it ties into the main story of The Starlight Prince.

The more I wrote, the more Josain and Savrion told me about themselves until it became clear they’re not just spin-off characters for a short story, but integral supporting characters for The Starlight Prince.

Josain also insisted she isn’t happy starring in just one short story, and demanded she be the star of the short I’m working on for the WH, WN Christmas anthology. However, this story takes place before The Starlight Prince and The Adventures of Josain Jovenne.

Progress on The Starlight Prince is currently on hold, as I can only work on one story at a time. But I already have ~25k written and scheduled to release on November 19. I’m confident I will have the rest of the story finished before the end of the year and ready to release on February 25.

Right now, my main focus is getting The Adventures of Josain Jovenne finished. It was meant to be a quick and simple short to introduce you to Kralis and Kalas, but instead, it’s on 18k words, and I still haven’t finished. I hope to have it complete by the end of July, and I estimate it will be about 28-30k words when finished.

After that, it will be back to work on The Starlight Prince and Josain’s Christmas story… Oh, and did I mention I also signed up to be part of a collection of “PNR Dark Fantasy Romance Stories featuring a hot MC that falls for a sorcerer/witch?”

I’ve planned a story called ‘The Last Magic Shop,’ but I will tell you more about that some other time. ;)

For now, I’ll leave it here.

If you have any questions about either The Starlight Prince or The Adventures of Josain Jovenne, please feel free to ask in the comments.

And please follow me on social media, as I share teasers and tidbits from both stories, as well as other fun bookish things, and snippets of my non-writing life.

Until next time,

Take care and stay creative,

T.T.F.N