Rachael Huszar's Blog

VOID 1680 AM Playthrough

Back into solo RPGs we go! This was a really fun one. Let’s dig in.

As a personal goal lately, I’ve been trying to be more intentional when I listen to music. Do it actively, not just as a background wash, and with good headphones, and it’s been a great experience. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know my books often put me in a position where I have to write lyrics, so listening, really listening to them, is becoming a fun mental exercise for me.

Enter today’s game, VOID 1680 AM, by Ken Lowery of Bannerless Games. You play as a radio DJ, who has access to an AM channel, and that’s about it. The book guides you through prompts that help you build your song blocks, as well as generate caller requests as your broadcast goes on. The game creator encourages you to actually record your voice breaks, as though you were on the air! I had a blast playing this, and am really looking forward to doing it again. I was also lucky enough to convince my friend and GM Michael to create some callers for my broadcast, and he knocked it out of the park!

And to continue to shake things up! Ken at Bannerless also allows player to submit their playlists and voice breaks and airs them over on YouTube. You can watch mine below, and be sure to check out the back catalog for even more amazing shows!

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TEETH Playthrough

Another day, another solo RPG playthrough. My brilliant friend and GM Michael turned me on to TEETH, a game by Snow. The rules are super simple, providing a framework of a relationship, potential actions you can take and their consequences. It’s practically work of art itself, rather than a guide. Just reading through it the first time, I felt like it was already telling a complete story. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to play with the characters and see where I might take them.

I also formatted it like a screenplay for reasons I can’t explain. It just felt right.

TEETH is a one page RPG, you can view and download it here! Please consider making a donation to support indie game creators!

Content warning for sad doomed girls, injury, and codependency.

PDF Available Here!

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Galatea Playthrough

Back at it again with another solo RPG playthrough! Today, we’re looking at Galatea, by S. Kaiya J.

“Your creator is a brilliant artist - celebrated, lonely, tormented - who has never been satisfied with his own creations. Until now. His magnum opus, his crowning masterpiece, the pinnacle of his art - is you. And yesterday you came to life.

You must remain perfect for him - or else.”

I was on board the moment I read the premise of this game, and it was an incredible journey from start to finish.

The mechanics of the game are simple. During the Undergo phase, you draw 4 cards, either tarot or a standard playing deck, and answer the questions they correspond to in the game book. If playing with tarot cards, prompts will be more geared toward philosophy, while playing cards are more focused on social risk and trust. I played with a standard deck, as exploring character relationship and emotional workings intrigues me the most. Then, during the Overcome phase, you write a journal entry about your experience. I will also say, I misunderstood the gameplay flow when I began, and journaled after every card pull, rather than doing all 4 at once during the Overcome phase.

To add even more tension, you also play using a Jenga tower, and certain prompts will instruct you to construct layers with a defined number of blocks. You start with a reserve, but after a while, have to start pulling from the tower itself, and if it collapses, well…

Here’s a picture of my tower at the end of my playthrough. Yikes!

Content Warning

From the book itself: “Galatea is a solo journaling RPG about bearing the weight of unrealistic expectations. It features themes of narcissism, controlling behavior, co-dependence, helplessness, despair, self-mutilation, and suicide. If you are sensitive to these themes, please look after your mental health and make sure you have someone trustworthy to talk to, and stop playing if you feel overwhelmed.”

My playthrough did engage with several of the above themes, and I played it over the course of several days, allowing myself to breathe and process between sessions. This story drew on a lot of my own personal experience, and looking at these fictional events felt gratifying, although difficult. It’s much easier to see things objectively when you are not involved. Because I felt such a strong connection to Lyric, I did take some creative liberties with the ending of the game I got to ensure the ending was positive. I hope you find it so.

PDF Available Here!

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The Librarian’s Apprentice Playthrough

You’ve probably heard of tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs), but how about solo RPGs? They come in lots of different forms and can be adapted by the player to be just about anything. As an avid player myself, sometimes I’m in the mood to sit down and have that collaborative narrative experience with just me and the author!

The Librarian’s Apprentice is a solo journaling / mapmaking game that takes place in an infinite library. You generate the rooms you encounter on your journey by drawing cards and rolling dice and seeing where those numbers fall on a series of prompt tables that help you populate your library with people, creatures, items, and events. Every playthrough will be different, and everyone who plays will have a different idea of what their library is like, the possibilities are endless! Apart from a few prompting questions, the worldbuilding of this story is entirely up to you.

A core tenet of the TTRPG space is “play to find out.” It’s why we roll the dice. Creating a story where you aren’t fully in charge is liberating, and I encourage all my author friends to give it a try. One little boundary can be infinitely more inspiring than the blank page.

My library ended up being a subterranean maze of crystal caves, traversed by the intrepid Phlox. Details and truths about her and this post-cataclysm world emerged as I played, and I really loved exploring what the game had to offer. The lists at the start of each section indicate the cards and dice generated descriptors I used to help define that room. Everything else was improv! Read the adventure below, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! And grab your own copy of The Librarian’s Apprentice today!

PDF Available Here!

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Act. React. Repeat.

Let’s get right to the point. I. Love. Dialogue.

My YouTube page is often flooded with writing-related or bookish videos, and a lot of the time, I tend to steer clear. You see lots of stuff like “NEVER MAKE THESE MISTAKES AS AN INDIE WRITER” or “TROPES EVERYONE HATES. NO QUESTIONS ASKED.” And that turns me off a little bit. Yes, writing is a craft, and yes, there are some things that are more generally disliked than others, and yes, if you’re writing for market, you do need to be up on current reader trends. But I think every writer has an equal chance as any other at making something work for their story. Even a dream sequence. Even a scene where a character looks at themself in a mirror. Anything.

Look at me, I’m already digressing. My point is, I don’t click negative leaning writing videos, but I DO click more positive ones. Especially if there’s an Arcane thumbnail. I’m a simple lass.

I highly recommend giving this one a watch. If you don’t have 20 minutes, just watch 1:47 - 8:42.

I really love this notion of the filter, and the part it plays in keeping conversations sounding realistic. Because in life, we don’t say everything on our mind, or often how we really feel. We don’t exposit. But as readers and writers, we know that our characters will have to do those things for the sake of story progression. But characters’ filters are where the tension lives, the characterization lives. I absolutely love the exercise shown in the video of listing out a scene’s necessary info, and then incorporating all of it into the dialogue alone. That’s a very similar approach to how I wrote when I was first starting out, and honestly? I might go back to it to tighten up some of my WIP’s scenes.

I wanted to use the video’s exercise and take a look at one of the scenes from Then Came the Night and try to break it down. Also, I just like this scene. ;)

The Scene’s function

This scene is near the end of Night and kicks off the last leg of the plot. Narratively, the thing that needs to happen in the scene is Roger comes clean about his behind-the-scenes actions over the course of the last few nights. He’s been hiding it from the others for a very selfish, very dangerous reason and has dug himself in very deep, but also believes he’s close to a breakthrough. So the question is, what will be enough to make him confess?

how would this character in this situation communicate this information?

The key question. The players in this scene are:

Roger Shaw: Town reverend, overall nervous demeanor, currently operating on very little sleep.

Needs: To keep his secret.

Filter: Respect for Jessalyn and their friendship.

Jessalyn Joy: Schoolteacher and heroine of the trilogy, possibly hitting her lowest point.

Needs: Answers and a plan

Filter: Jessalyn usually operates with a strong filter of societal courtesy and her own self-doubt and poor self-image, but that filter is crumbling under the weight of her current distress.

Scene analysis

(Jessalyn enters Roger’s quarters unexpectedly and sees his conspiracy/research board)

J: “Roger.” 

R: (startled) “Miss Joy! I…what are you doing here?”

J: “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What is all this?”

R: “My, eh, research is vast. My office was no longer big enough. So, I moved here, to the walls!” (pause) “It’s actually quite convenient. But, I must ask again, what are you doing here? How is…how is Samuel?”

J: (avoids eye contact) “Patrick and I were able to get him home. He’s not moving, he’s hardly breathing. His eyes are wide open, though. Staring straight ahead. And…and I don’t think he can hear me. And I don’t know what to do. It’s torture, Roger.”

R: “Miss Joy. I am so sorry.” 

J: “There’s nothing for you to apologize for.” 

Jessalyn excels at taking care of Roger, but with the tables turned, he isn’t sure what to do. He considers her his best friend and has a strong desire to comfort her, but refrains form a hug or other encouraging gesture for a few reasons. Physical contact is too intimate for him. Roger knows Jessalyn’s heart belongs to Samuel, who is currently in critical condition, and the best way to comfort her would be to fix all this, but he can’t do that with her here. But he can’t ask her to leave, he has to show her somehow that he cares, so he manages the bare minimum sentimental apology.

Jessalyn didn’t come here for that. She came here for action. So she pushes forward. Roger has to refuse, or reveal the whole truth, which will surely upset her more. 

J: “So, I knew I had to come see you straight away. To help.”

R: “That is most kind of you, Miss Joy, but, I’m really—”

J: “Put me to work. What can I do? Read something? Take notes? Where should I start?”

R: “Please, if you could not—”

J: (reads the contents of the board) “What is this, Roger?”

R: “I’m—”

J: “These are parts of the Bordeaux documents. Why are you looking at these?”

R: “I’m not sure if I can properly explain.”

J: (insistent) “Why are you still looking at these, Roger? These have nothing to do with our current situation!”

R: “That may not be entirely—”

J: (furious) “Roger! Have you been doing nothing to help us with Zedekiah? This whole time!?” 

R: (fear-stricken) “No! Like I said! It’s more complicated than that!” 

J: “Complicated? Complicated how? How could any of this get more complicated? Explain it to me.”

R: “Miss Joy, I really don’t think—”

Seeing Roger’s unrelated notes is the spark that ignites Jessalyn’s powder keg. Her own feelings of helplessness come to the surface and her anger spikes. She would never speak to Roger like this under normal circumstances, but the current circumstances are anything but. Roger is a person who needs time to process his thoughts and form the right words, but Jessalyn refuses to let him speak here. She doesn’t want the long-winded explanation, she wants answers now, and Roger can’t provide that. So he can’t stop her rage from spiraling. His panic upon seeing her out of control and jumping to conclusions only makes it harder for him to speak. 

J: “What? Am I too stupid? Maybe I haven’t read as many fairy tales as you, Roger, but I’ve been through just as much of this goddamn mystical bullshit as you have, as any of us, and you’re gonna stand there and tell me I can’t hack it? What should I do, then? Hm? Stay home? Give up, like everyone seems to want me to?”

R: “Of course not, but—”

J: “I’m not weak, Roger!” 

R: (yelling) “It has to be me!” (pause for breath) “You…you know how much I value our friendship. I would do anything for you. I truly hope you know that, Miss Joy. But, and I mean every word of this, you absolutely cannot help me.” 

Jessalyn is talking more to herself here than to Roger. She’s giving voice to things she thinks about herself. She feels like she’s being doubted at every turn and constantly forced to prove herself TO herself, not to mention her friends, town, and society. 

Roger is out of options for stopping Jessalyn’s rampage, and has to raise his voice, even knowing that he can only give her a partial truth, and that will surely not satisfy her. He tries to pledge himself once again, hoping that will be enough to assure her, but doubting it deep down. 

The full scene in the book does read differently, as it’s told from Roger’s perspective, so the reader does get to see his inner thoughts and feelings throughout, but I do really enjoy just the stripped down argument. I love writing stammers, interruptions, pauses for breath, change of expression, or eyerolls. Body language. Describing where a character is looking, or NOT looking. I love providing props for characters to work with within the scene. By the end of the Three Willows trilogy, I no longer need to explain how Jessalyn feels if she’s spinning her wedding ring, the reader is well aware. 

I’m trying to think of the best way to apply this kind of close reading to the drafting stage when many of the pieces of scenes haven’t been developed yet, but I think what I can work with right now is dialogue. To remember ‘yes, and...,’ to remember filters, and that every spoken word matters. Let’s see what comes of it. 

Then Came the Night Playlist

With the third book in the Three Willows series out in the wild, it’s time for another playlist! The playlist is now available on Spotify. Read on to see why each song ended up on the list!

SPOILER WARNING!!

Reading on from here will 100% spoil the plot of Then Came the Night and the bonus novella The Ballad of Drew McBride for you. BEWARE! (You could grab a copy here, if you wanted!)

Art by Bec Hurley

Christina Grimmie - Absolutely Final Goodbye: This song is everything Andrea wants to say to her father when she leaves home, and more. I imagine her trunk pounding down the stairs in time with the rhythm.

Royal Deluxe - Bad: Drew’s anthem as she enters Three Willows for the first time. She does everything she can to present as the baddest of badasses in the entire continental United States, and she often succeeds.  

Halestorm - Here’s to Us (Guest Version): Three very important men changed Drew’s life for the better, and their years together made them closer than family. Granted, they were dangerous years of smuggling, but Drew wouldn’t trade those memories for anything.  

Aztec Two-Step - Cockroach Cacophany: I’ve never found a song that describes the mental fog that years of depression traps you in better than this one. After the deaths of her companions, Drew is simply living day by day, only escaping into her memories when she sleeps, and haunted during the days.  

Vandaveer - Spite: Drew and Jessalyn’s relationship is one that’s full of spite. They dislike each other immediately, and Drew purposefully tries to anger Jessalyn on purpose, because the reaction is just too good.

Art by Bec Hurley

The Builders and the Butchers - The Night Pt. 2: I mean, it’s all there in the lyrics. The night ain’t filled with gentle things.  

Junie & TheHutFriends - I Wanna Tell You a Secret: When Zedekiah takes the forms of the dead to torment our heroes, the duels start out innocently enough, but as they go on, he weaves his words with more uncertainty, more danger, more questions, until his victims no longer feel safe at all.

Over the Garden Wall - Come Wayward Souls: Were Zedekiah given more time to develop his personality and how he chooses to interact with others, he might view his terrifying visions as a way to help people. He takes them into the darkness, and they either emerge with new light and resolve or… they don’t.

Art by Bec Hurley

The Bridge City Sinners - Through and Through: Isbell and religion DO NOT mix. She blames her upbringing for most of the tragedy in her life and is very convinced that the only person she can rely on in this world is herself. Despite this, she’s proud of who she is, and is unapologetic about her forceful personality.

Renaissance - Black Flame: During her time with Ordo Nocturnus, Isbell has witnessed and controlled some very dark and powerful forces. The power feeds her need for discovery and understanding, regardless of what it might be doing to the rest of her wellbeing or soul. Throwing herself into her work is the only thing that fills the holes in her heart.

Will Wood - Laplace’s Angel (Hurt People? Hurt People!): Isbell has no shame in who she is or how she acts. She is repulsed by people who take the moral high ground, when the intellectual high ground, where she firmly stands, is the only one she sees value in. She’s been too cold to feel remorse for quite some time.

Art by Abril Puente

Richard Shindell - You Stay Here: As the duels carry on, Jessalyn and Sam find it harder and harder to talk to each other. In their efforts to stay strong for the other, they end up pushing each other away, a little. Those mutual sacrifices, though helpful, do more to hurt in the long run.

BELLE - A Million Miles Away: Jessalyn’s thoughts and feelings toward Sam both while he’s under Zedekiah’s spell, and throughout the duels. She’s here, she’s trying to reach out, but the circumstances keep them just too far apart.  

Natalie Weiss - How to Return Home: Lilah has grown so much into an independent woman, she worries and fears what will happen when she comes home. Her old life and her new life are incompatible in her mind, and what will happen in one eclipses the other? Who does that leave her as?

Caleb Hyles - Amber and Rain: Jessalyn wrestles greatly with understanding who she is, her place in town, her place in her own life. It takes her a while to trust herself enough to know what she wants and who she wants, and to see that love and relationships are just as instrumental in defining yourself as anything else.  

The Arcadian Wilds - Rain Clouds: A Roger and Isbell duet. They’ve both faced so much apart, and can only wonder what life would have been like if they spent it together. During those critical moments after Roger’s duel, as dark as Isbell is, Roger’s love was enough to wake her up, just a little.  

Red Horse - Don’t Mind Me: Roger’s feelings for Jessalyn are complicated and precious. His love and respect run deep, and he would do anything to protect that bond. He does recognize that the way he cherishes her may not be reciprocated in her care for him, but that’s fine. He just wants to be with her and there for her.

Richard Shindell - So Says the Whippoorwill: A song for Roger. He’s grown so much since this story began and is gathering to tools, knowledge, and people to help him fight down his own doubts, fears, and worries.

The Hunts - Remember Us: Isbell and Roger, once again. They shared a home once. Things haven’t been so simple since then. Though they were forced apart, their childhood bond is enough to begin to bring them back together.  

The Amazing Devil - Welly Boots: Farewell, Isbell. Her reunion with Roger carries heavy emotions for both of them, and her leaving on the train is a bittersweet scene to end on. There’s still hurt, there’s still worry, but they know now the other is strong enough to carry on on their own.

Unlikely Masterclass: Making you Care

SPOILERS FOR STRANGER THINGS VOL. 4

Before we begin, do me a favor and watch these two videos.

I’ve been a fan of SungWon Cho’s videos and voice work since my Tumblr days. There is no one on the internet who can so precisely pinpoint the nuances of the anime and movie industry, and their respective writing.

For the uninitiated, anime, particularly slice of life anime (anime based in (more or less) reality), usually about mundane subjects, has a brilliant habit of making its audience also care about those mundane subjects. Maybe YOU never thought twice about being a patissier, or golf, or ballroom dancing, or camping, but here. Watch this group of people who have made it their WHOLE LIVES.

In these videos, we’re given exactly one minute of story, but already, I care more about this man and the pizza making career of his, and his brother’s dreams, than I have about anything else. It all comes together; reaching for the sky, the true meaning of pizza, their relationship, the loss that pushed Pizza Bro forward in life.

Parody it may be, that’s a story. Investment in under a minute.

Surely when you have a whole book to get people invested, it’s easier, right? I’m not so sure.

In my writing group this week, we talked about side characters, and how sometimes, they can unseat the protagonists as someone’s favorite part of the story. I’ve experienced this myself. After my first drafts of the Three Willows series were completed and my parents read them, because they are wonderful people, I asked them who their favorite characters were. And my dad’s honest answer was the saw blade salesman. A purely comic relief background character who gets no development. But here’s the thing: I get it! I love that guy, too! Why do you think I gave him another scene in the third book?

What is is about characters like this that have the potential to develop their own fandom to the levels of the Avatar Cabbage Guy?

I think this video explains it the best. There are some great tips in here for not only creating side characters the audience will care about, but also how to build up a character’s death if it happens early in the story.

In a show like Stranger Things, where the nerds and outcasts are the heroes, you wouldn’t think its audience would be very sympathetic to a typical popular girl cheerleader character. It feels even less likely that a show with an already huge cast would be able to bring in new faces for their fourth season and have people respond so favorably to their stories. But they did! Just like ProZD’s pizza bros, we got very little screen time with Chrissy, and every bit of it was used to make us care about her until the end. But the thing is, Chrissy’s death wasn’t the grand conclusion to a character, it was a device used to introduce audiences to the show’s villain. What’s masterful, is that it did both well.

Schnee explains a point very well. Because we don’t have many episodes to understand Chrissy, the writers fall back on character archetypes to get us to figure out who she is. And that’s not cliche, it’s a beautifully executed trope, and tropes are not bad. Readers/watchers/audiences are consumers of media, there are certain stories we already know and can understand quickly, spending more time on other details that can help develop something else. Side characters can and should be developed, but don’t lose sight of that development serving a function.

In my new WIP, I was working on a scene where I realized some things about the protagonist would be better demonstrated if they came out in conversation, but I hadn’t thought of a character who would also feasibly be in the scene, so I had to create one.

My mind went to these two guys from Castle in the Sky. Why was I thinking of them? What did I like about them? They’re big, strong, outwardly tough guys, who are actually very kind and comical. Strong Guy with a Heart of Gold is a solid archetype, and I latched onto it in the scene. I developed a set of twin brothers, in the same line of work as the protagonist, who are much older than her, but they’ve known each other since they were kids. Meaning, they’d know about her family situation. Meaning I can lay hints about her father, a much bigger driving point of the plot, in conversations with These Two Guys that will feel more organic, before he’s brought on page. It was easy to find their voices once I had their archetype and knew what I needed them to accomplish. The rest of the scene was flavor, and endearing them to myself as I wrote, and consequently finding other places in the outline where they could appear again.

Formulas like that are some of the cool parts about writing. I’m going to attempt to take what I’ve been learning about side characters, and work some of it into introducing main characters, too. The faster I can get you to care, the better. 🥰

Then Came the Fire Playlist

Back at it again! Making book and character playlists has been something I’ve done forever, and it feels so good to be able to share these amazing songs! The playlist is now available on Spotify. I thought I’d take a moment here to go into more detail regarding my thoughts!

SPOILER WARNING!! Reading on from here will 100% spoil the plot of Then Came the Fire for you. BEWARE! (You could grab a copy here, if you wanted!)

Art by Will Berendsen

Paul Kantner - Have You Seen the Stars Tonite: I just love the mood of this song and all the instrumentation. It gives off the perfect feeling to accompany Grace and Patrick’s late night stroll. The two shared a very traditional courtship, and Patrick is happy to invite Grace anywhere with him. 

Steve Balsamo - Breaking Apart: The luckiest day in Patrick’s life was when he met Grace. At first, she was a shining example of goodness, the way most of the town sees her, but the closer they grew, the more Patrick learned that there is so much more to her. She’s trustworthy and brave and will fight to make her voice heard if the world is too loud. Patrick grows to depend on her stability just as much as her sweetness. What they go through together throughout Fire just makes them stronger. 

Anaïs Mitchell - Bright Star: This is a pretty perfect choice for Patrick and Grace’s meet-cute. All of Patrick’s struggles growing up and living in Three Willows seemed to become worth it if the new direction he could travel in was towards Grace. And rather than keep her distant, he makes her a part of his journey, and she him. 

Rachel Platten - Better Place: I’m realizing this playlist is mostly an excuse for me to fill it up with sweet love songs. This one in particular describes the relationship from Grace’s perspective. Patrick sees her, not just as one of the many Templetons, but as her own person, and he shows a great depth of understanding of her needs. Grace has always been the quiet one in a very loud family, but Patrick doesn’t make her shout. 

The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band - Fallin’ In Love: The after party of the wedding. While all the couples get tested during the story, Grace and Patrick are sort of meant to remind everyone that falling in love can be fun and freeing. Never forget that.

Art by Will Berendsen

Chris de Burgh - Lonely Sky: Loneliness had been slowly killing Bijou for years when she lived in Paris. She’s only somewhat aware of it herself, and it only succeeded in making the cage around her that much stronger. The greatest challenge she faces is breaking down her own defenses and accepting the very few moments of kindness she’s ever received, until she met Louis. It’s something Louis recognizes in her, and gives her the space she needs. And later on, it will be something Bijou sees in Jessalyn. 

Nick Pitera - Stairwells: The thing that brings Louis and Bijou together, the thing that keeps them both going in their darkest moments, is music. The songs they sing are always for each other, before they are for the audience. The echoes around the stairwells are enough to remind them until they have each other.

Cody Fry - I Hear A Symphony: Bijou inspires Louis from the very first moment he hears her sing. She brings more than talent into his life, she brings creativity, vision, and eventually, love. As she grows, so does he, rising to meet her with bigger and better songs. With Bijou, simple tunes become symphonies. 

The Brothers Bright - Second’s Glance: This song was an excellent model for what one of Bijou and Louis’s songs might sound like, as they perform across America. Storytelling mixed with spectacle.

Renaissance - Midas Man: The relentless rhythm of this song always makes me think of the decades the Bordeauxs spend on the road, as the curse Bijou is under gets worse and worse. Louis loses so much of his optimism, becoming a twisted caricature of his former self. All that matters is the money. All that matters is who can serve his needs. All he needs is to keep Bijou alive. 

The Brothers Bright - It’s A Wonderful Life: The whole idea for the Bordeauxs began with this song (“Me and my red-headed wife?” 😉 ). I love the bombastic voice of the lead vocalist and the feeling of spiraling out of control with a smile on your face. Listen to the very end to hear the mask crack. 

Marianas Trench - Wildfire: Cut to the end of Then Came the Fire, Louis on his own for the first time in years, and he doesn’t fully understand why, or what went wrong. Why Bijou chose the fate she chose and left him behind. “From wedding bells, to private hells… From up in lights, to up in smoke.”

Art by Abril Puente

Stephen Pasquale & Kelli O’Hara - One Second and a Million Miles: This is probably my own personal ultimate love song, and it’s difficult for me not to put it on every playlist I make. But for Sam and Jessalyn, it does fit rather perfectly. At the end of Thunder, Sam confirmed that he would stay in town, and at the end of Fire, he’s no longer staying for Jessalyn, he’s staying with Jessalyn. As for her, well…

Katie Thompson - Say Goodbye: Truthfully, Jessalyn has known for quite some time that she’s fallen in love with Sam, but her overpowering self-doubt and some of the self-loathing she struggles with kept her from admitting it. At the end of the book, when she finds out that Sam feels the same way, and she sees him struggling just as much as she has, it allows her to find her courage and take action, declaring what she feels. She’s faced with walking to or away from something new, and she chooses to begin, leaving her uncertain self behind. 

Once - Falling Slowly: When you get right down to it, Then Came the Fire is three love stories. Grace and Patrick are new love gaining strength, the Bordeauxs are an old love that’s suffering and failing to communicate, and Sam and Jessalyn are a slow burn love finally reaching its ignition point. They’ve grown to trust and confide in each other, with the good and the bad, which Jessalyn often struggles with. It’s not a whirlwind romance, but one they’ve come to slowly, together.

Checking in & Mixing up

It’s time for a check in. 

If you read my last blog post, you’ll know that I’m currently in the middle of a bit of a challenge. Self-imposed challenge, of course. It’s the wide world of self-publishing. I make and break all the rules I want. :D Basically, I’ve put the Three Willows trilogy on pause while I give into shiny new idea syndrome and try my hands at a totally fresh draft of an idea. I haven’t started on something completely clean like this since 2017. Nerves are high. 

So we’re a month and a half into the four months I’ve allotted myself. What do I have to show for it?

10K words. Which I don’t consider half bad. And judging from the content of those first words, this draft will easily surpass the 50K mark, which again, not bad for a notorious underwriter.

A complete outline. I’m not sure if the ending is good enough, but it will be a while before I get there and have to worry about it. 

The World. I’ve got the framework, I think. Things are still a little malleable, and I’ll make more choices should the story need me to decide something. Not to mention, I have a lot more to learn about architecture, but those are the sorts of details I’m learning to let go, especially on a first draft. 

Characters. I’ve got ‘em! I’m planning on two main protagonists with alternating viewpoints, because that formula makes sense to me. Maybe one day I’ll have an idea that will keep me in one character’s head the whole book, but it’s not this book. As a long time Critter, Dungeons and Dragons has been steadily consuming my life for some time now, and the result is that I now refer to side characters as NPCs. And it’s sort of a fun way to think about it? You, the reader/player, will never be in their heads, never be certain about their goals or motivations, they exist to color the world and give the PC/protagonists things to react to and interact with. That probably makes no sense, but it’s what I’m rolling with at the moment. I will take any, literally any, excuse to think about D&D more than I already do. 

And the craziest thing, I think I’m happy? Before I started writing, I was planning on using this post as a way to punish myself and push myself to make more progress, but the complete opposite has happened. I’ve done a lot. And it will continue, because I’m in that magical, mystical brain-place where whenever there’s a dull moment, my mind comes back to this story, to what happens next, to future scenes I’m excited for. (Including what will be the first steamy scene I’ve ever written. I know. I’m worried, too.) 😅

And here’s little tease for you blog-readers. While they’re still forming, I like to dump all my character inspirations into a blender and see if that helps me get closer to who they are. Now presenting, the cocktail recipe of this project’s two protagonists.

MC 1

MC 2

“I made a great decision this morning.”

Story time. The summer after high school graduation, my friends and I decided that we weren’t done with theater just yet, and wanted to go all-in one more time. We staged and filmed a production of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever in my parents’ house. It was an all-consuming project, we were gathering props, doing our own production design, cooking fake breakfast, raiding every thrift store in Oshkosh for anything that could be vaguely 1920s, I spent a solid week designing hair accessories, and it was a BLAST. We were filming at all hours, even up to days before some of us were leaving for college. Very much an unforgettable summer. 

Look at me on that couch. So young. So able to walk in heels. So closeted.

I think this is a common thing for actors, but I certainly know that for me, there are some lines I’ve performed that are going to stay with me forever, the pattern of words and delivery locked in for eternity. One of those lines, for me, is “I made a great decision this morning.” (Heck yeah, I played Judith Bliss.) 

Then Came the Fire came out just last week, and I’m still coming down from the AAAAHHHHHH feelings of launching a book. (Thank you so much if you’ve picked up a copy or wrote a review!!) Authoring is weird for a lot of reasons, but the one that gets me is that you spend so much time and emotion (and money, let’s be real) creating something that people can consume in hours. Or ignore completely. That’s just, art, really. In a nutshell. But those feelings, along with my own struggles with figuring out ads and promotion and how not to blow my budget and how not to check my KDP reports every time I’m at the desktop, and trying to stay excited and not forget that I love this… 

It’s been a little stressful. 

Turning back to creativity has also been hard, because, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’ve been having a difficult time settling on what I want to work on next. I’m not a multiple project person, I know that for sure. Every time I think I’ve picked a new idea, I end up waffling around and resisting the commitment and I’m now sitting here with 3 well-developed outlines that are all perfect contenders. 

But. After some encouraging conversations with a close friend, and following the siren song of the shiny new idea, I think my tide is changing. For the first time in a long while, I’ve got characters in my head when I’m doing other things, unexplored places, scene ideas that make me excited to write them. I think this is the one. The next one. 

And so. 

I made a great decision this morning. 

Equal parts eternal lines from Hay Fever and a recent rewatch of Whisper of the Heart, I’m making a plan. I’m giving myself 4 months. 4 months to rough draft Shiny New Idea before I start looking at Three Willows Book 3 (which I do still plan to release by the end of the year). One of the best parts about self-publishing is you make your own rules, but you do still have to actually make them, which I have been consciously avoiding because sometimes my liver is lily-colored. I need to do something big to prove that I can still do this. I need to quiet the promotional madness imposter syndrome fueling relentlessly ephemeral rush and race of social media and sales reports and HAVE some FUN with my own imagination. So, you heard it here first, folks. A deadline. Let’s see what I can do with it. 

Other notable Judith lines:

“I’m stagnating, you see, and I won’t stagnate as long as there’s breath left in my body.”

“Don’t you say rubbish to me!” 

“If you mean that because you happen to be a vigorous ingénue of nineteen that you have the complete monopoly of any amorous adventure there may be about, I feel it is my firm duty to disillusion you.”