Whence Cometh Hope?
It's been a long time since my last 'real' post, and I wanted this one to be more meaningful than updating my current projects or a bit of writing advice that I gleaned through my work this past week.
One of the themes of the From the Ashes of Victory series is finding hope and the strength to pursue it out of the sucking morass of darkness that many of the characters find themselves in when we join them. There is a lot of darkness in these books, and they are set in a dark time, post-WWI, pre-suffrage, the Russian revolution, etc. Victoria's arc especially is about her finding her way back into the light after so long in pitch-blackness.
Where do they find the hope to keep going? The strength to move on and rebuild lives shattered by events totally outside their control?
Each other.
Trying to go it alone is a common mistake shared by many of my characters, and it's only through (often reluctantly) working together and sharing their burdens that they grow into the strong, vivacious people eager to change the world for the better that they were always meant to be. They all have access to extraordinary abilities, the most potent magic known in their world, but it's only one tool of many to help them in their recoveries. No matter how powerful they may be, without each other they would be just as vulnerable to their traumas as they were before they were transformed.
Togetherness, the bonds of found family and sisterhood, of learning from the experiences of others and embracing them, the power of vulnerability and trust, these are many of the ways in which our heroines find and tap the extraordinary potential within themselves.
Hatred, violence, selfishness and fear is what broke them down, but it's love, of each other and themselves, that allows them to take the next step, to seek the light in the dark. Romantic, platonic, familial; no matter the form, love is the underlying, driving force in a series cloaked in darkness and despair.
EVE is made of survivors, but through one another and working together, they become far more than that. They flourish through adversity because they seek out and embrace others like them, who have been through just as much, if not more than they have. It's painful, humiliating and humbling, but ultimately all for the betterment of each of them together.
I think there are those out there who could use a story of overcoming dark times, and finding hope in the most trying of times, so I hope, if you are reading this, that you will give them a chance, and maybe find a little bit of that hope yourself through them.
"EVE was about new beginnings, about finding a new home. It was the bed of ashes from which the detritus left behind in the wake of an uncaring world could grow again. The lost, the broken, the discarded, the forgotten.
Together, they were no longer any of those things."
-excerpt from The Fires of Winter
One of the themes of the From the Ashes of Victory series is finding hope and the strength to pursue it out of the sucking morass of darkness that many of the characters find themselves in when we join them. There is a lot of darkness in these books, and they are set in a dark time, post-WWI, pre-suffrage, the Russian revolution, etc. Victoria's arc especially is about her finding her way back into the light after so long in pitch-blackness.
Where do they find the hope to keep going? The strength to move on and rebuild lives shattered by events totally outside their control?
Each other.
Trying to go it alone is a common mistake shared by many of my characters, and it's only through (often reluctantly) working together and sharing their burdens that they grow into the strong, vivacious people eager to change the world for the better that they were always meant to be. They all have access to extraordinary abilities, the most potent magic known in their world, but it's only one tool of many to help them in their recoveries. No matter how powerful they may be, without each other they would be just as vulnerable to their traumas as they were before they were transformed.
Togetherness, the bonds of found family and sisterhood, of learning from the experiences of others and embracing them, the power of vulnerability and trust, these are many of the ways in which our heroines find and tap the extraordinary potential within themselves.
Hatred, violence, selfishness and fear is what broke them down, but it's love, of each other and themselves, that allows them to take the next step, to seek the light in the dark. Romantic, platonic, familial; no matter the form, love is the underlying, driving force in a series cloaked in darkness and despair.
EVE is made of survivors, but through one another and working together, they become far more than that. They flourish through adversity because they seek out and embrace others like them, who have been through just as much, if not more than they have. It's painful, humiliating and humbling, but ultimately all for the betterment of each of them together.
I think there are those out there who could use a story of overcoming dark times, and finding hope in the most trying of times, so I hope, if you are reading this, that you will give them a chance, and maybe find a little bit of that hope yourself through them.
"EVE was about new beginnings, about finding a new home. It was the bed of ashes from which the detritus left behind in the wake of an uncaring world could grow again. The lost, the broken, the discarded, the forgotten.
Together, they were no longer any of those things."
-excerpt from The Fires of Winter
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