The WIP tag (in search of beta readers!)

Hello, everyone, my name is Corinne, and I wrote a book!

Today, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my book (known as a Work In Progress, or WIP) and officially put out the call for beta readers who want to be the first to read the story and give me feedback to help make it better before publication!

Without further ado, I bring you the WIP tag! This tag originally comes from K.E. Francis over on Wattpad, so if you are a fellow writer and would like to do this tag for yourself, that’s where you can find it!

What is the title of your WIP?

My WIP is titled Ocean Mage, and I’m hoping that it will be the first in a series that I am tentatively naming The Forsaken Lord trilogy. (Side note: teenage me would be so excited because she’d always dreamed of writing a trilogy of fantasy novels! The story I wrote as a teenager has survived to this day, albeit in a different incarnation, but it is such an expansive story that it will require 6+ books to be told properly!)

2. Where did the idea for the book come from?

Now that is an interesting question. It came from a few different sources. The very first inkling of this book that I ever had was when I read the One Piece manga for the first time and became fascinated by Makino:

Makino is a side character we meet in Volume 1; she owns a tavern frequented by the pirate Shanks and by Luffy, our main character. She is like a big sister to him, and is one of the main female characters in the first volume (we don’t get to meet the actual FMC of the series, Nami, until the very last page of the volume, so she doesn’t count!) I would constantly find myself wanting to know more about her, like how she came to own the tavern, and realized that I should write a novel about a tavern-keeper’s daughter and about pirates. Also because I theorized that she and Shanks would have an affair, probably. But I didn’t have the plot yet. I played around with a few ideas, until finally it evolved into “magistrate’s daughter falls in love with tavern-keeper’s son who became a pirate.” Over time, that evolved into “magistrate’s daughter is autistic and is exiled from her home village because magic is illegal,” and the “tavern-keeper’s son is a pirate” became “tavern-keeper’s son is kidnapped by pirates and becomes a mercenary who tries to get revenge on pirates.”

3. What genre does your book fall under?

In case it wasn’t already obvious, this is a fantasy book! Specifically, YA fantasy (Young Adult) The main character is eighteen, so ideally my readership would be 15-19 year olds who like fantasy.

4. Which actors would you choose for the movie adaptation of your book?

If you guys do not know this epic epic person, this is Paige Layle, an autistic social media influencer/actor and I love her! Because my main character is autistic, I would 10000% want the actress playing her to also be autistic. I also will freely admit that I watched some of Paige’s Youtube videos while writing this book and I just think it’d be so cool to have Paige portray my main character Rose.

So… this is a photo of a One Piece cosplay I found and I have no idea what this man’s name is. But he is EXACTLY how I picture Thom. Probably left over from the fact that the One Piece manga inspired me.

I wouldn’t say no to Ben Barnes playing Thom, but he’s a bit too old at this point. Maybe he could play her father, instead. But Thom is supposed to be eighteen, only a few months older than Rose, and Ben Barnes is already forty. I found this actor, Skyler Gisondo, who is young enough to play Thom and who I could imagine playing Thom in Ocean Mage, the movie adaptation.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock (10181246g)Skyler Gisondo arrives at the LA Premiere of “Santa Clarita Diet” Season 3 at the Hollywood American Legion Post 43, in Los AngelesLA Premiere of “Santa Clarita Diet” Season 3, Los Angeles, USA – 28 Mar 2019

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?

On the verge of becoming a prisoner of the king, magistrate’s daughter Rose goes into exile on a merchant ship. But when her past catches up to her in the form of an old friend, she must sacrifice her quest for revenge, or else she’ll be a prisoner of the king once more.

6. Will you traditionally publish or self-publish this book?

I would like to traditionally publish and have a close-to-finished book by the end of this year so that I can return to the query trenches in 2023!

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft?

*counts on fingers* Seven years, technically. Because I started my “first draft” of this book way back in about 2014, got about halfway through, then realized I had no idea how to end the book and went back and did major revisions and plotting, then got about halfway through again and started over… So basically, the first half of my book has been revised to death, while the second half only got one or two minor rewrites.

8. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Well, I’ve already discussed above how One Piece gave me the initial idea… That was back in maybe 2009? In 2010, I started writing a different book and basically completely abandoned my “pirate novel” as I called it at the time. Then, I was writing another book when I ended up writing a short story about my experiences with friendship as an autistic person and one of my critique partners at the time said “Hey, you should write more stories about being autistic!” After I finished the book I was working on at the time (which I queried to death, then realized that the main character wasn’t the main character after all and the story actually should be told from her love interest’s perspective because he had the most dramatic character arc), I started playing with ideas for my next project, and my “pirate novel” and “more stories about the autistic experience” got meshed together in my head and I was like “Hey, what if Rose was autistic? Yes! It works!”

9. What other things in your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Okay, time for a mini Top Ten list! Top Ten Things I Love About My Book!

10. Rose’s father! This is going to sound really weird, since I have a great relationship with my mom, but for some reason, if there is a single father raising a daughter and the mom is dead/missing, the book instantly becomes 10x better! I discovered this when going back over older manuscripts I had written: three featured teenage girls being raised by a single father! Another of my manuscripts had the girl’s mom pass away from cancer, and a third was that the girl’s mom was a mermaid and the father was human, and the girl was being raised a human with her father. So basically, I am trash for the “Missing Mom” trope!

9. While it’s not the main focus of the story (though we do see a lot more of it in Book 3), the kingdom of Kouha, the neighboring kingdom to the one where Rose is born, is a fictional country inspired by Japan! And then I had to ask myself why Rose’s kingdom was very clearly French-inspired and the very next kingdom over was very clearly Japanese–the Kouha empire doesn’t like Rose’s kingom and refuses to trade or do business with them. And anytime Kouha is mentioned, I get to nerd out and write about Japan!

8. One of the side characters, Summer, is transgender asexual! I love her so much! She has big dreams of being the world’s greatest chef, and is the cook on Rose’s ship. Instead of being annoyed that Rose is a very picky eater, Summer sees it as a great challenge, one more step along the path to her dream! I just love writing about Summer so much. In Book 2, we follow a different character, instead of Rose, and while the character does go traveling around the kingdom, she never gets to the capital city where Summer has opened her own restaurant, so Summer probably will not make it into Book 2. I am hoping, however, to let her have a cameo in Book 3, as that one takes place in the palace, and one scene sees the prince go exploring in the city; I might have him visit Summer’s restaurant.

7. The very last chapter of the book (the epilogue)! I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s a letter the main character writes to her nursemaid–one of Rose’s worries throughout the story is that her nursemaid will get in trouble for smuggling her out of the town, so the epilogue wraps that up, plus a few other loose threads. I’m so proud of how it turned out!

6. Fairy tales! Rose’s special interest is fairy tales, and my favoritest trope ever is a “story within a story,” where a character tells a story to another character. So of course, I had to include this trope. Rose gets to tell one of her favorite stories to another character, about a human prince who goes on a quest to see a genie and falls in love with an elf woman!

5. Sirens! They are a big part of the story and do a lot of singing and even kill someone onscreen!

4. A certain subplot about the captain of their ship and how he had a forbidden romance with a peasant girl (he was nobility once upon a time) and fathered an autistic daughter with said peasant girl. In fact, I loved this subplot so much that I outlined an entire spinoff novel about the captain and how he fell in love with this peasant girl.

3. The love interest! He is so swoony, and we get so many opportunities to see how he cares for and will be such a good husband to Rose! Plus the KISSING SCENES! There aren’t many, but the ones that are there just melt my little asexual heart!

2. The queer rep! So many queer characters in this book! A demisexual protagonist, a gay supporting character in a healthy gay relationship with another supporting character, and a transgender asexual supporting character! Kids need queer books and mine is no exception!

1. An autistic main character! Who is an adult! And a woman! We need more female autism representation all over the place, and I’m so excited for girls like me to read this book and know that they are valid, they are loved, and they are worthy of being loved!

That is the end of the WIP tag! Thank you so much for allowing me to shout about Rose and Thom. But wait! Before you go! If you like what you’ve read so far, why not become a beta reader for my book?

If you’d like to be part of an exclusive book club, read my book before it’s published, help make it even awesomer before publication, and maybe even get your name in the acknowledgments once it is published, visit the Google Form here to sign up! I will be doing several rounds of beta reads, so there is a very good chance you will get to read the book early, even if you don’t get chosen for this time around!

Of course, if you have any questions about my beta reader process, you can shoot me an email over at my Contact form and I’ll get back to you very soon! And uh… yeah. Subscribe to my blog and all that good stuff! 乙女