Welcome to our Monday Coffee. Every Monday is set aside for musings and considerations around the Twinverse, the Tales, and the writing craft as a whole. We will occasionally discuss sources of inspiration for the Twinverse, share some text from existing or upcoming books, discuss the history of the Twinverse's development, and how roleplaying games have contributed to fleshing out the world. We may even look at some of the original documentation on the Twinverse, at its very beginning. Happy Monday!
Some time after North Star was published, my publisher and I looked back at my first published novella, Ghostblood. The novella had first appeared in one of Kevin's Watch's anthologies, but we felt it could be adapted as a standalone book.
Ghostblood as a story was slightly shorter than North Star, and very different in tone and content. Unlike North Star, it had never been conceptualized as a self-contained story; rather, it was meant to both stand on its own, and act as a prologue to a larger storyline, which had only been loosely thought of at the time.
Instead of the nurain Riyya, Ghostblood followed the lives of two citizens of Mathklyr, an ancient empire which buckled under the weight of its traditions and customs, mummified and frozen in time. One of the two is Alric Ingeist, a commoner with dreams of higher stations in life who enrolls in the army and, due to his skills in military strategy and tactics, is eventually hand-picked to become one of a handful of high generals to the Emperor, a so-called Mathklyrian Warshifter. The other is Elis Allin Aeronis, a young woman from a wealthy family who rejects the blatant mysoginy of the Empire, seeks to escape, and almost pays for it with her life, only to encounter something otherworldly instead.
Despite the difference in tone and content, Ghostblood explores some of the same questions North Star asked. Who are we, when it comes down to it? What are we really made of, when push comes to shove?
Although the two stories are mostly separate, they intertwine in the third act of the book. The consequences of this meeting are what would be explored in the sequel, which would have greater scope and be more similar in tone to a fantasy epic. Mathklyr, the Empire where Ghostblood is set, is a rich setting with many story hooks, several of which spawn from Ghostblood itself.
After we published Ghostblood, I started planning what my next story would be. I wasn't sure I would immediately write its sequel, and I had many ideas swirling in my mind as to what should my next story be. The most insistent idea was also a very difficult story to write - still a personal tale, but one that could intertwine, obliquely or not, with all the stories I had written before and all the stories I thought of writing after. A story about stories and their power. Admittedly, it was daunting, especially since my concept implied writing extensive citations from folktales and books in the Twin Worlds to be used as chapter headings.
Around that time, in 2011, my personal life also went through several changed. I moved to the United States and changed career, which led to me having to focus harder on my day job. Therefore, many of these stories remained as sketches on paper, and every time I had the inspiration to advance one, the others would clamor for my attention. Between that and the amount of time I needed to spend in building a new life across the Atlantic, my writing suffered and it would be years before I would pick it back up.
This didn't mean that the setting grew stale. I still found the time to build and expand it, and in addition to worldbuilding, it also grew through roleplaying. A new continent was developed specifically for one of these games, which spawned its own stories and a saga I plan to write as well. But as for writing my tales, these were the dark years where I didn't do very much, or what I did, I was unhappy about and didn't feel compelled to complete. I recognize now I was going through writer's block, but I also know I had to settle other parts of my life before I could travel back to the Twin Worlds and continue their tales.
Next Monday, we'll complete this retrospective by talking about Leaves and what is to come. In the meantime, I hope this gives you sme insight into the history of the setting. Thank you for joining us, and as always, happy Monday!
Comments