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!
After the publication of Ghostblood, my move to the United States, and my career change, I found myself in a position where I had many ideas for stories set in the Twin Worlds. Some of these ideas had spawned from the roleplaying campaigns I had put together. Others, from my continued worldbuilding and the concepts I kept expanding upon. But I continued to encounter roadblocks. I would find the inspiration for a story, write a bit of it, then find the inspiration waning, or the inspiration for another story replacing it. Three major stories circled each other this way, although there were a few minor ones that popped up here and there. But these three - Amyrè, Carnival, and Leaves - returned to me time and again. Sometimes I'd think of a different format, or of a different hook, although the basic plot remained the same. Sometimes characters would go through changes, even radical ones, to better fit a reimagined version of the story. But even then, there was no real progression.
It was only a few years ago that I realized that one of these three tales was blocking everything else. Leaves was a tale that wanted - no, needed - to be told, and I kept returning back to it. And yet, of the three, it was probably the most ambitious. Not in its content, but in its framing. Leaves was meant to be the cypher of my Tales - the hub of the wheel as it were, connecting one way or another with all other tales I had written and planned to write. It would do so by means of Easter eggs, shared characters, and excerpts. Each chapter of Leaves would be headed by an excerpt from a tale or story the protagonist had ostensibly collected. These tales could touch on themes later expanded in the chapter, and/or connect to other tales to be written in the Twin Worlds.
But this was an extremely challenging undertaking, especially since the tales I intended to write were still in flux. And furthermore, Leaves was the personal story of a character who would, during the course of it, fight with mental illness - and I was terrified of writing something that would do a disservice to this theme.
But in the end, I forced myself to push through. Leaves had to be finished before any other story could begin, and those stories clamored to be told as well. In addition to all the standalone tales, there were the tales of the Amaranth to be written, and those of the Pact of Four. So I set down to complete Leaves, and although I had always known what the final scene was meant to look like, I was surprised by the way it wrote itself, in a better way than I had ever imagined it.
Admittedly, I might be biased here! But I felt it truly ended the book in the most perfect way.
Now Leaves is finished, or rather, its first draft is. I am going through the editing phase, thanks to my wife's editing prowess, and ensuring the book will be all it can be. And once it is completed, it will be published alongside North Star and Ghostblood, beginning a new era of Twin Worlds Tales.
There's a certain civil war I would like to explore, for example, and a Crisis which has led to strange developments. There's a broken noble family that needs resolution, a continent that needs to be explored, and a Breach that should be closed. I might revisit the Anger War. And then there are the gods, and the story of the Pact of Four during the DIvine Wars. That story intertwines with many others.
And then, finally, there's THE story. The biggest one by far, the one that's daunting to me by its very nature. Leaves touches on it, but it still only scratches the surface. And I have a mind that Ilidrian - the protagonist of Leaves - might be involved in the framing device for this one, as well. Don't quote me on that, though!
So there is a lot to write. There's also a lot of material to share - the world in which these tales are set has been developed over the course of years, starting out as a setting for roleplaying campaigns. A lot of friends have played in it, leaving their mark upon it - some of them more so than others. I'm not going to list them all - this post would be double the length! but I'm sure their names will come up in conversations.
So, this new chapter of the Twin Worlds starts here. And I can't wait to take you all on this wild ride!
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