Writing Update and Artwork
An update on “Where the Stars Used to Sing”, “The Ruon Chronicles”, and more
Hello again!
I hope November is treating you well so far – it’s hard to believe that Christmas and the end of 2020 is just around the corner.
I’ve been a busy bee, working away on Where the Stars Used to Sing’s stories and sketches and outlining The Ruon Chronicles.
With Where the Stars Used to Sing being released on (drum roll) 16 December 2020, I’m hard at work to get everything done and the book ready to go by the weekend before. I really don’t want to be stuck at 11:59pm on the sixteenth trying to get the formatting right!
The cover for the collection has also been finalised:
And, here are two more sketches that will be included in the book – one is for “The House with the Blue Roof” and the other is for “And She Danced with the Moonlight”.
The Ruon Chronicles’ outline is getting there – I’ve mostly had to do changes to the beginning of the story to beat it into a coherent shape and am now working on making sure that the timeline works the way it’s supposed to. For that I’m using Aeon Timeline software (not a promotion) that I bought a while ago to use specifically for Chronicles and other fantasy stories. And, wow, does it help a lot to help me remember the ins and outs of when what happens during the history before Chronicles actually starts.
Once Where the Stars Used to Sing has been released, I’ll definitely be posting more about Chronicles here!
Looking forward to (a writing-filled) 2021
I’m also planning out my writing schedule for 2021 (in the hopes that it’s not dashed quite as well as my 2020 one was!) and I’ve decided to work on the worldbuilding for Porselein (‘Porcelain’), an Afrikaans fantasy novel (*cough* maybe trilogy *cough*) that takes place in a veeeeery different world from The Ruon Chronicles.
Where the Chronicles I’d describe as late Middle Ages and early to middle Renaissance “on Earth” – because why create a secondary world if you’re keeping strictly to Earth stuff, Porselein is more late Renaissance and Enlightenment.
And, although Porselein has been mostly outlined and the magic system finalised, I do still need to do a lot of research and reading (“Poor me”, she said, grinning from ear to ear) to make sure that the story will work. Especially if I do decide not to leave it at a standalone book!
Unfortunately, I’ll only be translating Porselein into English once it’s already available in Afrikaans, so I’ll have to beg my English readers to be patient with me, haha! Don’t worry though, the Chronicles books will all be available in English first. (I know there are writers who write their books in English and Afrikaans simultaneously... yeah, I don’t want my brain to explode from switching between languages and stories that much...)
But I’ll keep posting some flash fiction here as well and not just Chronicles stuff!
And, let’s be honest, I hope 2021 is a much calmer, more structured, and less... well less like 2020.
That’s it for today, I hope you have a magnificent week further!
Love,
Carin