Tag Archives: fantasy

TWoS Fun Fact #4

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The number four is very important to the Suomilen people because of their beliefs in the Four Winds. They often structure things around multiples of 4 (their week is 8 days, and there are 4 weeks in each month, traditionally there are 4 Brigades in the Royal Army, etc.).

~Ethelinda

TWoS Progress Update

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I just finished the second draft of The Wizard of Suomen! 😀 😀 😀

I’m going to do a line-edit on paper before sending it to my editor, and then there will definitely be more edits to make, but at least I will feel like I’m sending a decent draft!

…

I’m really excited! 😀

~Ethelinda

Review: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

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(“A book published this year” from the Reading Challenge)

So, this is technically a review of Shadow Scale, but out of necessity it will also talk about the preceding book Seraphina. Expect spoilers for both books!

I loved both Seraphina and Shadow Scale! Seraphina was one of my “grabbed it randomly off the library shelf because it looked interesting” finds that worked out well – I was hooked about ten pages in. They are set in a fantasy world in which two sentient species – humans and dragons – are struggling to coexist. The first book is set entirely in the country of Goredd, where forty years of uneasy peace between the humans and the dragons is teetering. Seraphina herself is a musician in Goredd’s court…and secretly a half-dragon. Continue reading →

im/mortal: Revelry

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Cold and damp seeped in around the shutters as the chill winter wind lashed rain harder against the front of the little inn. The few travelers who had not yet sought their beds upstairs huddled well away from the outside wall, hunching over half-empty tankards and pretending that the glow of the fire was enough to ward off the dark and cold that pressed heavily against the worn wooden walls.

Muirne had wrapped herself in a second shawl and eyed the guttering lanterns near the door with resignation as she finished wiping up the bar. It was noticeably colder on that side of the main room, and she was in no hurry to go over even long enough to replace the candles. Still, maybe more light would make the room less dreary than it was, so the innkeeper sighed and moved to fetch spare candles.

The knock that came on the door just as she reached for the first lantern was not expected. Nor was it the desperate pounding she would have anticipated from a traveler still caught out in the storm. Instead, it was firm, assured, steady. Continue reading →

Series Intro: im/mortal

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This is going to be a series of short stories and novellas that I intend to work on in and amongst other things for the foreseeable future, and that I plan to someday collect into an anthology of sorts.

As a reader of fiction and especially fantasy, I have over the years developed an interest in stories that portray relationships between humans/mortal beings and immortal beings of various sorts. This series will be me as a writer exploring various permutations of this idea. My goal is that there will be a lot of variation between the stories in length and tone, since the imbalances of lifespan and (often) power between a mortal and an immortal being lead to a wide variety of different outcomes: some happy and some sad, some good and some bad, some dark and some light.

Most, if not all, of the stories will have a song that I associate with them, and I’ll link to it at the end of the story. In some cases, I’m finding that a song is direct inspiration for a particular story, but in other cases the story is already in my mind and the song serves more as mood music. I’ll also say here that for the most part, these stories will each take place in a separate “universe,” and the reader can safely assume that they are not related to each other unless I indicate otherwise.

I’ll post many of the stories in full here on my website, though for at least some I will post only an excerpt, and the full story will be included in the final anthology. I can’t say right now exactly how many stories there will be in total; I have ideas for at least fifteen, with seven of those being more solid. One story is written and edited, and I am in the middle of a first draft of the second story.

The first story will be posted sometime this week!

As always, please don’t hesitate if you have comments or questions for me.

~Ethelinda

Review: Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson

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(“A book with bad reviews” from the Reading Challenge)

[Technically, this book has more good reviews than bad on Goodreads, but the list doesn’t specify “only” bad reviews, so I’m going to go with a couple of bad reviews + I didn’t care for it = good enough to meet this particular criterion.]

[Some spoilers under the cut.]

I wanted to like this book. It was one of my “picked it up randomly whilst browsing at the library” books, and the blurb made it sound interesting. The world that the author creates is very interesting, with a society that has spent centuries recovering from an ancient cataclysm currently on the cusp of a technological revolution. Continue reading →

TWoS Fun Fact #2

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The planet that Suomen is a part of has a slightly shorter orbit around its sun than Earth around our Sun, making their year about 355 days long. The Suomilen people divide this up into eleven months of 32 days each, with a “leap year” every fourth year adding a day to the first month.

(Yes, I spent time figuring this out. Because I could. More fiction soon.)

~Ethelinda

TWoS Progress Update

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Finally finished my read-through of Draft 1 of TWoS. -_- I think I’m solid on knowing the remaining major edits that are needed (at least, the ones that readers pointed out or that I can identify myself), so now it’s just a matter of doing them! Then a line-edit on paper, and then it can go to my editor. After which it will undoubtedly need many more edits, but that’s okay. 🙂

~Ethelinda