Author of too many books who will be chasing Solavellan forever. Atish'all, vallem. Fen'Harel elathadra. Revas vir-anaris. Maigheach most places else-internet. Solavellan prompts welcome in asks!
Since I’ve gotten a few questions about my original books and where to find them, I figured I should do an introduction/master post, because I’ve a whole heap of things I do.
I’m a polymath, a pain in the ass, a massive pain
If you’ve enjoyed my Solavellan meta and want to support me, I would be honoured. I’ve just been totally cleaned out by a gruelling and traumatic immigration process (that is ongoing), and honestly *any* support is an enormous help in getting back on my feet so my life in my home can…finally begin.
I’m a fantasy author of over 25 novels across several subgenres, but all of my books have a romantic element or are romances. I’m also an award-winning Gaelic singer and songwriter who has represented Scotland internationally twice and been invited to perform for our parliament’s 25th anniversary celebration.
I’ve been at this a long time, and I keep kind of getting knocked backwards onto my arse and am pretty exhausted! Here’s my erm…life’s work below the jump!
Books
If you want to read my current series as I write it, check out my Patreon! I’m back on my Solavellan bullshit with it: if Lavellan met Solas somehow both as Solas and simultaneously as rebellion-era, peak traumatised Dread Wolf…and had to reconcile those experiences on the fly as her people’s oppressors subject her to impossible trials to steal what remains of their Indigenous magic? Aye, that’s Wilder.
You can follow along for £1 a month on Patreon. It’s going to get very spicy.
My most recent published series is a Solavellan-inspired romantasy trilogy (complete!) that I wrote over the last five years of absolute panic that we wouldn’t get a happy ending.
Complete trilogy!!!
Mutual pining
Souls bound across time and space
Big Dragon Age and Solavellan vibes
Banter!
“We shouldn’t” 👀
Low spice (honestly I kinda regret not making it spicier so might make some erm…bonus scenes at some point)
In KU/ebook and available in bespoke deluxe paperback from my own shopfront
Elven gods and mortals romance episodic series where the gods are being punished by a greater power for being assholes and can only find redemption by winning the heart of their mortal soulmates 😌
Queer-norm world!
Book 1: m/f
Book 2: f/f
Book 3: enby/f
Book 4: m/f
In KU and ebook only; they’re just short lil guys
Complete trilogy!
Spell-induced climate change, one land magically draining the resources from another, and those dead set on righting the wrongs (or making it worse 😳)
Giant sapient bats
Giant cats and those who bond with them and ride them
A land cut off from the world by an ancient curse
Ace rep!!!
Profound friendships and trust
Available in ebook, hardcover, and paperback
Complete quartet!
Lots of snark
My earlier work but I’m still proud of it 🥹
Bi lead, f/f endgame
So many butts
Adorable demon hybrid lads who are very wholesome and also always naked
NANA THE BUNNY, best bunny
Available in ebook, hardcover, and paperback (and audio, narrated by the amazing Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame—she’s truly an absolute legend 😭!)
Look to the Sun and A Hall of Keys and No Doors are both available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and audio. Also narrated by the amazing Amber Benson!
Two standalone YAs, both lightly paranormal
Non-binary autistic leads in both
Big themes of surviving and recovering from trauma
Sweet romance in each
Demi/grey ace rep in each
Will is obsessed with Solas just like me lmao
Target of banning in plenty of US states 🙃
Sam got nominated for a Nebula award 🥹
Available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and audio (Sam is narrated by Allegra Verlezza, and Will by Vico Ortiz—yes, that Vico Ortiz!)
Seonag and the Seawolves: free to read at Reactor Mag!
A Gaelic reimagining of a Green Man tale with a sea-based protector and their wolf guardians. Set in South Uist!
Long listed for a Hugo award 🥹
The Quiet: A tale of a woman who bridges worlds to seek out her lost sister in the face of an ancient threat. Has selkies!
Perchance to Dream: An m/m tale of Sleeping Beauty if the legends didn’t get it quite right and neither Aurora nor Phillip wanted anything to do with one another, beginning from the wake-up kiss
The Quiet and Perchance to Dream are both available in ebook and KU!
***
Beyond this, I have a whole series of LitRPG under another name that I’m toying with outing myself about.
Music
I also have a wee EP of demos of my original Gaelic songs and one translation of Once Upon a Dream over on Bandcamp. It’s a pay-what-you-want dealio!
Art
You may have seen my lil Solavellan art going around! You can get it on a T-shirt in my shop, along with other wee bits and bobs I’ve painted.
And, of course, if you want to just read my Solavellan long fic, you can do that here. 💕
Ko-Fi (please note that ko-fi has fees)
Current funds: 0/$2000
My partner ended up in a nightmare situation after leaving hotel he booked for 2 weeks at bc of a sexual harassment from a long-term guest. Hotel refuses to refund and we have no money left at all. He is currently staying at safer hotel, but we can't extend his stay past September 6.
His phone's screen broke, and he can't access calls/finances and other important resources. All this while he is still dealing with fresh trauma and serious chronic illnesses. He can't communicate verbally rn, deals with flashbacks and other consequences of severe trauma.
We are in contact with LGBT organization, but they are simple volunteers and don't have many funds themselves.
Donations will cover phone repairs, transportation to a safer place, hotel stay, food and other survival needs.
If anyone wants to help with extending his current hotel stay, please contact me via DM.
More information in my blog (I update it more frequently than carrd).
Carrd: https://helpcharlie.carrd.co
PLEASE REBLOG HUMAN LIFE DEPENDS ON IT
When you’ve got a date you’re painfully excited for and he sends you a voice note about his own excitement and chuckles halfway through and you almost pass out because it hits the Solas chuckle activation node:
Okay, so. Shit kicked off, and not in a fun way. We’re talking “my new man had a brush with death a fortnight into our relationship” levels of shit kicking off.
The last month has not been fun.
I won’t spill details, beyond hospitalisation, rest of life go boom too, and all of it coinciding with the anniversary of my best friend’s death, so I spent that grief anniversary terrified of losing someone else, so…yes. Not fun.
I spent a lot of time asking myself who I wanted to be and how I wanted to show up. Listening to my intuition, trusting my heart’s whispering, and also regulating my nervous system through a lot of silence and fear, because he withdrew into his walls.
That intuition told me a lot of things. I know a trauma response when I see one. And I also trust my instincts about people. Also my nose? He smells safe. Weirdly, my nose is bang on about recognising safe people (including when someone has become UNsafe, but that’s a different story). Humans are animals too, but I digress.
The point is, that was a crucible of a Mercury retrograde.
And it ended. Fucking finally.
And he and I reconnected in vulnerability and mutual compassion.
I asked myself a lot if I was self-abandoning by waiting and hoping for a month when we’d only dated a fortnight. I decided I would be self-abandoning if I ran; whether I owed it to him or not, I don’t know, but I do know I owed it to myself to trust my instincts. Running would have also meant abandoning him, and that also wasn’t something I was willing to do. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away.
Reader, while this is not a “hold steady for that random guy you met on Hinge when he leaves you on read for days” post, this is a post about grace for the people who have shown you care and consistency and communication and just happened to have a crisis. Or, like, a flurry of them in quick succession. Jab, cross, jab, uppercut, hook.
I saw the punches land. I knew where they hit on existing wounds. And as much as I wanted to stop it, I couldn’t. And when I got hit on the backswing and pummelled by my own hits, I reeled as much as he did. We never hit each other, but he couldn’t be there for me when he was KO’d on the floor. I didn’t get hit to that degree, so I crawled toward him and stretched out a hand and waited.
(I don’t know when this became a boxing metaphor.)
I’m so, so glad I held space for him and for myself. Did I have woe-is-me moments where I thought the same bloody pattern of me getting abandoned was repeating? Lol, yeah. Did I breathe through it and find compassion for myself? Yup. Did the ghost of my best friend maybe knock a trinket off a shelf to tell me when to send a text and he replied immediately when I obeyed? Erm. Maybe. (Yes, if you are a woo woo bitch like me. If not, cool.)
When he finally woke from that beating and saw my hand and reached back, when we reconnected, we did so with the same care and communication we started with from the first day. Directness and mutual respect. Wholehearted apologies and curiosity and seeking each other’s truth. Commitment to repair what needs repair.
That’s a hell of a lot for the first two months of dating, but lads, I am still just as cooked as after date one. More. Officially have been plated and garnished.
I’m keeping this one as long as he’ll have me.
I don’t need perfection. I need someone who tries. Who gives me the same grace I give them and who lets me in. Who sees their own wounds clearly and says, “I won’t let my fears and pain hurt you again, and this is what I will do to make sure of that.”
It’s still early days, even if we lowkey covered the whole in sickness and in health and for better or for worse on a speed run from hell.
Neither of us navigated this tangle without stumbling, but that’s kind of what I’m here for too. It’s not avoiding mess and life and conflict; it’s handling it on the same team.
Even as we both got hit with what felt like our own personally tailored cosmic shitstorms the same week in some godawful galactic joke, we treated each other with kindness and gave each other what we were able. That wasn’t always enough to meet a need fully. That’s okay. We each gave a hundred percent of what we could.
And that, my friends, is a triumph—whatever happens next, I’m excited to find out. Because if this man can come back from this mess, if I can be safe to have my feelings and needs and express boundaries, if we can meet each other with such care and kindness and tenderness?
When you’ve got a date you’re painfully excited for and he sends you a voice note about his own excitement and chuckles halfway through and you almost pass out because it hits the Solas chuckle activation node:
The biggest criticism of Veilguard is it doesn't engage with moral dilemmas in any way. Slavery in Minrathous just isn't discussed. The nuances of Solas's cause are never brought to light.
For me, it helps to remember that the devs weren't allowed to make the game they wanted.
Joplin was looking to be the DA4 that we wanted. But EA canceled the project in 2017, told the team the next DA had to be a live service, and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director at the time, resigned. That's it. The DA4 we wanted and that the devs wanted to make died.
The crew was told to start over. And the direction they were given was that live service games were more campy. Traditional DA was too dark and too gritty for live service. They were forced to make a tonal shift. They couldn't touch slavery in Minrathous! That was "too dark for a live service."
And then Anthem flopped, and they were told to make the game single player again. This should have been a moment to rejoice. The team should have been able to go back to the drawing board and start rebuilding the game the way that they wanted it.
But they weren't allowed. Too much money had already been "wasted." They had to piece a game together with what they already had.
To me, looking at how much the devs were dicked around, that makes Veilguard an absolute triumph. Is it a fitting sequel to Inquisition? No. Is it a satisfying entry to the series? No. Does it explore the past of The Dread Wolf and his current fight to restore the old world in any meaningful or interesting way? No.
But I enjoyed playing it. I got a brand new cast of companions, and I love every single one of them. I got a new protagonist to build up and canonize. I got my Solavellan Heaven ending that I never in a million years could have predicted and was scared to hope for.
Veilguard is a terrible DA game. It's shallow and unsatisfying. But I also never rolled my eyes at the slog of combat. I enjoyed every moment I got to spend with our companions. I revelled in all the new locations we got to visit (even if they weren't explored in the depth that I would have liked). I got to spend time with a project that the devs undoubtedly put their blood, sweat, and tears into.
It was a labor of love to give us something out of the meager tools they were given. It is heartbreaking and devastating, and the franchise didn't deserve that kind of treatment. But the devs pulled something out of that mess. And the fact that it works as well as it does is incredible.
We could have had nothing. I could have been in Solavellan Hell for the rest of my life. But instead, I got to laugh and cry one more time with characters I love and cherish. I'll forever wonder about what the game should have been, about what that pre-2017 build could have turned into. But I was given a gift - a very imperfect, broken, yet beautiful gift. And I can't help but be thankful for it.
Hard agree. I’ve suspected all this time that the live service killed the spirit of Thedas because they had to flatten it out to make it MMO-able. You simply cannot incorporate the depth of choice from previous games in something like that. Hard enough to do that well in single player.
It’s deeply depressing and why I cannot blame the devs for what we got. They were forced to make a shit sandwich and then told fine, you don’t have to have shit in it anymore, but you still have to use the same bread.
When you’ve got a date you’re painfully excited for and he sends you a voice note about his own excitement and chuckles halfway through and you almost pass out because it hits the Solas chuckle activation node:
Okay, I have been absent for a long while but it’s because I was busy working out a decade of Solavellan angst in an original book to kick off a new (spicy, kinky) trilogy that is not full-on Dragon Age inspired but is definitely me A: having Unresolved Veilguard Feelings, B: needing to write some fantasy with Gaelic in it in a way that honours our culture and doesn’t fetishise it, and C: soulmate romance plus dragon bonds.
Anyway, if you like the idea of a tortured wolf chained to a power-hungry tyrant to hunt down forbidden magic but pining for his target, you might like Wilder.
Enemies to lovers in forced proximity with a bonus spicy fake relationship, anti colonialism, Gaelic in a second world fantasy that feels like living Gaelic culture in our world (by someone who knows cos it is my world), and kinky smut (the relationship is a D/s relationship that includes negotiation, active consent, and limits) for all your fantasy romance needs.
Ebook is here and in Kindle Unlimited!
Paperbacks are also there but you can get them directly from me too!
I’m absolutely unhinged about Eala and Conn, and I hope you will be too.
Dragooooooons too! Bull would be so bloody jealous.
Maybe if there’s interest, I’ll post a wee snippet. 😇
ok actually i do need to analyze this because im not going to be able to focus and clean my apartment until this is out of my system.
the most important context that isnt clear from the line alone is that it is a devastatingly cruel example of just how deeply and totally surveilled you are by his agents and how there is nothing you can do that he is not aware of. he is nearly omniscient. he clarifies with the following immediately after (whether or not bull is alive):
but if you did kill bull, he taunts you for it FIRST. it demonstrates his willingness to throw your failures back in your face. it is an insane power play. especially because YOU DO NOT RETURN TO HALAMSHIRAL IN-BETWEEN KILLING BULL IN THE DARVARAAD AND ENCOUNTERING SOLAS. he somehow knew about bull turning on you only HOURS after it happened and somehow got that information from.... WHERE? we know he has agents in the inquisition - he literally just said so. but only your party + the qunari were in the room with you when that happened. its possible the viddasala mentioned it to him although... idk why she would do that. we only see the tail end of their conversation before he petrifies her but considering her misunderstanding of his role in the situation at large i highly doubt she would be gossiping about some random hissrad's death to this guy shes been hunting down. anyway. we have no reason to believe that the viddasala told him. which means he has a level of surveillance of the inquisitor that we cannot even begin to understand. were there agents of fen'harel following you through the daravaad? does he have double agents among the qunari? is he using magic? does it have something to do with his powers over the fade? we have no fucking clue. you could maybe argue that he is just extrapolating based on knowing that 1. you left halamshiral with bull, 2. you would have had to fight the viddasala's qunari (because he himself led you through the darvaraad like a cat playing with his mouse dinner) to get to him and 3. he would presumably know bull was no longer around because he was able to lock the eluvian behind you and prevent your companions from following. but even this level of fucking 4d brain chess (which we know he is capable of, except you wouldn't in this world-state because you never would have witnessed him play it with bull) is terrifying. you could also probably call this a plot hole, but considering this was our first real reveal of him as A GOD i dont think it is. i think it was very intentional and genuinely one of the most revealing and well-done lines in the game. trespasser clearly established him as 1. unfathomably powerful and 2. absolutely ruthless. he knows your every move and he will throw it back in your face and taunt your for your mistakes without hesitation. REMEMBER. HE WILL SAY THIS TO A HIGH APPROVAL INQUISITOR. HE WILL SAY IT TO A ROMANCED INQUISITOR. HE WILL THROW THIS IN A ROMANCED LAVELLANS FACE AND CALL HER VHENAN ONLY MINUTES LATER. he will also say this to an inquisitor who romanced bull and just was forced to kill him. no fucking mercy.
next. the way this is worded is sickening and also indicative of not only who he is (wisdom spirit turned pride demon) but how he operates. he is asking you a question. isnt it? isn't it? solas is a spirit and thus he is a mirror and a reflection. he exists to challenge the inquisitor and the player to reflect. he forces this reflection through repeated testing. to a low approval inquisitor he states, "it would be sad were you to examine yourself with a critical eye". most of his low-approval conversations are a series of questions. he is testing you. this is no different. are you capable of examining yourself with a critical eye? will you take accountability for the decision you made to ally with the qun? he knows the answer. he is toying with you. "tell me, where is he?" he is being cheeky and cruel at the same time. YOU need to be the one to say it. YOU need to take accountability. YOU need to reflect. he is literally testing your wisdom and provoking your pride the same way a pride demon in the fade would prey upon your insecurities.
next. *your* friend. YOUR friend. not his friend. now i actually dont like solas's beef with the qun from a writing perspective because i dont think it is adequately fleshed out and supported through other aspects of his character. ok he hates slavery and he considers the qun to be... mind-slavery? there is a lack of nuance here that i find to be a writing flaw as well as gross more generally considering what we know about the writer's statements regarding qunari inspiration. solas just hates the qun because its "bad" and it feels like we are just supposed to agree with him because of course the qun is bad!!!! but.... if you dont think the qun is bad.......... it falls apart. solas gives more nuance to the templars than the qun which i feel shows some clear writer bias. however its what we got and in terms of this line i think its interesting and telling in other ways. if you do side with the chargers over the qun, solas, through banter, will literally refer to himself as bull's friend. he tells him "you wont go tal vashoth because you have me." this is really sweet in general and not something we see from him often but especially in the context of this later line when this friendship is absent. if the inquisitor tells bull to side with the qun, solas is absolutely nasty to bull. he refuses to engage with him and they have absolutely no relationship past solas taunting him for what he sees as an unforgivable mistake. even if i dislike the handling and framing of the qun in their banter, what this line + the previous context of their relationship does is give us another example of how willing solas is to dispense with someone's personhood when they have done something he finds deplorable. he does the same to a low-approval inquisitor. iron bull lost solas's respect and solas becomes smug at his death. he was right! he knew this would happen! he said so in banter! bull's life becomes little more than a chess piece for use in a conversation with someone else. he does not care how it hurts you (both the inquisitor and the player who is presumably still reeling from being forced to kill a companion like 30 minutes ago). he does not care how it feels to have it flung back in your face. people who lose solas's respect, who make what he believes are the wrong decisions, forfeit their lives. hey, remember felassan?
despite it all there is also something in his use of bull's full title. THE iron bull. bull himself says he likes the article at the beginning of his name because it makes him sound like "a mindless weapon".
this is a whole other can of worms to unpack but broadly it is self-objectification that affirms his understanding of himself through is role under the qun. but we also know from banter with other characters that solas's use of titles comes from a place of respect for the truth. perhaps an attempt at emotional separation too, but he tells cassandra that he calls her "seeker" because he says what he believes to be true.
however, up until this line in trespasser, solas calls bull "iron bull", not "the iron bull". even if the inquisitor sacrifices the chargers, he still calls him "iron bull", no "the" until trespasser, in which he has become just that he once said the article implied; a mindless weapon, an implement of destruction used by the viddasala. for solas to use this now is yet another moment of self-righteous smugness. if solas sees what he believes to be true, then he has seen bull become what the article before his name implied. he is reminding you, once again, that he was right. he is dehumanizing bull using bull's own language and saying "i am right to dehumanize him now and he was right to dehumanize himself because he just proved both of us right". it affirms his aforementioned belief that people lose their right to personhood when they do not pass his tests of worth. he does the same to a low approval inquisitor when he literally says "YOU PROVED ME RIGHT. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A COMFORT THAT IS" he was "iron bull" when he was worthy and became "the iron bull" when he failed the test. WHAT THE FUCK!!! this is fucking CRAAAAAZYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!! BRO HES BONKERS!!!!!!!!
literally every single word in this sentence implies godly omniscience and power and cruelty. it feels like a slap in the face no matter who you are playing as and what your relationship to solas was. it is mask-off, fen'harel time, baby! you are playing 4d chess with god and you are LOSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! top 5 solas lines of all time TO ME. and the fact that like 5 minutes later he can be all soft and gentle and caressing inqy's face or gently holding their hand to remove the anchor right before he gets up and says "bummer that i still have to probably kill you and everyone you know but i hope you have fun in the meantime" is just icing on the cake. delicious and scrumptious. he is a mess of contradictions. kindness and cruelty in equal measure oscillating between the two at the speed of light so fast you get whiplash. character of all time.
I’ve never understood this love more than I do right now.
It’s a strange thing to both see myself in Lavellan and in Solas at the same time, echoes in my relationships.
There’s something about the kind of relentless love it takes to be in relationship with others when you feel like you don’t deserve the care, faithfulness, nurturing, or consistency you try embody. I think about my best friend Rekka, who came along when I needed them most…but also when I was at my most avoidant. I’d been shattered in love, romantic and platonic alike.
I wasn’t ready to be loved. I certainly wasn’t ready to allow love into my heart.
Rekka loved me anyway.
They loved me with a relentlessness that terrified me. They let me be avoidant and push them away. They let me be skittish. Scared. Prickly.
Rekka loved me anyway.
I only got to be Rekka’s best friend for three short years before cancer took them. In those three years, Rekka taught me more about love than I learned in two marriages. I spent most of that time fucking scared shitless. The cancer was the third party the whole time; somehow, somefuckinghow, I didn’t run.
I let Rekka past my walls and I loved them as hard as I could.
Now I am…maybe in Rekka’s place. Maybe in Lavellan’s place. Was Rekka a fool for loving me? Is Lavellan a fool for loving Solas?
Most people might say yes.
But I also know what that love can do. Rekka taught me how it can find you where you sit, scared and certain you are and will be alone forever, and surprise you when it pours in through the cracks, fills the space with a new thought, that maybe, just maybe, this person can’t be a fool. Because you know they’re not actually a fool. They’re brilliant and smart and clever and wise, and they’re here. What are you going to do, tell them they’ve got the wrong guy?
Probably, if we’re honest, but this brilliant, smart, clever, wise person is also stubborn as fuck.
Lavellan didn’t know there would be a resolution that could reunite her with her love. Pretty much everyone around her thought the entire idea was more insane than an ancient elven god throwing a temper tantrum and moving the moon.
Maybe she loved him because she knows too well how unworthy he feels of her love…because she feels that way too. She’s simply decided, unilaterally, that she no longer cares to live beneath a mask only he can see beyond.
Maybe all love is unhinged, a reckless gambit.
Maybe we’re all just casting out a hand and hoping when one catches ours, neither will let go.
