Lynn Edwards @lynnedwardswrites - Tumblr Blog

"Everything's a con, Creed."

"Everything but us."

When Creed managed to escape the Wolfguard—the Seerish Church's army of mind-controlled shifters—ten years ago, he did not foresee a decade living alongside the brilliant, jaded Lady Prince, runaway heir to the Morgenhausen empire. They've since transformed themselves into notorious con men, tomb raiders, and lensers: practitioners of the dark, forbidden magic the Seerish Church seeks to stamp out.

But as freshly uncovered tombs begin to dwindle and bounty hunters close in, Isabella and Creed are forced to take a risky job from Isabella's manipulative father, the Lord Sovereign, to jumpstart their leap into a new branch of dark magic. The job seems simple: start a rebellion in one of the empire's independent city-states... until the Wolfguard unexpectedly find them again and their handler—the bewitching socialite, Lady Barbaron—proves more alluring to Creed than anyone expected.

As Isabella struggles to unravel her father's true motives and Creed grapples with his own desires, they find that staying together demands more than it ever has before. Is everything just a con? Or can love continue to be the exception?

Find snippets and updates via #the hare and the jackal

#writeblr #writing #creative writing #fantasy #amwriting #holy shit this my first tumblr yo #been working on this book for two years already #yes that is my original art #the hare and the jackal

Happy WBW! In your world, who are the ones in charge? Are they actually in charge, or are they more of a “face” whilst someone else does the work?

Hi Kraken! I based a lot of my power structures off of The Dictator's Handbook (watch the CPG Grey series about it on YouTube if you haven't, but I assume it's a classic by now). The gist is that power is control of resources which you maintain by promising to distribute some of those resources to the people who have enough of their own resources to overthrow you (but only to those people, lest you run out; everyone else can suck a dick). Depending on the structure of the government, your key supporters might be just the cabinet members of your dictatorship (who then have to distribute to their supporters, down the chain), or it could be the people in your voting block who get you reelected every year, etc. Democracies tend to be better because the number of people resources need to be distributed to is larger.

In the Hare and the Jackal, there are two main power structures. One is the Empire, which has unified (through conquest) traditional lands, new territories, and a bunch of city-states under vassalage. The Empire controls taxation in gold and vitality (magic resource), and the distribution of those funds to a noble class of governors (who in turn spend just enough of those resources on their populace to not get violently unseated).

The other power is the Church, which is such a significant cultural influence that it has the power to control popular opinion and stir up civil unrest to make problems if the Empire and it's governors don't give them what they want. Thus, at this point in history, a significant portion of the vitality collected by government is sent directly to the Church, which is supposed to use it for healing purposes in their hospitals, though (of course) it gets used for other purposes as well. Almost all hospitals are Church-run at this point, and they only admit people who have paid their tithe-tax. And, while maybe 60% of your vitality goes to the Church if you pay your tithe to the government, you can also just pay your tithe to the Church directly, which gets you an exemption from the state tithe tax, and then the Church gets to keep all of it. You'll never guess which method will get you more status and promises of divine blessing within the Church.

Thus... if you want medical care, you have to pay taxes that keep the Church funded and lobbying to maintain its influence over government, which allows it to do things like continue preaching how certain classes of people (like werewolves) are inherently more evil and dangerous than others. You'll also be funding a Church-run werewolf police force (y'know, the "good" werewolves that have subjected themselves to magic brainwashing at the Church's hands to rid themselves of their evil nature), which allows the Church to enforce heresy laws (a privilege that their influence over government has also given them), laws which primarily target foreigners and social divergents and non-members, etc, etc, etc... you get the picture.

So anyway, this is a really interesting question because a lot of the series is actually about government leaders trying to reclaim power from the Church in a way that doesn't result in outright civil war. Who *is* really in charge? Whose power runs deeper? Who has the leadership smart enough to leverage what power they do have to change things/keep the status quo? We'll find out, won't we.

#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #wbw #thanks for the ask!

Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday!

A bit of a meta question today: you know these long lists of questions on weather, flora, fauna, fashion, religion, government, etc. that are supposed to help you flesh out the setting?

Which section do you find is inapplicable to your setting? Be it because the plot doesn’t let you explore it or because it’s just not a thing in your setting (e.g. fashion may not be applicable in animal xenofiction).

I'm gonna have to say "daily life for a common person." There are plenty of such people about, in the streets and markets. I'll name one occasionally, like when the protag's have made a long journey by carriage in the company of several fellow travelers. But Isabella and Creed do not lead a very common life, most of their allies are smugglers, also not leading very common lives, most of their marks for con artistry are nobles, Creed's past is full of supersoldiers/people from an oppressed minority who skirt below the common folk, and Isabella's past is also full of nobles. The plot of book 1 revolves around the manipulation of a group of foreigners who are common enough, but who bring a totally different lens to the life of a commoner than someone born and raised in this culture. So it kind of feels like the "normal" that many characters are often comparing each other to doesn't exist. Maybe that part is good, but sometimes I wonder if I'm not missing something by showing how even the most well-adjusted people had to collectively adjust to survive the environment that government and religion created for them. 🤷🏽

#thanks for the ask!#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #wbw

Happy STS! Is there a story that haunts you? Something you never finished, or something you wrote but lost somehow? Something you’d like to revisit but haven’t, for whatever reason?

Probably the closest thing I have is an unfinished D&D campaign. Two PCs, a human wild magic sorceress and an orc bard-barian. They had the Best character dynamics, dialogue that was just through the gods-damned roof. But we never finished the campaign and I still want to know what happened. 😭 But at this point, the only way for me to find out is to write it. 🥲

#but thanks for the ask!#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #sts

Happy STS! A bit of a lighter question today! Let's pretend you're throwing a WIP-themed party. What food might you serve? What would you put in the goody bags for your guests?

Pre-columbian fare? Maize and beans and tomato and quinoa and squash? There has to be a way to make a candy lens. It'd be like a sucker or a ring pop but the handle wraps around the edge of the flat candy disc instead of sitting inside. I had a cool idea for a patch or a sticker the other day, so maybe some of that. Maybe some other good-ole undead themed stuff.

#feels like a scattered answer #but thanks for the ask!#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #sts

Happy STS! I’m currently obsessing over this myself, so I’ve decided to infect others with it too~ In a Band AU of The Hare and The Jackal, what would the characters look like? Who plays what instrument? What kind of music would they play? Are they big-league names or more on the indie scene? Go wild!

I'm so deeply *in* my setting that it took a long time to pull me out of the characters as they are and transpose them to an AU. But like... I'm pretty sure Band AU Isabella and Creed are just Joy Williams and Jack White from The Civil Wars. Swap their personalities and histories, but yeah. Couple of guitar picking crooners singing southern gothic duets.

Thanks for the ask!

#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #writer things #sts

Hi, Lynn. 👋 If Creed and Isabella (or any other characters you might want to throw in too) were to find a mysterious package outside their door, how would each of them react? It has their name on it, is wrapped in brown packing paper and tape, but also has "Do Not Open" written in block letters on top.

(P.S.: I deny all knowledge and responsibility for any mysterious parcels past or future.)

--@ceph-the-ghost-writer

Oh Lord. I thought this was going to be an easy answer for Isabella. She gets "mysterious" letters with her name on them pretty frequently, so she'd know just what to do with this box... until she saw the Do Not Open on top. That would give her pause. After all, that's not really her father's style. If the label called her "Valentine" she'd assume a smuggler friend was using her to launder or hide something, and she'd stash the box diligently away for them until someone came asking for it. But it doesn't say Valentine, it says Isabella. Which means it's from somebody who knows both who she is and where she is. That makes it dangerous. She asks Creed about it. He says he doesn't know. She yells at him to make sure it's not a prank, but he's earnest, he doesn't know. Well, it has to be opened. She's not going to give up any information about the package's sender. So she throws on her armor, gloves, a helmet, grabs a lens (a rabbit lens, maybe), and takes the box out into the woods. She finds or digs a little burrow she could quickly hide in in her rabbit form (just in case this is a bomb or something), and starts to very carefully, surgically, open it...

Creed. Hmm, Creed's reaction depends on the name, too. It doesn't say Vince Verstett or Martin Ambrose or Dieter Bain. So it's probably not from a smuggler or any of the women he's conned and their families. It doesn't say Creed Hearst either, which is good. If Creed got a package with his dead surname on it he'd probably yeet it into the river and he and Isabella would have to move. Or, perhaps Isabella would convince him to like... camp out on the hill about their home, and they'd be on the lookout for visitors for months. And she'd talk him into opening it, eventually, for the same reason they opened hers. But it doesn't say Creed Hearst on it, just Creed. He'd ask Isabella about it, and she'd deny knowing anything. He'd be suspicious, stash the box somewhere, try to forget about it, be occasionally really tempted to open it, genuinely forget about it, find and remember it again a month later, and then, anywhere after like the 3 month mark, just give up and open it.

#thanks for such a fun question!#Isabella's in particular almost sounds like it could be the start of an actual story for them #writeblr #the hare and the jackal #oc: creed #oc: isabella

sam-glade

Happy STS! Tell me what your OCs would do when faced with the trolley problem, both the version where they're pulling a lever, and the version where they're pushing someone off a bridge.

Hi Lynn! Happy STS💜

You made me realise that some of my characters are actually awful people, they just don't get many chances to be awful on page. This can be remediated still.

I'm also limiting the use of superpowers here. No Weapons, no short-distance teleportation, which is a technique most of them can perform.

#i dont see anyone awful #just people #you've got quite a variety here!#thats so cool!#sts #other peoples writing

Happy WBW! What kind of music is popular in your world? Are there any famous musicians known by the characters?

Lots of traveling troupes and "bard"-like performers, along with the kind of music you'd hear in a theater. Some of my werewolf people are also really into throat singing, too.

My protags don't know any performers personally (yet), but there are some popular songs that make their rounds, which they've probably heard many different singers perform. One of them they rewrote with their own lyrics, and it features heavily in the story.

#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #wbw

Happy WBW! Are there any special handshakes or pass phrases that exist in your world? I'm thinking like those really cloak and dagger things where a contact might give you half of a phrase and then you have to complete it to prove your identity.

Yes! In order to get into the Slippers' hideout (the Slippers being a smuggling ring that deal in lenses), Isabella uses the phrase "Three eyes are better than none." "Three eyes" being two real eyes and a lens. "None" being a reference to the Seerish church and their blind prophet (who teach that lens use is forbidden of the gods).

#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #wbw

Happy STS! What are your favorite character interactions to write? (arguments, scheming, banter, first meetings, chance encounters, things like that!)

Pretty much any time Isabella and Creed are alone together. So arguments, scheming, and sexy time. The book pretends to be a political intrigue novel but it's really a story about their relationship, and the complexity and scariness and depth there.

#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #sts

Happy STS, Lynn!

Can you give me one quote - from your story or just a famous quote - that perfectly encapsulates The Hare and the Jackal?

Isabella: Everything's a con.

Creed: Everything but us.

#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #sts

Happy WBW! What are some interesting foods or dishes in your world? Share as many as you like!

I've been kinda trying to do this fantasy north america setting that's had its Columbian exchange but no colonizers (just immigrants). So there's not a lot super exciting about any of it, just interesting in that it deviates from the fantasy "standard" of medieval europe. Like the social drink of choice is brewed cacao, instead of tea or coffee. Bison is more common than beef, pork is a foreigner thing still, corn breads like tortilla are the norm, and "fluffy wheat bread" is a novelty.

When I get to the end, I'm definitely going to want to pay an expert to read it and look for stuff I missed, to get a more authentic balance. But in the mean time I have fun googling everything.

#writeblr #the hare and the jackal #ask game #wbw

thatndginger

Happy STS! Have you ever gotten so frustrated by a story you were consuming that it inspired you to write something better? Which aspect did you want to fix and how did you do it?

Hi Lynn, and thanks for the really cool question!

I can answer this with a very definitive yes. But I also have to note that for these specific examples, I still very much love the source material. I'm just a picky asshole sometimes lol.

The biggest one, the one that actually inspired me to write fanfiction and start my first tumblr blog, was the Mass Effect game series. It's my favorite game to this day, and I replay it often, but I thought - and still think - that the game devs never paid enough attention to the emotional repercussions and worldbuilding potential of some of the events in the game. Like, in the start of the second game, your character dies, and then gets brought back by a terrorist organization that in certain playthrus is directly responsible for the pc's Traumatic Backstory. I think there could definitely be some more weight put behind that particular scenario than what was given. Like, I know it's a game and there are limitations, but I live for the angst lol.

In my fanfics I always gave my pc a lot more options to explore the emotions of suffocating in space while your ship burns around you and what that might mean to a space marine who suddenly finds themselves resurrected and given an exact replica of their destroyed ship, all while surrounded by people who work for the organization that killed their entire squad for a science experiment 10 years ago.

I don't do much sci-fi writing, but if I did, I'd probably end up turning it into a horror because Mass Effect taught me space is terrifying, actually.

The other example is an interactive fiction game that I won't name because it's an indie-game and I don't wanna be a dick, because I do actually like the game, just not the particular romance arc in it. The love interest is one of those emotionally repressed, "love makes you weak" types who always pulls away from a romantic moment. And I think that can be really good if done right. But I kept finding myself wanting to smack the love interest upside the head.

I fixed it by making Adrien Montrose in Shapeshifter lol. He's also extremely emotionally repressed and been taught that love is a weakness, but he doesn't *stay* that way, like the interactive fiction guy. You get to see the gooey warm center behind Adrien's walls of ice once they've been melted.

This got away from me a little ;^.^ Thanks again!!

#love these answers!#i too am a picky asshole #but understanding how something went wrong is the first step to making it better #💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻#sts #other peoples writing

writernopal

Happy STS! Have you ever gotten so frustrated by a story you were consuming that it inspired you to write something better? Which aspect did you want to fix and how did you do it?

Happy STS, Lynn!

I've actually never had this happen before! I get frustrated by unsatisfying stories but I generally feel the frustration and then leave it alone for my mental well-being 😅 It's also really hard for me to be motivated by something like that to write a story to completion (whatever that is).

HOWEVER I have had it happen where I'm consuming something and I'll be like "...I did it better" LOL. There have been times where my friends will tell the same thing and when that happens I get very flattered 🫣

#😙🤌#good answer so satisfying

captain-kraken

Happy STS! Have you ever gotten so frustrated by a story you were consuming that it inspired you to write something better? Which aspect did you want to fix and how did you do it?

Happy STS!

I get frustrated a lot at the stories where when given the opportunity, the good guy lets the bad guy go because "we wouldn't be any better", especially if they've already killed a bunch of henchman. There's enough of people getting away with awful things in real life, I want my revenge / karma endings where they get what they deserve.

This was one of the biggest inspirations for the Sonharian culture of everything remaining in balance, although they do take it to the extreme in some cases. I wanted reassurance that if you do horrific, evil things, then that's definitely coming back to you. You literally cannot get away with murder in Sonhara lol

Also, I've always hated that every male character with long hair that I've liked has ALWAYS cut it off. Why do they keep doing that to me?? lol. So that's why I forced long hair onto all of my gishars, with only a couple cutting it all off.

#aww hell yeah this is beautiful #also bad news my longhair protag boy is definitely cutting it all of at some point #or rather #someone us going to cut it off for him :(#i'm very down with thr karma ending though #especially when the protags have already taken out accomplices #as though they were worse than their leader somehow #other peoples writing

Happy STS! If you were to design a deck of playing cards based on characters in your WIP, who would you assign to be the King? The Queen? The Jack? The Ace? And the Joker?

Spades: Morgensterns

K: Sovereign Luther

Q: Marina (Isabella's mother)

J: Mary (Isabella's little sister)

Hearts: Protags

(I might have to change the ranks to Realmliege and Houseliege to get away with this, but:)

K: Isabella

Q: Creed

J: Jen (you'll meet her eventually)

Clubs: Wolfguard

K: Dean Farland (Jen's husband)

Q: Sgt Nic Winter (old friend of Creed's)

J: Captain Ober (main guy in charge of trying to capture Creed)

Diamonds: Feels weird to call these antagonists but that's what they are I guess

K: Otto Konigstal (Isabella backstory)

Q: Ines Barbaron (relationship plot antag)

J: Florian (runs a smuggling ring in book 1)

Jokers:

Black: Lutz and Clemens

Red: Jen's kids

#i wasnt sure id have enough characters when i started splitting into suits but here we are!#this was fun!#i also feel like i have a great character list for asks now haha #the hare and the jackal #writeblr #ask game #sts

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