#cotmw

[lionraeart]

hands you butch bartender med cat

also for @clansofthemidwest !

[treesandwords]

"He dreamed he saw little Nysel Alderras in her white dress, standing in an empty room somewhere. When she turned to look at him her body became a wax candle, her face the wick and flame and shadows around it. Her shadow-hair swirled, and she smiled, and melted." -Chapter 18

"The yellow walls of the tent gave everything a warm sheen. Torchlight glowed against Nysel’s skin, amber and gold. She looked like a white candle, her face all aflame." -Chapter 31

[treesandwords]

Sons of the Summer King Excerpt: The Prologue

I submitted this for a writing contest and it didn't even make it to the long list, so I'll put it here instead. The fun begins under the cut vvv

The boy was wrapped in a white death-shroud when he was brought to the castle, cradled in the back of a cart.              Jamos Dalion bent low over the body, long fingers carefully uncovering the face, the green-stained hands. The face was not that of one of his own children, but some nameless other’s. A woodworker, a weaver. A farmer, a villager.   Sewn into the brown linen of his sleeve was a hill-rowan twig, and at his throat was a strand of dark green ivy. Neither had done him any good.            “Forgive me, my lord,” said the grubby man who had brought the body, “but you shouldn’t touch him. Not bare- handed.”  He drove the horse and cart, and following was a stream of curious and frightened villagers, not far from the castle gates. The sky was heavy with clouds, brown oak-leaves rattling on their twigs. The moors around cradled the hill and the castle in a dusk-grey sea.             “We did as we’re meant to,” said the cart-driver, twisting his own gloved hands. “He’d been good and protected, in the old ways proper. As they always are, when they hunt in there.”             “The old ways mean nothing. Not here. Not with this.” Not this time of year. Not when the hunt was more a shrike-like attack.             “M’lord, my family – we’re of the old blood, we know the right ways of things. We told the boy what to do, all the right things – “             “Yet still he died. As did others.”             It was not a question, but the villager quelled under his lord’s glance. “They did.”             A cold wind blew, hissing through the dying heather. A small crowd of children stood behind the lord, most with his red hair and unsmiling face, watching with solemn curiosity. One of the little boys, a lad of eight summers, stared intently at the rowan berries resting against the corpse’s limp hand. He had his own today, in his own sleeve, and on the coldest nights of winter his mother would smudge his cheeks with their juices. Even within the castle’s safe walls. Even if he never dared set foot in the place where the dead boy had gone.             Lord Jamos took the man quietly aside, out of earshot.  “There was no sign of – him?”             “No sign.”             There never was. “How many dead?”

            “Six. Seven, including the boy.”             It was quick, then. Often it took more time than this, for them to show signs – long enough that many thought they had escaped this boy’s fate. And on the barest occasion, perhaps once every ten hunts, one did.

The boy’s eyes were half open, veins in the lids green-tinged. A sickly greenish hue emerged beneath his skin all over, choking his blood. Mage-touched.

He was younger than Jamos’ eldest son. The eyes, where they were not eerily green, had been pale brown.             “Burn him in the village, along with the other dead,” the lord commanded. “Give them to the flames, and to the Holly King. They deserve an honourable crossing.”             “What of those not yet dead, my lord?”             “How close to death are they?”             A look exchanged. A knowing one. “Close, my lord. Very close.”             “Burn them too.”             The cart went away, the dead boy and his protections with it. The lord turned to his family, slowly. Their cheeks were thin. It had been a bad year, and with worse to come. For he  was not yet gone. The bringer of green-veined death, of childhood nightmares.             In that cold, whispering autumn night the funeral-pyres blazed down in the village, smoke crossing the moors like sea-fog. It swirled into the dales and hollows, brushed the hills with snakelike tendrils.

At the far edge of the moor it halted, at a wall of trees deep with shadow. The Wood. Before the trees lay wreaths of wildflowers, bare twigs twined together in the shapes of folk charms, crossed circles made of rowan wood. The smoke trailed around them, the wind leaving them feebly fluttering. In the darkness between the trees there was no sound, no movement. But the fearful eyes of the nearby village kept watch, as they watched the reeking bonfires all through the long night.

And the children of Dalion remembered; the sons and daughters who sat huddled at the castle windows high above and, too, watched. They never forgot the shadow of the Wood. They never forgot the green veins beneath pallid death-skin, creeping like a poison, like lightning, like summer vines.

Taglist: @kaatiba (ask to be added/removed)

[treesandwords]

Sons of the Summer King: An updated introduction

Genre: Adult high fantasy, family saga Status: 3rd draft in progress, lots of editing also in progress Themes: Family, coming of age, change, humankind's relationship with nature, generational trauma/passed down prejudices, grief and loss, false/misunderstood cultural history What to expect: ~witchy vibes~, nature taking over (literally and symbolically), getting attached to kids and watching them grow up, probably too much worldbuilding

Blurb: Jerod is the son of Lord Jamos Dalion, a powerful and cunning man with a long held hatred of magic. Wanting to finally be free from the mage in the nearby woods that legend says has lurked there for a century, Jerod and one of his brothers attempt a dark magic ritual of their own they think will be rid of him. But it all goes wrong --- and Jerod's family is forever touched by magic.

Now, believing himself and his family to be cursed but wanting desperately to hide his own ties to the magic his father so strictly forbids, Jerod must figure out how he is to heal the wound he has made. But past and future collide as he is haunted by the mage he once encountered, and war is quickly approaching his people. Strangest of all, he isn't sure he believes all his father has told him about magic despite how he was brought up, and now knows the only way to fix his past is by delving deeper into the knowledge of it than he'd ever thought he would.

What you'll get from this blog: Discussions on character motivations, worldbuilding, and lore, occasional moodboards, faceclaims, some memery, snippets

Let me know if you want to be part of the taglist!

[treesandwords]

CHARACTER INTRO: Jerod Dalion

His father and elder brothers, his sister too, were all Winter's children. But Jerod was a son of the Oak King, born on the cusp of summer and autumn, and meant to be forgiving.

WIP: Sons of the Summer King, main POV character

Age: Eleven at the start of the story, late 20s by the end

Birthday: September 28

Zodiac/Ennagram/archetype: Libra/ISFP/The Innocent

Sexuality: Ace spectrum

Other notes: Likes to draw, wants to be the Medieval fantasy equivalent of a naturalist, somewhere on the ADD-ADHD spectrum, terrified of snakes and fears poison and disease, has a dog named Juniper

Traits (positive//negative): Easygoing, enthusiastic, patient, gentle, protective, curious, booksmart//overly trusting, a worrier, naive, procrastinates, tendency to self isolate, oblivious, poor communicator

The sixth child in a family of nine, Jerod has it enforced in him from an early age that he must both live up to his older siblings and be someone his younger siblings will have to live up to themselves. As someone often overlooked he craves attention and acknowledgement from his family, yet shies away from trying to do anything drastic to get it. His family is his immediate circle, and despite their dysfunctionality, he strains to keep them together, often filling the role of a peacekeeper between various quarreling members as he gets older. But his will isn't as strong as theirs, and little by little said family begins to slowly break apart.

Throw in a curse he carries in secret, a war, a dead brother, and other bad situations, and honestly you've got a pretty messed up kid.

Taglist: @kaatiba

[treesandwords]

Masterlist of masterlists!!!

Here it is, everything I've posted that I deem Important (or just at all relevant) to my wips.

Sons of the Summer King masterlist

The Iraeya Chronicles masterlist

The Last Red City WIP intro

Answered Asks: 1, 2, 3, 4

Weird inconsistencies in my writing

Things I love in fantasy series

Hopefully this will get longer with time, I intend to post more now that I'm finished school (yay!)

[treesandwords]

Here’s my attempt at the John Mulaney challenge, thanks for tagging me @sophiewritingstuff​ !!

Here are some of my main characters from Children of the Mage Wars, sorry for the terrible picture quality on some of these lol...

Jerod:

Also Jerod:

Laeder:

Mikial: 

Tanja: 

Bonus - Jamos:

Tagging: @songsofaleria​  @ryns-ramblings  @writerfae​   if you guys want to do it for your WIPs 

Thanks!

[treesandwords]

Writeblr Into

Hi! My name is Lily D. and welcome to my writing sideblog. I’ve been on the Tumblr community for a long time now, but as a fellow writer I thought it would be a good time to make one of these things. I’m still doing some research on how the majority of Tumblr writers set up their writeblrs, so if I put something on my blog that seems totally weird not normal for a writeblr, please be patient with me, I’m still learning.

About me: Yes, Lily is my real name, but it’s not the name I use on my main blog and I mean for it to stay that way because I’m keeping that thing anonymous ( >:) ). I’m from Ontario, Canada, and I just turned 20. My pronouns are she/her, my MBTI type is INFP, and my Hogwarts house is Hufflepuff (or Ravenpuff if we’re getting really specific). I recently finished my first year of college, where I am studying acting. Acting and writing are both passions of mine, and there’s no way I could choose one over the other though people have suggested it would be easier if I did. Probably, but I’m planning to just try both all at once and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but if it does I’ll be having the time of my life so why not try? When I’m not writing or acting, I love being out in nature, and learning about nature. Big tree fan. I also do a lot of reading, visual arts, cooking, and baking, and love languages and geography. 

My WIPS: I’m a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy, which most of my ideas are. I have a massive list of ideas I want to write, but right now there are only two main things I am working on. Both are huge endeavors; high fantasy novels that I hope will both be the first of series. In  both cases I have big plans for later installments, but I need to work on just finishing the first ones before I get to that! They are:

Children of the Mage Wars (title has changed before and it very well may again): A series of 7 books (if all goes well that is) that take place on a very large scale world with a looong timeline. Worldbuilding is fun.

The Iraeya Chronicles: Series of 5, and a slightly smaller scale overall but still plenty of characters, plots, and subplots. I’m more behind on this one than I am on CotMW. 

I will be posting proper intro posts for both WIPS soon, as well as other things about them and plenty of reblogs from other peoples’ WIPS that I’m enjoying. I hope you all have as much fun on this journey as I am - when I’m not stressing about it that is.  Stay safe and stay wonderful. Bye!