#ettawritesnstudies

[did-i-do-this-write]

Hi! Do you mind telling me a bit about your current original WIP?

Thank you so much for asking!!!!! I would love to tell you all about it!!!! This is going to be the real basics of the premise!

Right now, I am working on a contemporary fantasy series called the Paragon series. Currently, I am working on the first draft of book 1, Fire in My Veins.

The basic concept of the series is that it's set in a version of the real world where about half of the population is born with magic powers that allow them to control an aspect of nature - fire, water, earth, air, lightning, darkness, and psionic - which develop as they grow up, similar to puberty. People with these powers are known as paragon. When a paragon's element powers develop, they also get a unique weapon that manifests in the form of a coin that is activated by being flicked into the air.

Throughout society, paragon are feared. They're hated. They're revered. They're worshiped. But most of all, they're misunderstood.

The story follows a group of seven paragon (one of each element) that come together and try to do what they can to help humans stop being afraid of them. After all, many people fear what they don't understand.

If you have any follow up questions I would love to answer them :) (this offer applies to anyone haha)

[sender-paulson]

hi there! can you tell me a bit about your WIP "Limbo"?

Oh, you mean this Limbo right here?

Oh, this is gonna be fun ★

So, the thing is, Limbo isn't a work in progress anymore. After sixteen years— yes, you heard me right, sixteen YEARS (and change)— of drafting, writing, rewriting, abandoning, returning, revising, and finally running at like a bull on coke, I got it done. It took more effort and pain than I'll admit and yes, I cried when I realized it was over, but let's talk about the actual story, yeah?

So the basic idea is this: paranormal podcaster/amateur ghost hunter JK Tailor goes out of his way to do a story on Hawthorn Hills, allegedly the most haunted town in America. And he gets there, and it's not quite what it's cracked up to be, but he starts digging a little after receiving a mysterious note and finds something worth investigating; namely, how the town "stopped existing" in 1959.

Unfortunately, that something ends up with him dying. But luckily, death isn't quite the end of his story, because he wakes up in 1959. With a wife and a job he didn't have while he was alive. In Hawthorn Hills, a town that shouldn't exist.

And that's where the horror really begins...

Anyways.

As of right now, I don't have anywhere to read it, but I'm working on that. And it's obviously a story I'm very proud of given how much I've put into it since grade 10. The story has changed a lot, but the core has been the same: what does it mean to be dead?

I hope this has piqued any sort of interest in the work, and I hope this answered the question because I forgot I was supposed to answer a question ★

[fenrir-kin]

Hi! Do you mind telling me a bit about your current WIP?

Well good afternoon @ettawritesnstudies, and thank you for the ask! This will be excellent practice for me, because trying to talk about my WIP usually ends up with me looking like

while the person I'm talking to smiles awkwardly and tries to back away.

So! Let's give it a go!

Oathsworn

Oathsworn is an urban Fantasy trilogy set in an alternate universe where the Fae are real, and co-existed alongside humanity since there has been a humanity, until a war lasting 100 years uproots everything. The trilogy follows Harriet (a shut-in) and Rowan (explosively outgoing) as the two main characters, with a supporting cast of IRON (an under-funded gov organisation dedicated to fae-watching) and the Lieutenant (mysteriously appeared out of a portal into the Fae realm with no memory of what happened there).

Book 1

The Nameless is the first book in the trilogy, set 300-and-some years after the war ends, and focuses on providing background, introducing the characters, and introducing the antagonist. An attempt at an elevator pitch for you:

Harriet wants nothing more than a quiet life, but when Rowan literally explodes into her life she is plunged into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the mysterious Fae, who haven't been seen since the war ended. As an increasinly hostile enemy bears down on them, Harriet is left with no choice but to turn to Rowan for help, or risk the start of a new war with the Fae.

It definitely needs some work as an elevator pitch, but hopefully you can see where I'm going with it?

I'm trying to write the book in a similar way to Dracula (Bram Stoker) and Carrie (Stephen King); a combination of present-day third-person POVs, interspersed with newspaper clippings, audio transcripts, and classified dossiers from during the war itself. I'm hoping that will demonstrate that there's not a single reliable narrator in this whole thing, while also building up a fairly cohesive view of the world and how we get from a to b.

I've made the prologue to Oathsworn free to read on my Patreon, so please do check it out and let me know what you think!

[hyba]

I've been slowly but surely working on my calendar and schedule for 2025 and I'm super excited for October 31 because that's when @ettawritesnstudies has her novel Runaways coming out!!! 🤩 I have like 5 reminders set for this and I'm really looking forward to it 💙

[legend-of-rabbit]

Another illustration for “Runaways” by @ettawritesnstudies: we follow our heroes as they march homeward through the faerie-forest but not quite out of the woods

[keyboardandquill]

How do the seasons work in your world? How do your characters celebrate the changing of the seasons?

I haven't given a lot of thought yet to weather in Athenaeum, but the weather in Rocket Boosters is pretty integral to the main plot/themes of the story so we'll go with that!

Rocket Boosters is set in a nearish-future where the climate crisis has gone unchecked, and the freakish weather we're seeing even now has escalated to the point where 'seasonal weather' no longer corresponds to the calendar. We've got 'autumn weather' going into January, we've got really bad rainstorms in what used to be the hot months, we've got scorching heat in what used to be the temperate months.

The people in the area where the story takes place don't celebrate the changing of the seasons so much as Prepare for what's ahead. Repairs are made to food storage facilities, the back-up greenhouses are checked for structural integrity, and there are a lot of amateur meteorologists out there keeping a constant eye on the quickly-changing weather patterns that plague the desert and its surrounding areas. They do celebrate the first harvest of their quickest-growing crops, though, because it means they'll have food to wait out the inevitable storm that's just around the corner :D

Thank you for the ask!

[brutal-nemesis]

How do people use magic/abilities/special tech/etc. to improve the mundane parts of their everyday lives?

While not everyone can use magic, it still helps everyone out in daily life. Since spells can be stored in the class of minerals corresponding to their element, anyone can use enchanted mineral crystals to bring about various effects. Some of them are things we have here, like starting a fire for cooking or lighting up a room, and some of them are a little more ✨magical✨, like creating water that's at the perfect temperature for a bath or quickly defrosting frozen food (since ice magic is often used to keep food cold, though most places don't sell any pre-frozen food so it's more of a way to preserve ingredients you've bought or something you've made yourself).

These stones cannot activate automatically unless part of the spell on them sets criteria for activation such as light level, which costs extra, so most of the time someone needs to touch the crystal in order to give it energy and activate it. Certain ones should also be used with care and under adult supervision or serious injuries might occur!

People can buy these stones anywhere they would buy the associated goods, like crystals for preserving food and cooking at places such as butchers and produce sellers and crystals for lighting at places that sell furniture, and usually come in some kind of wooden holder so the crystal can be picked up without activating it.

[writeblrsupport]

@ettawritesnstudies is a fun writer with intriguing ideas, immersive writing and very lovely characters