Okay let’s do this. FLEMBER - The Secret Book is released October 2019, published by David Fickling Books, and HERE’S THE COVER!
Flember is the story of Dev, a young inventor whose creations don’t always go to plan. When one day he not only builds a huge robot bear, but also brings it to life, what should have been his greatest achievement rapidly descends into chaos.
Flember - The Secret Book is a highly illustrated novel by me, Jamie Smart, and it’s my debut. It’s a great big adventure, funny, sweet and heartbreaking all at the same time. I really hope you’ll enjoy it!
I’ll be posting up more artwork from inside the book as we get nearer to release!
3 and 22 for vassar, 29 and 40 for samson, 23 and 42 for flechette
Vassar
3. Brothers, sisters? Who do they like? Why? What do they despise about their siblings?
Vassar loves and cares about Fenalin very much. She has come to his defense too many times to count. He definitely doesn’t love her new ‘friend’ though.
22. Who are their friends? Lovers? ‘Type’ or ‘ideal’ partner?
Vassar hasn’t had a lot of time for lovers. His ideal man is one who loves food almost as much as he does. Almost.
Samson
29. What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?
Samson’s weakness is actual Thugs. She works to put up an external persona but if anyone calls her bluff, she doesn’t have much to defend it with
40. How is their sense of humor? Do they have one?
At her heart, Samson is rather mischievous and loves messing with people’s emotions. She also finds friendly, mostly-harmless brawls to be hysterical
Flechette
23. What do they want from a partner? What do they think and feel of sex?
Flechette thought that she wanted a partner who would whisk her off into the sunset like in the simsense movies she watches all the time, but she only looks for Ember in a partner. Sex is just another layer of intimacy to Flechette, one that she is happy to share with Ember.
42. What does your character want most? What do they need really badly, compulsively? What are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain?
Flechette has had faceless people mistreat and experiment on her for the first part of her life so she really wants someone who she can trust and rely on. She is loathe to let that slip away from her.
At the beginning of October, I started work on the illustrations for Flember. I had nearly 200 drawings to do in just two months, and I don’t mind admitting it felt like an absolute mountain to climb. To get it done I’ve been doing seven day weeks ever since, getting up at 5 and working through till the evening. This is a foolish way to work. I’ve been running on fumes for the last stretch of it.
But it’s all done.
I thought I’d be elated at the end of it, but I wasn’t. I felt absolutely crushed. When I sent the last few pages over I buried my head in my hands and stared at the floor. And I can’t quite explain why. I *think* it was because this marked the end of such a long, long journey, and now it was finished I couldn’t change it anymore. Oh sure I can still tweak here and there before we go to print, but the book, the thing itself, is finished, and I have to be happy with what it is. Up until now it has been malleable and changeable. Now it’s done I’m committed to say yeah this is it and flipping heck what if it’s no good.
For context, while this pile of drawings represents a big chunk of work, here, alongside it, is the last few years worth of sketches and notes to even reach this point:
This is why I’m so invested in this book. I don’t think I’ve ever put as much of myself into anything, or spent as many years trying to get it ready. In that pile are not only all the sketches I did trying to find the right style, over and over again, but an earlier version of the book which I (foolishly) illustrated in full, as well as Flember comics I drew in the very early days before I even knew it was going to be a novel.
I’ve talked a fair bit on this blog about the writing process, how long it has taken for me to become good enough, to tell the story effectively, and how demoralising (at times) the revision process can be. But I haven’t spoken much about the artwork side of things. I wanted this to be a novel, a body of words, with illustrations to support it. But as you might expect, the book itself has evolved as we’ve put it together, and the words and illustrations have become intertwined.
I’ll post up more about the artwork in future - it’ll be fun to show how the style has changed over the years, as well as showing previews of how the book looks now (while being careful not to spoil anything). In the meantime, I need a big drink and a sleep.
I know it’s been over a year since I’ve updated this blog. There are reasons, i’ll detail them later in this post.
For now though I just wanted to share some exciting news. We have a release date for Flember pencilled in - Autumn 2019! Why so long - well, before a book is released, there is a ton of promotion that needs doing, not to mention book fairs, rights, all that legal stuff. It all takes a long time. Does that mean I’ve a year off? Not a bit of it. The text for Flember is finished, done, copyedited to within an inch of its life, which is wonderful. Now I need to draw the illustrations, and they preferably need doing by this December. Which, with my other work on the side, is quite a tight deadline for me. Not only that, but we need a front cover done and finished by the end of August, something we can start showing around a year ahead of time. So I have a lotttt to be getting on with.
This all came to light because today I had my first lunch meeting with Rosie, my editor, and Alison, the designer. This was immensely exciting for me - after years of working on the book, this is finally the stage where things get serious. We discussed, for example, the size of the book, the paper type, what fonts we’d be using, all the finer details which go into making reading a book such an enjoyable experience. I’d sent over a handful of initial illustrations for us to look over and start working out how they’d be placed within the text. So today felt like a huge milestone - while I have a fair amount to do before this book is ready for print, the wheels behind it have all now started turning and we’re taking the long run towards publication!
As for why I’ve been so quiet, two reasons. Mainly because the last year has been spent batting the manuscript back and forth between myself and Rosie. Editors aren’t there to rewrite things for you, they’re there to point out things you need to think about, and as a result that often means spending a fair while rebuilding parts of the book. Well for me, anyway. It hasn’t been constant work - one side has to wait a couple of months for the other side to read/rewrite it, etc - but it has been a continuous process. With the last draft i sent over, the one which is now locked in, i said to Rosie i had become almost snow-blind by this book now, that i’d stared at it so so many times that i was starting to lose my grip on what was working and what wasn’t. Fortunately, this happened to be the draft for tidying up a few tiny little details, relatively easy, and we’re all really happy with the book. I’m super happy, actually. The plot’s nice and clear, it’s exciting, the characters are likeable, and the sub-plots all spin around and resolve satisfactorily.
The second reason I’ve been so quiet is that over the past year i’ve been working on the illustrations. I’ve been thinking about them a TON. This is obviously a very different medium than comics, what I’m used to, so i’ve been trying to work out how to use my style most efficiently. I’ve been devouring influences, other books, other artists, looking for ways to make everything fit together. I’ve created a heck of a lot of artwork for this book, none of which will be seen, which is why i haven’t posted it up - i wasn’t sure what would be spoilers and what not. But now I’ve finally, finally, settled on a way to work, and an application of my style, that we’re all really happy with.
So, in the next blog post, I’m going to start posting up some of my preparatory Flember artwork, and showing the process of how much it has all changed.
#15 for Flechette and Ember because no one has ever played with Flechette’s hair before.
yo this is cute as hell
“Now, crossthe first strand over the first, along with the additional strand youjust picked up from the scalp,” said the chipper voice of the elfstylist in Ember's AR. Ember kept one eye half-focused on the littlewindow in the corner of their vision, watching the elf's slenderfingers weave the brilliant purple strands of a plump, pleasant-facedhuman's hair together with no apparent effort. Ember, meanwhile, hadalready run out of fingers and there was a lot of loose strands ofFlechette's hair left.
“How are yousupposed to hold on to all of it?” Ember muttered, juggling some ofthe strands to their other hand and losing several stray hairs in theprocess. The meager progress they'd made down the right side ofFlechette's scalp was mediocre at best. Blinking to pause the video,Ember combed Flechette's hair loose again, enjoying the silky textureenough to forget their frustration for a second. “Hang on, lemmefind a better tutorial. This one's too fragging complicated.”
They could tellFlechette was smiling, though she dutifully refrained from turningaround. “I thought it was supposed to be a simple process.”
“I, uh, mightapicked a hard one by accident. Gimme a sec.” Ember flicked througha few thumbnails in their AR window and selected one with no verbalinstructions, but simply a pair of hands and a mannequin head. Eachstrand that the disembodied hands picked up briefly glowed as itcrossed under or over the others, and Ember blink-paused after eachstep, trying to mimic the exact configuration of hair and fingers andwhen to transfer strands to different hands. This time they made itall the way to the end of Flechette's short hair and found themselfwith a new dilemma. “Fletch? The chick in the vid just used like arubber band or something to keep it all together at the end. Do you,like, have one of those? Or two? I think I need two.”
“Oh –elastic bands, I bet. Hang on.” Flechette slumped abruptly backagainst Ember, who leaned their shoulder into her back to keep herupright rather than letting go of the (admittedly loose and uneven)braid they'd finally achieved. The two of them were sitting on thefloor of Flechette's living room, ignoring the couch in favor of theplush carpet.
Flechette satforward a few moments later. “I ordered some. They should be hereinside of ten minutes.”
“Oh my god, Ihave to hold all this hair for ten minutes?”
“Listen,Ember, if I didn't have a corp-exec-level Ultra-Prime Eco membership,you would be holding my hair for ten days to two weeks. Also, youdon't have to keep holding my hair.”
“Are youkidding? Look – look at this masterpiece.” Ember got the haircondensed into one bundle and used their free hand to draw a box inthe air and send a picture to Flechette over the Matrix. “Look atthat. I can't let go of it now.”
Flechette'sshoulders rose a little as she visibly bit back a laugh. “Are youonly doing the one side of my head?”
“Can't do theother side while I'm still holding onto this side. So I gotta holdonto this side until the elastic bands get here. How come you don'thave any, by the way?”
“Do you see mepulling my hair back often?”
True. Untilrecently, Ember had only seen Flechette with her hair slickedstraight back off her forehead, lying flat to the nape of her neck,almost helmet-like. When she came out of the bathroom after a shower,it hung forward along her cheekbones, which was cute. “Has anyonedone it for you before? Your hair.”
“No, and I betno one's done yours either.”
Also true. Thatwas a dumb question.
Ember leanedforward and rested their chin on Flechette's shoulder. “Hey, pullup that vid, the one with the – yeah. I think it's about sixminutes long.”
Four minuteslater, Flechette received the AR alert and stood carefully, Emberholding doggedly on to her hair, and shuffled to the front door ofher apartment to collect the little box from the Eco drone outside.She cut through the tape with a fingernail and tore the plasticpacket open, passing a new, unstretched elastic over her shoulder toEmber. It took them a try or two to get the hang of stretching itaround their fingers and Flechette's hair at the same time, but theystruggled along until they had two little uneven pigtails at the endof a pair of lopsided French braids and sent another picture toFlechette. “That look okay?”
“Wow, you didit.” She turned around finally, grinning, hands patting at theslightly lumpy braids. “I'm going to go look in the mirror. Beright back.”
Ember beamed,watching her go. Hopefully they'd get a bunch more chances topractice.
you're not strong so you, you can hurt her so badly
you don't mean to, hurting her is too maddening
when you do it's a war in your head
what you mean to say isn't always what's said
take a deep breath as soon as you let go
△ what is flechette gonna do if ember doesnt come back?
(I would recommend reading this post first)
5/10
Flechette locked the sniper rifle together with a satisfying, industrial click. The barrel screwed on without a sound, but the stock and magazine were built in such a way that they gave off an intimidating locking sound. She charged the weapon, though there were no rounds in the magazine. It was all muscle memory. A task to occupy her time and her body. Sitting on the floor, back against the couch, Flechette aimed down the sights at her television. A clock in the corner of the screen read 1:28 am. Just two hours since she had gotten home. Two hours and eleven minutes. And still no word from Ember.
Flechette had said she would respect Ember’s desire for space and she had really meant it. Or at least had tried. She had spent the last two hours thinking of nothing but where Ember might go and why Ember would leave. She had a list of places to check and a list of reasons, chief among them was Ferrous’s death. They had talked about it but Ember hadn’t been forthcoming. Flechette suspected Ember needed time. But the reasoning behind Ember’s disappearance had done nothing to soothe her fear and anger. There was something else, too. How could Ember just leave with barely a word of parting? Heartbreak. It felt as if Ember hadn’t even considered that she was there to help. Or that she would hurt if they just left suddenly.
Although Flechette had lived in the apartment for months before Ember joined her, it now felt so empty. Flechette’s chest felt tight and her breathing was getting faster. She had had a panic attack when she first sat down to begin to cleaning her gun and she could feel a second coming on now. She began to panic about the oncoming emotional storm, which only fanned the flames. Last time she had been powerless to stop it.
Flechette began to sweat. Shaking would be next, she thought with dread, almost an observer to this terrible fit. Thoughts of Ember wormed their way into her mind’s eye. Alone. Scared. Emotionally and, more than likely, literally lost in Seattle. In danger. In over their head. That’s not fair, Ember is competent. They may be lost or scared, but not stupid or naive, Flechette thought, getting annoyed at herself. She suddenly found herself filled with anger. She was angry that she assumed Ember to be helpless. She was angry that an imbecile adept had caused her face to be plastered across every news server from here to Hanoi. She was angry that Horizon thought they could raise her as a weapon instead of a human. She was angry that she had left so many prisoners locked in Aztec’s metal grip. And she was angry that Ember had left without saying a single word to her face. A well of fire, brought to her attention by such a minor annoyance, burst. It was not the wrathful blaze of rage, but it was a white hot light of determination.
The tremors and sweat of the attack forgotten, Flechette disassembled her rifle in a flash. She swung the case over her shoulder, more for comfort than protection, and locked the door with AR. She walked out into the night, bound for their regular Soy-shi dive. Ember. She thought. Everything is going to be ok. I’m coming to find you and then we will do this together.
