#starfall sleuth

[hallowgracie]

Starting off the day with a writing sprint and 64,123 words, with 35/52 chapters completed (only 17 chapters left)

[hallowgracie]

Okay, so I ended up reducing the projected chapter count for Starfall Sleuth after having some plot points move around and having a better idea of my pacing for this particular story. This always happens--some authors always extend their chapter counts, while I always end up cutting some once I'm deeper into the WIP.

So 14/58 chapters done, that leaves 44 chapters to go.

Current word count is 33,739

[hallowgracie]

I forgot—six chapters down, 55 to go.

[hallowgracie]

Still in the query trenches with Seelie but I am still determined

[hallowgracie]

This is the first of my many faerie designs. None of them quite represent the intricacies in my head yet, but hopefully the final book itself will remedy that.

For now, let’s meet Solasta, formerly known as the Queen of Golden Dreams. Once a powerful faerie queen with a dazzling realm, she was known as a wish-granter, similar to legends of djinn in Celecerres. Some believe she may have been the origin of those legends. . . But Solasta's generosity opened her to the endless greed of humanity, leading to her downfall and the destruction of her original realm.

An ancestor of Aster Aelian's gave her kindness in her time of need, and ever since Solasta has watched over the lineage of mothers and daughters. At even a mere fragment of what she once was, Solasta draws on the power of imagination and holds hope that circumstances will improve for their kind.

[hallowgracie]

Starfall Sleuth Updates (1/17/26)

In other words--I finally did it!

Clocking in at 80,606 words and 48 chapters, I now have a completed draft of Starfall Sleuth.

So what happens now?

I'm taking a week off from this project and next weekend I will resume by doing a read-through for continuity, spelling and grammar, and any major characterization'/plothole issues, fixing as I go.

And then it will be time to embark on my greatest quest yet--querying for publication.

To @annlillyjose and @despoinacoco and everyone who has been following Starfall Sleuth--thank you. Without your interest and faith in me, I never would have been motivated to continue working on it to this extent. I would never have kept reshaping the story and reinventing it.

So thank you. This story would not have happened without you.

To celebrate this milestone, let me know if there's anything you'd like to know about the story of Starfall Sleuth as it currently stands. I can't wait to hear from you!

[hallowgracie]

The Origins of Seelie Gardner

Seelie Gardner is the main protagonist of my fantasy wip, Starfall Sleuth, and there's been a long road from here to her current iteration!

Starting in my short story, Alternate Universe, Slow Burn, Seele, as she was called at the time, was a fake fictional character made up for the fake fictional fandom. She had a design based on Sophie Hatter from the film adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle and her personality was meant to be a take on characters like Rey, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel as they were represented in their major films during the late 2010s as female characters who were badasses. One of the sticking points of the short story being that Seele was celibate, all romances doomed out of a sense of trying to seem empowered.

When I decided I wanted to make this story real, that was the first element to go. Still, I played with the old design and personality concept, in which Seelie (I'd changed the name for pronunciation) would be a stoic, rational, and very proper lady.

I found I did not care for writing her that way.

Her next iteration paired with a redesign. I realized it would be a plothole if her celestial heritage really was so obvious as shining silver hair, and so I changed her to a brunette and played with some alternate backgrounds for her, with her mother being Altalunese originally, which was one of the countries at war with Astraeria. I also changed her sleuthing style to be more intuitive, with a more passionate and intense personality that the design came to reflect.

The project still didn't gain momentum until I decided to include the character of Aster Aelian, my Cinderella protagonist from the now-cancelled Feywood Tales story project.

For a while, I posted on here about this version where Aster would have been the protagonist and Seelie an important deuteroganist. As I worked on the draft, however, it became obvious that Aster was written as a better detective and that integrating the two characters together would make a tighter, stronger story.

Which is where we are now! I'll reintroduce the character soon, (along with some others as I decide on some further edits I'll be making) with her final bio.

[hallowgracie]

Cast of Starfall Sleuth: Caelus de Solasta

Caelus is not like the other faeries who remain in Astraeria. He is not sealed to the stone, is free to come and go as he pleases. But it is not a joy--for it reminds him of what he lacks. Something happened to Caelus, stripping him of his heart. As a result, he can occasionally be angsty or broody, but he generally tries to be kind and take courage in his new circumstances. Once he was an air-headed, irresponsible faerie. One might argue that this was the natural consequence, the punishment out of a fairytale. But others would argue that it was merely the role he was born to play, the same as any other faerie. . .  When Caelus meets Aster, he at first tries to do the responsible thing and dissuade her from coming into their world of magic and danger. After all, she is destined to topple what their King has achieved in centuries, the reluctant enemy of their kind. But Aster is the one who awakens Caelus's capacity for imagination and wonder, and who makes him believe he can become more than his missing heart. As he falls deeper in love with her, he learns that the faeries and their plight is connected to the loss of stardust and the war that has gripped the Valley of the Falling Stars for a generation.