#themechanicsofmagic

[owlsandwich]

Eira from The Mechanics of Magic, because she needed some updated art. This angle was so hard, even with the amazing reference from @adorkastock !

[owlsandwich]

For the OC pairings tag! Please tell me about Morgan & Matthew, Robert & Abby & Ethan, and Oren & Ada! :D

Thank you so much :D Excited to talk about them all, so I hope this won’t get too long.

Morgan and Matthew Morgan and Matthew are from The Mechanics of Magic. To summarise, Morgan led the mission to kill Matthew and the rest of the royal family of Ardveld, and he now leads the country while Matthew lives in hiding.

For two people who have had such a big impact on each other’s lives, they have barely met. Matthew was 17 when Morgan arrived with his entourage on their state visit. He remembers being introduced to Morgan - the 21 year old younger brother the leader of the neighbouring country of Vailberg – but Matthew was never the type to care much about playing the good little crown prince. He ditched the formal dinner and so was safely in the palace gardens with two of his friends when the more sinister motives of Morgan’s visit were revealed. The man who Morgan had sent into the gardens to find them was killed during Oliver’s awakening as one of Matthew’s champions, but not before Matthew’s childhood best friend Xander was killed. He still has flashbacks of the scene. As far as Matthew knows, he has been presumed dead for the past 23 years. His fear of Morgan fuels a constant anxiety for his own son, as well as guilt that he has moved past any desire for revenge or to claim his birthright. All he wants now is to know that his family are safe and to live a quiet life.

Morgan has waited every day for Matthew to come for revenge. He knows he survived the attack – Morgan was the one to find Xander’s body and to pass it off as that of the prince.

Ardveld’s royal family had been trying to destabilise Vailberg for some time, stirring up unrest that had culminated in an assassination attempt on Vailberg’s leader, Morgan’s older sister. He’d been young and consumed with ideas of vengeance and glory – the reality of Ardveld’s takeover was quite different. Stumbling across Xander’s body after fleeing the chaos and death of the banqueting hall brought home what he had done, and he couldn’t face having to send out people to hunt Matthew down. No more deaths – damn the consequences.

Every year, a celebration of Ardveld’s takeover is held in the same dining room. Morgan has had all the furnishings replaced, but it doesn’t stop the flashbacks and panic attacks. In some ways he’s glad for them as a just punishment. How can he deserve sympathy when he was the cause? He looks in the mirror and sees a monster, one whose only purpose now is to do his duty and take good care of the country he bought with blood in service to his sister. Duty above all, Morgan is a fair and considerate leader and Ardveld has thrived with him in charge. He is well loved by his staff, though comes across as incredibly private and serious, with no close friends. In Vailberg his reputation is that of a power-hungry killer, who drenched Ardveld’s palace with so much blood it had to be stripped clean. There are whispers that he plans to usurp his nephew and claim his sister’s throne when she passes.

Perhaps he will get some peace if Matthew ever comes to claim his place.

Robert & Abby & Ethan This trio are minor characters in Burning the Darkness. Robert is a vampire, turned in the early 90s by his boyfriend at the time. It was quite a rushed decision because Robert was dying of illness, and the couple went their separate ways not long after. He always wears a beany hat due to a bad haircut a decade ago that still hasn’t fully grown out. The reality of traditional vampire life was difficult for Robert, and so he joined up with the volunteer network in order to feed consensually from humans rather than hunting, and that was how he met Abby and Ethan.

Abby and Ethan are a couple who came to the network as human volunteers, introduced by Ada who runs it. They got close to Robert through a shared love of nerdy interests and are now basically a triad, with him crashing at their place more often than not. Ethan is very into music and likes to mock Robert’s old-fashioned taste. Abby doesn’t have much contact with her family since coming out and is deeply appreciative of the found family she has gained through the network. They’re the ones to ask if you’re looking for a D&D group!

Oren & Ada Ada runs the volunteer network, a group of humans and vampires working together to help vampires feed consensually and to advocate for human rights in the courts. The network has been demonised by the current court leader, with vampires who join it being ostracized and having their rights to turn others removed.

She would never show it, but Ada’s feelings towards Oren were initially cold. He had been turned by the son of the court leader, Julian, meaning he must share some of his values and have known was he was getting into before becoming a vampire. Ada would never turn anyone away from the network, but she didn't have much sympathy for him until he revealed that he had been turned illegally against his will. At that point she encourages him to seek justice and watches out for him whenever she can.

Oren has great respect for Ada, that only continues to grow over time. She is someone who keeps a cool head in a crisis and does what is right over a knee-jerk emotional reaction. He owes her his life in more than one way, and her approach to the vampires helps him to see that he isn’t the monster he thought he was.

[owlsandwich]

Look what came! :D New edition with new cover. So happy it's finally done!

[owlsandwich]

Finally finished going through all the editors changes to Mechanics :D

Now to just give it a proof read, then I can upload the updated edition with its new cover and finally stop fiddling with it!

[owlsandwich]

I'm getting some bookmarks made up for The Mechanics of Magic, and I'd like to put a quote from the book on them but I'm struggling to think of one.

Here's a few that I've collected - I'm leaning towards option 1, but do we think any of these would work?

Best quote for a bookmark?

“To protect those I care about, I would have done it. I see the same in you.”

No matter how hard she looked for evil, all she saw was regret.

"It’s very convenient that the magic supposedly makes the system fair.”

“What makes you think being strong made them the best for the job?”

Something else

It's fine to not have a quote

Voting ended onOct 28, 2024

[owlsandwich]

Writeblr Intro

Updated 7 August 2024

Links to where you can find each project are below. For gay vampire romance, see Burning the Darkness, and for multiple POV fantasy, see The Mechanics of Magic.

Some key facts first:

Genre - Fantasy

Audience - Adult

Reccuring elements - magic, neurodivergent characters, queer characters 🏳️‍🌈

I'm Wren, I'm 35 and from the UK. I am also autistic and my rainbow credentials are that I'm a trans guy, grey-ace, and somehow also pretty gay 😉

My characters tend to be neurodivergent, with many of them being ADHD or autistic, even if the fantasy world doesn't have a term for it. I also like to write about trauma and healing through found family and connections with others.

I currently have two ongoing projects.

Project 1:

The Mechanics of Magic (read it here)

Multiple POV fantasy novel. Tag: themechanicsofmagic

Two decades after the slaughter of Ardveld’s royal family, Matthew could almost forget he’d ever been the crown prince. His survival a secret from all but his closest friend, the expectations of his birth have been consigned to history.

A job. A family. He thought he’d moved on.

But when his eighteen-year-old son Alex is arrested and taken to the palace, Matthew realizes his past has caught up with him.

Meanwhile, novice mage, delivery driver, and part-time thief Roy is looking for answers. A simple break-in takes a sinister turn when he stumbles across a weapon imbued with destructive magic and glowing with the sigil of Ardveld’s deceased royalty.

Across the city, a string of strange magic attacks prompts an investigation by Ardveld’s newly appointed Head of Magical Affairs, Tamara. What she discovers threatens to reveal the truth about Ardveld’s takeover, and will determine the future of the survivors.

The Mechanics of Magic is a multiple-pov fantasy novel set in an original world where magic exists openly alongside early internet-level technology.

The book follows the surviving prince of a deposed magical royal family (who has been living in secret for two decades) trying to rescue his son from the government whilst uncovering the truth about his family's murder.

Mechanics was my first book. It can stand alone, but I am now working on the sequel as there is much more to explore with these characters and their journey.

I am currently working through the edited manuscript that I've received back from my editor, and will be posting each chapter here as I go under the tag themechanicsofmagic

Project 2:

Burning the Darkness (AO3: Darkness At The Heart Of My Love)

18+ gay vampire romance exploring themes of discovering you're queer, and what it means to be a monster.

Currently being edited into an ebook, but the old version will always be available on AO3.

Read it on AO3 here or grab the edited book version here!

A Lightborn manifests once a century. Oren’s light magic is powerful enough to wipe out the court and devastate vampire society, but money and connections can thwart any threat. Killed before they even know they have been betrayed, the Lightborn has become little more than a monster from Julian's bedtime stories.

A monster that seems nothing like the gentle young man now destined to die.

~

The surprise attack by the vampire’s feral army should have killed Oren. Instead, he wakes up, bloodied and weak in the lair of his enemy.

It is surely no act of benevolence. Julian is the son of the Master of the Court. A night creature, whose sharp teeth at Oren’s throat leave him changed - transformed into the very monster he was born to destroy.

They are bound together, but Oren's magic is only growing stronger. He resists control, even as he slips further into hunger, and Julian’s father is close to figuring out the truth. Time is running out, and Oren’s existence threatens to tip the delicate balance of power at court into a battle that will devour them both.

My second book! It has an 18+ rating for some explicit content.

[owlsandwich]

Magic System Done Badly Tag

Thank you for the tag @eccaiia! (and for still thinking of me when I've barely been around recently :) )

Rules: Explain the magic system of your current WIP as poorly as possible. Bonus points if you use bullet points.

The magic system from The Mechanics of Magic:

Magic users are batteries

If you have magic, you constantly leak a magicy aura that everyone else can feel and judge you for

Unless they don't have magic, in which case you can't feel them and they can't feel you

Spells leak too - try and be efficient

Magic is just one thing, except that thing is split into two things, and then there's this other thing that seems unrelated but is actually linked to the first two things, and then there's the fourth thing that comes from the first thing but no-one's ever seen it before.

I'm terrible at remembering who said they're into tag games and what everyone is currently working on, so I'll pass this on to @teacupsandstarlight @anyablackwood @theprissythumbelina and leave an open tag!

[owlsandwich]

OC in 3

rules: post three pictures or images you feel relate to a character

Thank you so much for the tag @sarandipitywrites! This is such a fun sounding tag game, but also surprisingly difficult. Maybe I'm just bad at mood boards haha!

I'm also never sure where is the best place to get images - do they need to be royalty free for something as basic as a tag game? Hopefully it was alright that I just got these from Google.

I'm going to do Oliver from The Mechanics Of Magic because he's my favourite and has a good vibe for image games :)

I'll tag @verba-writing @dragonbooksword @eccaiia also open tag for everyone!