#wm summary

[muffinswritingblog]

Original Fic Fest Intro

So I think I’m gonna join the band wagon and sign up for @originalficfest to see if I can spread some news about my WIP’s. I can’t promise something for every day or that they’ll be on time (I’m having a baby shower this weekend so most of my days are going to be spent cleaning up and getting my apartment ready) but I’m gonna give this a shot! About Me Feel free to call me Muffin, but my name is Kate if you prefer names. I’m 30 years old, married with two cats and a baby on the way. She’s due June 29th.

I’ve been writing fanfiction for the last four years but Keeping Secrets was my first attempt at a multichapter fanfic, and I wasn’t sure I’d have the staying power to see it though. As I got to the end of writing it, I realized that clearly I had the ability to write and see through a novel, and by that point Winter’s Mourning had stood out among my other concepts as a story that deserved to be it’s own, not just a fanfic. Between the two stories, and my husband’s encouragement, my desire to switch to writing original fiction blossomed, so here I am. Synopsis For My Projects Keeping Secrets Liam Vastassi is finally headed home after being away at college for the last two years, and he’s not looking forward to going back into the closet. Not wanting to face his family or their conservative home town alone, he enlists his best friend, Jasmine, to pose as his fake girlfriend for the three weeks of winter break, and help him keep his secret. Things start to complicate themselves when the guy Liam’s been flirting with online wants to meet up, and Jasmine starts to show an interest in Liam’s step brother. With their web of lies starting to tangle, Liam struggles to keep his greatest secret safe. Winter’s Mourning When a simple job to steal a derelict talisman goes wrong, Khiar realizes he’s been used as the catalyst in a plot to bring down the Gods. A plot he wouldn’t concern himself with if his colleague and friend Astraea wasn’t one of the deities that have gone missing.With most of the Major Gods ignoring the issue Khiar and his friends, along with an irate mortal, Visadelle, who’d been charged with guarding the talisman, must find a way to retrieve the item and find the missing deities, while they still live.

About Keeping Secrets Keeping Secrets is a contemporary LGBT romance. It’s a lighthearted story that twists the fake dating trope on it’s head by making the main character gay instead of having him fall in love with his friend.

I started writing Keeping Secrets for Nanowrimo, 2016. Originally titled, I’ll Keep Your Secrets Safe With Me, then shorten to I’ll Keep Your Secrets Safe (aka IKYSS) it was my first attempt at writing a novel length story. I dropped out of Nano that year after my brother passed away, but I managed to write four chapters in the first few weeks and at the start of the year I decided to publish the first chapter and continue writing where I left off. It took just over two years to complete, and sits at 28 chapters and just over 190,000 words. Towards the end of writing Keeping Secrets I realized that it had taken on a life of its own, and that I wanted to rework it into an original project and have slowly been going through and making notes on alterations for the second draft. About Winter’s Mourning Winter’s Mourning is an idea that I’ve had kicking around for somewhere close to two years. It started off as a AU fanfic idea, but the idea has rapidly grown into something else as I realized it would work even better as an original piece and it was the first story I considered turning into a novel. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve really started to develop it into what it looks like now and I finally started jotting down ideas for it at the end of March, leading into Camp Nano for April. So far it’s mostly just world building, plot outlines and characters but it’s starting to take shape and I’m getting closer to the point where I’m gonna have to start writing to figure out the details. I’m both really excited and very nervous about this project. I love fantasy books, but I’ve struggled with writing stories outside of contemporary, so this is really stepping out of my comfort zone and is a huge undertaking that is likely to span three books. I’m sure my first draft is going to be very rough.

[muffinswritingblog]

About Winter’s Mourning

Winter’s Mourning is an epic fantasy trilogy that takes inspiration from greek/roman mythology. It follows the story of Khiar (God of Mourning) who’s abandoned his position as a God to live amongst the mortals. He uses his ability to see spirits to identify other deities talismans and steal and sell them.

The first book starts off with Khiar taking a job to steal a lost talisman that once belonged to Tam, the original Goddess, who has been in an unwakeable slumber for millenia. The pay is too good to pass up and the job ought to be simple. Of course such a relic isn’t unguarded, and while Khiar and his team (Nashari, Arisu, and Satu) manage to successfully steal the Talisman, they are pursued through  The Archipelago’s islands by Visadelle (a surprisingly young follower of Tam). They successfully evade her thanks to the help of Talas, only to be attacked upon their return, and have the talisman stolen out from under them, and Arisu be kidnapped.

When Visadelle catches up to them she is enraged to find that the talisman has been stolen yet again, and explains that it’s a sacrificial talisman meant to collect power through sacrifice and channel it to the deity wielding it.

Khiar is unconcerned about the Talisman, but agrees to team up since he, Nashari, and Satu intend to rescue Arisu.

They quickly discover that Arisu is not the only missing deity, and it soon becomes clear that the intended sacrifices are meant to be the gods themselves. With the world’s future at stake and Arisu’s life hanging in the balance, Khiar must find a way to undo the damage he’s done and save his friend.