laufire-writes

[laufire-writes]

COMING OUT ON JUNE 2023: "WHEN THE STARS ALIGHT" BY CAMILLA ANDREW

Thanks to tumblr I've been fortunate enough to meet incredibly talented artists of all kinds. Among them, one of the greatest privileges this site has let me enjoy was that, last year, I got to read earlier versions of the two first instalments of this wonderful series: "The Essence of the Equinox". Now, I get to read the definite version of this indie book, and soon will be able to hold what's setting out to be a gorgeous print edition in my hands ^-^

Alongside some other short stories and a novelette I've read as well, tEotE portrays an intricately built magical world that's a welcome change of pace from the modern fantasy I had been finding trite, woefully misogynistic and repetitive in the last few years. That level of depth and originality in the worldbuilding alone would've been enough for it to carve a space into my heart, but it doesn't stop there.

I've always been a fan of descriptive, lyrical prose; the kind that makes you want to pace yourself and sit back to enjoy a good turn of phrase and daydream about the lovely (or terrible) scenarios it presents. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, you'll find plenty of both here. On a personal note, I recommend reading on a full stomach: the food descriptions are particularly mouth-watering xD. But my favourite bit is how the different settings come alive in the narration, especially the contrasting dream-like Soleterea and the nightmare-inducing land of Mortos.

Other points in its favour for me, and I'm willing to bet, for a lot of the people who follow me, are its larger-than-life leads and its female-majority ensemble of characters, all of whom are varied and fascinating in their own right, with important roles inside the story, and who'll you get to meet in earnest thanks to an expanding omniscient narrator.

Princess Laila Rose of Soleterea, from a powerful race of fallen stars in humanoid form, is the protagonist of the trilogy. In fairness, she's not the first character in the 'verse that truly caught my eye; that honour goes to a particular Mortesian blood sorcerer who you won't properly meet until the second book (which is intended to be published a year after this one). But she quickly rose in the ranks and has become one of my favourite characters, period; in this and any other canon.

First of all, she's the uncontested star (no pun intended) of the story, outshone by none (that one, I admit, was on purpose). She's a firm idealist whose optimism is put to the test in her journey; she possesses endless charm and a silver tongue, as well as difficult insecurities that make her all the more endearing to me. She's at the centre of everything, and the dynamics that spark around her are another one of the selling points of the series: from her toxic and most defining relationship with her Impératrice and mother Amira, to her complicated friendship with her guard and past paramour Lyra; and, of course, to the intense, passionate and doomed romance that propels the series.

The novel's plot is kick-started when Laila's work examining potentially dangerous magical objects leads her to discover what seems to be a demonic monster encased in a block of ice. He turns out to be Dominus, a prince of a hidden immortal race: the Occassi, from Mortos; a kingdom as different from the idyllic Soleterea as it can be. When he gets free Laila travels with him on a diplomatic mission to establish contact and relations with this species. This puts her right in the middle of that country's dysfunctional royal family: a heartless king, his reluctant heir, and an ambitious bastard son: Darius Calantis.

I find him to be the best representative of Mortos' realm, in a similar way that Laila is for Soleterea. He's suave and shrewd and intellectual in a land that puts little value on anything of the sort, more interested in brute force and military conquests. His frustrated ambitions, routinely suffocated by a tyrannical father, might find an outlet thanks to this new realm. He is, definitely, another character to look out for ;)

Finally, I'll say that most of all, this book both subverts and surpasses expectations. For example, as someone who tends toward scepticism when it comes to romance (especially that of the female heroine/villainous male character variety), I nonetheless loved every choice pertaining to the romantic subplot in this book. And I must insist on how after this one, an even better sequel (with some of my most beloved characters in the series!) awaits you ^-^

You can find an official synopsis here on goodreads or storygraph, where you can add the book to your to-read list. I also recommend following the author @aninkwellofnectar on tumblr (and on her other sites) for updates, because "When The Stars Alight" will be available for pre-order very, very soon. As of now, she's offering Advanced Reader Copies as well, if that's something you guys might want to look into.

Oh, and before I forget: there's a short story by this author published in the Fall Into Fantasy 2022's anthology. It tells a tale from Laila's mother's youth, Amira. On top of being a delight for fans of cold, complex female leads and tragic sapphic romance enjoyers, it'll offer you a taste of the author's style and the world she's created.

I ask that if you're interested, or think someone you follow might be, you reblog this to give a boost to this talented indie author!

[laufire-writes]

it’s official now.

THIS BLOG IS MERELY AN ARCHIVE.

I made a new, independent writeblr to separate my original stories from all my fandom stuff. if you’re interested, message me or send me an ask (off anon) either here or on my main blog and I’ll give you a link.

[laufire-writes]

it’s official now.

THIS BLOG IS MERELY AN ARCHIVE.

I made a new, independent writeblr to separate my original stories from all my fandom stuff. if you’re interested, message me or send me an ask (off anon) either here or on my main blog and I’ll give you a link.

[laufire-writes]

it’s official now.

THIS BLOG IS MERELY AN ARCHIVE.

I made a new, independent writeblr to separate my original stories from all my fandom stuff. if you’re interested, message me or send me an ask (off anon) either here or on my main blog and I’ll give you a link.

[laufire-writes]

it’s official now.

THIS BLOG IS MERELY AN ARCHIVE.

I made a new, independent writeblr to separate my original stories from all my fandom stuff. if you’re interested, message me or send me an ask (off anon) either here or on my main blog and I’ll give you a link.

[laufire-writes]

half-thinking of nuking this blog and starting a new writeblr (or at least deleting a lot of stuff) to get a clean slate in part because I dreamed of a shiny new URL xD. but also because I’d kind of like to separate my fandom/original accounts more, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

[laufire-writes]

Making your own media is so great bc all your headcanons are correct. No one can disagree with you without being flatly wrong. The power is intoxicating

[laufire-writes]

Chanté Adams as Max Chapman S01E07 “Full Count” | A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

[laufire-writes]

The way I personally stay true to the story I started down on is to give myself permission to not teach anyone anything. I’m not writing a manual. I’m not delivering bromides. I know that a lot of people do take enormous pleasure and relief in lines or phrases or ideas from stories that ring true to their own lives, but it’s important for me that I tell a story and that I’m not writing Chicken Soup for the Necromantic Soul. It is getting harder and harder again, especially for authors from marginalised places or backgrounds, to write works where the takeaway isn’t ‘this is to succour all my marginalised people’. For anyone on the female-identified axis this is especially hard because it seems to me that most books by anyone female-adjacent have an expectation that they will comfort the uncomfortable and discomfit the comfortable etc., whereas a guy can just tell an adventure story and be done with it. This ties in with an idea that I think <is prevalent> nowadays that good art is moral and bad art is immoral: i.e. if a story is bad it actually has to be because the lessons are bad, and if a story is good it must somehow be beautiful on the moral scale. We go looking for why the art we love is moral even if the art we love is a donut. I think this is the pressure of capitalism on time – that everything has to double or triple up in benefit compared to the time we take on it: if we’re prepared to waste eight hours on a book we had better be able to tot up at the end how that book was also feeding us in some way. That’s brand time we just used.

I am writing for my younger self and it would be disgusting of me to try to teach her anything.

Tamsyn Muir, Interview with Ciara Seccombe, 2/5/22

[laufire-writes]

half-thinking of nuking this blog and starting a new writeblr (or at least deleting a lot of stuff) to get a clean slate in part because I dreamed of a shiny new URL xD. but also because I’d kind of like to separate my fandom/original accounts more, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

[laufire-writes]

I know the Goncharav but is funny. But it’s also frustrating. I mean, this is a fake movie that has taken tumblr by storm, with Moodboards and art and fanfics on ao3. And there are indie authors all over writeblr that can’t even get a reblog with tags.

[laufire-writes]

half-thinking of nuking this blog and starting a new writeblr (or at least deleting a lot of stuff) to get a clean slate in part because I dreamed of a shiny new URL xD. but also because I'd kind of like to separate my fandom/original accounts more, I've been thinking about it for a while.

[laufire-writes]

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

[laufire-writes]

“In [Angela Carter’s] writings, her voice speaks from the page, addressing you, talking to you: “See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny’s bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.” Very few writers use the imperative as she does — conspiratorially. Carter wanted to practise the atavistic lure, the atavistic power, of voices in the dark. “The writer who gives the words to those voices,” she wrote, “retains some of the authority of the most antique tellers of tales.”

The voice isn’t on its own, ringing in a hollow space. Open any page and a full score rises from its word-notes, of winds howling, teardrops falling, diamond earrings tinkling, snapping teeth, sneezing, and wheezing. Storytelling for Angela Carter was an island full of noises and sweet airs, and like Caliban, who heard a thousand twangling instruments hum about his ears, she was tuned to an ethereal universe packed with sensations, to which she was alive with every organ. Acoustics are not the only means, however, that she draws on to convey the lucid dreams she creates in her fiction. Her imagination is spatial, an architect’s axonometric vision, as she moves us through palaces and castles, forests and tundras, dungeons and attics, tracking with us down pathways towards her various sealed depositories of secrets, those bloody chambers. What reader does not explore with her these passages and woodland tracks? Who does not feel the Beast’s dark carriage like a hearse rumbling towards his eerily uninhabited domain? And who does not sense, through her powerful evocations, the pricking of thorns, the jaw-cracking stringiness of granny, the jangling of bed springs, the licking of a big cat’s tongue, the soft luxurious furs and velvets and skin, and the piercing contrasts with ice, glass, metal? […] Carter’s mastery of these effects brings about a quality of hallucinatory reality, dreamlike in its close-up intensity, that wraps the products of her unleashed fantasy. She knew what word power could do in this regard: “No werewolf make-up in the world can equal the werewolf you see in your mind’s eye,” she wrote.“

– Marina Warner, from ‘Chamber of Secrets: The Sorcery of Angela Carter‘ for the Paris Review.

[laufire-writes]

Neat. I'm guessing this means changes regarding Delanus other daughter(s), as well. Like maybe replacing/fusing them with Echo? Side note, I'm sad we can't meet the mother; clearly these interesting personalities couldn't have come from Delanus xDD

Either way, good look figuring out an arc for her! I'd be sad to see her go, ngl, but *shrugs*. You gotta do what you gotta do etc.

For the one word prompt game: 39

Thank you! This is a bit of the stuff I'm adding/reworking in Book 2

Keep reading

[laufire-writes]

Huh. This is certainly a different dynamic from what I'm used to among all these characters lol.

Echo now has a flesh and bone father that seems to fit the typical occassi patriarch role. And he wants her to marry Darius which. Oof. I had a very visceral 😖 reaction at the idea lmao. I wonder how this all will alter that relationship, as well as Echo & Laila (although Laila's realisation regarding Echo's maturity seems like it could go on par with the old one). Given how Echo's origins were a mystery I wonder how much of what she believes is the truth or if you've changed things, but that's another matter.

My favourite part of this is the description of Echo's room. My little macabre child xD. I want to see her doll scenarios and dissected animals.

For the one word prompt game: 39

Thank you! This is a bit of the stuff I'm adding/reworking in Book 2

“I realised with all the commotion you and I hadn’t been properly introduced. And I feel that ought to be rectified.” Laila tucked a curl behind her ear. “It is Echo, yes?”

Echo nodded.

“An unusual name,” Laila said, quashing the ugly impulse to compare herself by inspecting every square inch of her beauty, wit and deportment with a microscopic scrutiny that could rival even her mother.

“My mother chose it.” Echo swallowed as if she’d unearthed a secret. “It was the only thing she chose before…” 

“Before?” Laila tilted her head to one side.

Echo almost said she killed her but thought better of it. “Before she died.”

Laila was sorry at once for asking. “My condolences. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to live without a mother.”

“My father takes care of me well enough, and I want for nothing ever since the rex took me in at court.” Echo rose up from her bed. “He has been very kind to me indeed.”

“I can see that.”

Her surroundings spoke to one of a much cosseted childhood, if not oddly grim. The walls were a savage carmine trimmed with white, full of antique furniture also painted pure snow. There were rows of elaborate clothbound books worn from extensive use and carefully orchestrated scenes of porcelain dolls and taxidermied animals that seemed almost vaguely sentient.

“And I hear you hope to be his bride,” Laila continued.

“Oh… well.” Echo’s cheeks darkened. “That is my father’s wish. To become a forefather to the royal bloodline. Not to say I object. I could think of far boorish suitors and ones that are far less handsome. And well… I believe the rex should take care of me.”

“Is that what you want?” Laila asked. “For him to take care of you?”

Echo could say nothing more. Her father had ensured she was to remain pure; untouched. She was ignorant to the passion that stirred the nighttime thoughts within those who looked upon Darius. “Is that not what a husband is for?”

It was only in this answer did Laila realise how silly she’d been to be jealous. This was a child, she thought, and she had much of a child’s imagination.

[laufire-writes]

When will I get a post about how SHE committed atrocities but SHE'S my special little guy and also SHE looked hot while doing it