#AvraBlake

[avrablake]

Releases January 7, 2025

For decades the Military and Syndicate have been locked in a war for power. Both sides are desperate to gain the upper hand through any means necessary—including performing dangerous experiments to discover and enhance the strongest abilities.

Thea is a victim of these experiments. After her escape from a Military Research facility, her struggles to control her abilities put her in danger of being found. With both the Military and Syndicate after her, she finds help from an unlikely source.

A traitor and a war criminal, Nix is a wanted man on both sides of the war. He’s been running from imprisonment for years. Meeting Thea means he can’t run anymore. In order to help her avoid capture he’ll have to face his biggest regrets along with his worst fears.

With mysteries to unravel and secrets to reveal, both must learn to trust the other—and forgive themselves. If they don’t, they may end up with even more regrets.

-

Cover Design by GetCovers

Cover art and illustrations by @hinata-boke

[oh-no-another-idea]

Trick or treat 🎃

Thanks for the ask! Here's a treat for you, a moodboard for one of my characters, Sutton Byford! 👻🍬

[writingmoth]

find the word tag

thanks for the tag @avrablake!!!

my words are stubborn, presence, concentrate, and fear.

tagging @i-can-even-burn-salad @traveler-of-realms @treesandwords @isabellebissonrouthier

your words are flavor, visceral, deep, open and playful.

stubborn

You usually have more than enough time to prepare for it, don’t you? To carefully sew shut that strange humming that springs in your chest when the hunt is coming, to seal it inside the bars of your ribcage, pulling it in like blood returning, unwilling, to a wound. The itch beneath your skin has you picking at your own flesh in the hours before sundown. The urge to draw blood, to free whatever is lurking under your skin, is almost too much to resist, but you do -  as you’ve done for years now. You’ve always been so stubborn.

presence

Memories of that night swim around him. The fey’s clawed hands, the collective hum of the first forest, the weight of the god’s presence -  nothing but a storm of colors, smells, sounds, a collection of sensations captured in essence as if trapped in a glass case. It’s been so long since he allowed himself to think about them, to savor their taste, to remember…

concentrate

nothing :(

fear

The god’s glare doesn’t soften. Their almost white irises follow him as he kneels by their side, hands still up in the air. The smell of rain, of the clean chill of winter and something else, something earthier, like rotting leaves and pungent flowers, fills Rowan’s nose and mouth. The first forest preens in answer, but he ignores it, slowly lowering his hands, fear still clinging to him like sweat. They can kill me from this up close, he tells himself when his paralysis lasts for a second too long. They don’t need much strength to tear me from throat to navel with those claws. I should let them be. I should..

[talesofsorrowandofruin]

Trick or Treat 🎃

👻 Trick! :D

[author-a-holmes]

Hi there 👋 and Happy Saturday.

What's your favorite thing about your current wip? The thing you're most proud of or excited about or the thing that makes you want to gush the most? (Something like a particular character dynamic, scene, theme, worldbuilding facet or something else?)

Heya Avra!

This has been sitting in my inbox since February, I'm so sorry for the delay!

I didn't want to spoil anything on the leadup to Changeling's release, and then since it was actually launched out into the world I've been struggling with some powerful burnout.

when you first sent this I had finished Changeling and was just counting down to release date, so for Changeling what I was most excited about people finally reading about Lizzy and Booker and Andric.

To choose one specific scene, I was really curious to see how readers reacted to Lizzy's greatest fear. I feel like I tried to get it come through the narrative throughout the book, but there's one moment where she admits it aloud to Andric that I've felt was quite powerful ever since I wrote the scene. (And one reviewer did mention it in their review, that it broke their heart! So success!)

As a bonus, and an apology, for making you wait so long for a reply, I'll share the thing I'm most enjoying about writing Darkling...

So Darkling spoilers beneath the cut, but...

I'm REALLY enjoying writing the character dynamic between Lizzy and a new character in Book 2, Connorbar Moore.

There are loads of spoilery things I could say about their growing dynamic, but I'm just enjoying every scene where I get a moment to put them together.

In some way's they're very similar characters. Very stubborn, both refusing to back down, and every time they interact there's a growing level of respect between them that neither of them are comfortable with.

It's just a LOT of fun, and I can't wait to share more about Darkling with everyone but it's much harder to know what I can safely share with a sequel than it is with a book 1.

[emelkae]

for the tech asks (hehe) 3 for Sharpe and Claw and 14 for all the War Machines

From this ask game

3. Do they use nicknames for their contacts or do they list contacts by full name?

Sharpe's phone names for Claw were:

Claw

Nuisance

Mother Hen

Sergeant Wannabe - after the events of a prequel scene I'm brainstorming

Something vulgar in response to some of Claw's names for him

and then back to Claw

Claw's names for Sharpe evolved like this:

Sharpeye

Sharpe

Walking Target - as a retaliation for being called a Nuisance

Baby Chick - when he noticed Sharpe put him in his phone as Mother Hen

Scaredy - he put that one in after he started pranking Sharpe during battles

Splinters - since he kept getting shot out of trees

Soldier - it stayed as Soldier for a long time

14. You’ve just stumbled across their tumblr blog! Describe it.

Circuit: Uses Tumblr as a sort of repository. Despite his minimalistic theme, his posts are long-winded and riddled with links to sources. He loves to hunt down misinformative posts and correct them, not in a mean way but in an attempt to stop the spread of misinformation. People start tagging him in things to ask him if they're true, basically using him as a search engine - which he loves.

Sharpe: An empty blog with a default pfp. It's gotten him on a few block lists, but that doesn't deter him from lurking.

Lug: Loads of cute animal pictures interspersed with gifs of wrestling matches. He'll also reblog any indie musical artist trying to get their start. He gained a lot of followers and popularity during the shanty trend after he posted videos of himself singing, getting Mobo to help him stitch Tiktok duet videos together. He has lots of friendly interactions with his fan base.

Claw: He reblogs things the other War Machines post, but he rarely makes posts of his own. Really only uses Tumblr to see what the others are up to.

Mobo: He runs a fandom blog, a faceless YouTube channel, and a Tiktok, and he's actually really good at juggling them all. He posts long video essays about fan theories for scifi shows, using obscure lore and behind-the-scenes facts to back himself up. His knowledge of SEO and his occasionally coarse way of speaking have earned him a modest following.

[angsty-prompt-hole]

🖊️

I scrolled through my OC list at random for a little bit and stopped on Cyrus Merrick.

Cyrus is the older brother of Jackson Merrick, and one of the reasons Jackson ran away from home. Their father was incredibly abusive, and that made Cyrus cruel in turn. After Jackson ran away and their father was killed, Cyrus inherited his father's business: an illegal underground fighting ring. Under their father, it had been dog-fighting, but Cyrus was approached by a man by the name of Simon Pryce, and that changed everything.

Simon offered to sell him non-humans that he could pit against each other and guaranteed that Cyrus's profits would skyrocket. Simon was right too; the business boomed after that. Simon and Cyrus eventually decided on a partnership regarding the business, and they spread it to other dimensions. Fighting rings were established in other dimensions and soon Cyrus was rich.

At least, until he made the mistake of kidnapping Illonna Sinclair and Kirsty McCallahan, two members of the infamous interdimensional gang-for-hire the Bloodhunters. After that, he ended up having to face his brother again, and with the help of the Bloodhunters and Kira Shade, Jackson destroyed Cyrus's entire business.

Cyrus is a real skeevy dude who really gets a rise out of other people's pain, and who thinks the world owes him because of what his father did to him. That makes it really easy for him to hurt others and to run something as inhumane and horrifying as an interdimensional fighting ring. The only one that he really cared for was he and Jackson's mother, but she died not too long after Jackson ran away and their father died, leaving him all alone.

Here is a picrew ref I have of him. He lost his eye when one of the dogs his father used to keep attacked him. The chunk out of his ear was from a kidnappee who tried to pull one over on him and kill him. He also uses obscene amounts of hair gel.

[somanywords]

Hey I love your art style! It’s so cute. It has a very cozy vibe ❤️

Omg hiiiiiiii Avrablake you found my fandoms mess ;) Thank you so much for your kind words, I'm taping them on my little wall to grin at 💛

[pinespittinink]

Here’s some hot cocoa ☕️ and a hug ❤️

Also 6 and 28 for the ask game

6 answered here

28.  Favourite side character

Hmm, in TGGT it's probably Cashmere for the children and Seonghwa for the adults. I'm very fond of Cashmere, the nonbinary and nonverbal child (they start the book at four and end at eight) who works in the costume department in the Glavenisean Theater. Seonghwa is a treasure, one of the supporting actors within the troupe who lives in the Artist's Alley. Everyone loves him, though Morgan is a bit suspect just because he doesn't believe people can be so flawless.

Thank you for the hug, i really appreciate it <3

📚 Writer's Ask Game 📚

[sleepyandthefriendcollective]

[author-a-holmes]

Those are some *intense* blue eyes! I approve! :D

Also that snippet is cool, loving the worldbuilding displayed here <3 Dripfeeding worldbuilding through character dialogue is my absolute favourite method.

Trick or Treat? 👻

(Event Post)

A treat for you 🍬

I have a hard time finding picrews that work well for my OC Lucan. They either make him look too young or too old. These two are ok, though they work better for a younger Lucan

Left | Right

Here's a few lines of his as well:

It’s complicated to explain, but the theory is that when we channel energy, we are pulling from reserves stored around our brain. You can think of it like a protective membrane, and your membrane is damaged. This is why your channeling is uneven and difficult to control. If we can smooth out some of that damage you might see an improvement in your abilities overall.

[oh-no-another-idea]

When you send an ask and then realize it is in fact Friday...

NO worries, we've all been there! 😂 It's really nice to see you in my inbox, I'm not complaining :) <3

[writingmoth]

SAFE for the ask game

9. SAFE - What's the best thing to ever happen to your main character?

for rowan, probably his friendship with moira. rowan is veeeeeeery bad at getting close to people and if moira hadn't glued herself to him when they were small he'd probably be friendly with everyone but have no real friends to speak of lol

thank you for the ask!!

[talesofsorrowandofruin]

Wine for the worldbuilding ask game

Thanks! :D

WINE - What is the most broken law?:

For both The Power and the Glory and Totentanz: the law against conjuring money. It's illegal in both settings because it would drive inflation out of control, but people still do it. There's a whole branch of the magical law enforcement dedicating to cutting down on it.

For Like Snow on Hungry Graves: the law against corruption. It says a lot that the authority figure taking the strongest stand against bribery is the literal mob boss. (Of course she's opposed to it mainly when other people are getting bribed. She's in favour of it when she gets bribed.)

[author-a-holmes]

*Smothers a grin*

Of course. Very scary. Terrifying. Nothing cute to see. I don't know where anyone could get that idea...

*Pets the bat*

Trick or Treat? 🎃

Trick! 👻

(Event Post)

[emelkae]

Happy Saturday!

What's your favorite thing about your current wip? The thing you're most proud of or excited about or the thing that makes you want to gush the most?

(No pressure if you aren't feeling up to answering right away)

I have so much passion for this horrible problem child wip of mine that I need to respond with multiple things

So like, the obvious answer is that I have "I love my characters so so much disease," but what I specifically love about them is that this time around... they're mine. In book one their inspirations were VERY obvious, but things are different now, situations are different, arcs are different, and these robot boys have become fully my own. With that comes problems—I'm deeply picky about their story, to the detriment of literally everyone—but when I'm done I'll have learned loads about writing (and myself, let's be real) that I just couldn't have learned from the first novel.

Going off of that, I now get to explore the characters growing closer organically. Before, there was an existing history, an already established closeness, and a certain someone holding the group together. Things have very much fallen apart for them in book two. I can write relationship dynamics that I wouldn't have had time for before, like Sharpe and Briar. I can also write the Repair Units truly separated from each other >:) And how they're somehow both very different and very much the same when they're not attached at the hip.

Something I've been really looking forward to is developing and humanizing Eleni. She's grown a LOT over the drafts as a character and I love when she reveals more little tidbits about herself. She fascinates me tbh