#Formerly Magi PI

[maskedemerald]

Hi hi~ What stories/writing have you been working on lately? Gimme a big introduction to your creation(s)!

Hi! I'm currently working on 4 major projects in various states of done... (shoves the large list of back burner projects under the rug.) ignore that rug and instead look under the read more because this got long.

A Curiosity Piqued - The Last Straw

Formerly known as Magi PI

This is the big one right now, like scary levels of big both physically and in terms of my focus. A Curiosity Piqued is a series of short novellaish length stories that I'm writing. They are set in an alternate world and an alternate version of the city I live in. A world where everyone has magic, has had it since the beginning of time and like humans do they have scienced the hell out of it. The stories are full of world building, exploring the world and the lives of various characters within. Nearly all the stories are intended to be able to stand alone so people can start where they like. Kind of like how you can drop in to watching something like CSI at almost any episode and have things make sense.

As you can see this is a big on going project and I haven't even mentioned that subtitle yet! The Last Straw is going to be the first story and it's practically finished! Just some final touch editing and a cover to go! I am both excited and terrified. The story is a Slice of Life/Mystery that introduces one of the characters that a lot of the stories will follow. A soon to be private detective living in the 1800s of that alternate world. Aelfraed is just starting an arc of self discovery. After the stress of family and university get to much for him he takes an impromptu break. He hopes just for some time to settle his mind, instead he ends up stumbling on the attempted murder of a Baker. It's a rush to save the man and then comes the question of who attacked him.

It should be coming out in the next couple of months, I had to push it back due to a few bits of life chaos. End of the summer is what I'm looking at. Oh and as a treat here is something I did for the cover,

Magic Act

An old idea that crawled out from under that back burner rug earlier this year. It's changed so much its almost unrecognisable.

Magic Act is a YA Romance/Mystery with a good amount of horror vibes too. I tackled it's discovery draft for April's Camp NaNo and now I'm working on creating a proper outline for the true first draft.

It's about a trans boy with a passion for magic tricks who after a string of strange disappearances in his town accidentally becomes a witness to one and in his escape falls into a pocket dimension home to the Fae and other folklore creatures. Unfortunately his pursuer is native to the place and has followed him. He now has to trust in a risky Fae ally that might turn on him at any moment while trying to pull of the biggest magic trick of his life... and trying to get back home.

Slow burn and dangerous allies to lovers. Lots of soft horror and spooky Fae and other creatures. Honestly the original idea is boring in comparison to the new one that came about with an unexpected love of writing soft horror. (seriously, this is from someone who hates horror movies but found a certain horror style of writing that was just so my jam)

A Kind of Freedom

This one is old, the first story I ever reached the end of but also my first ever NaNoWriMo. Honestly the ending never sat right but now I'm in the process of rewriting the whole of the ending chapters to something that does fit.

Very much a fantasy adventure this one but it's also one of my more experimental narrators. It's written in first person from the point of view of a spirit who comes to possess the body of a knight's errand boy. It's about the two learning to trust each other when one is literally the others worst nightmare and to unravel a plot by the strange figure that unintentionally got them into this mess.

Oh and this counts as writing too its just not a book,

Light of the Oubliette

It's a visual novel, and it definitely counts. Any game would count. Light of the Oubliette is a story about identity both in the past and the choice of who to be now. It's a mystery game. The protagonist wakes with no memory of who they are and in a cell with a fang of criminals but soon the guards are there and that's where things get complicated. Both sides have a different story for who you are. Guard or Criminal or are they both lying? Try to learn who you were from connecting the stories and spotting the lies but is that who you want to be?

[maskedemerald]

Find the original post calendar from lola-theshowgrl here

So! I was trying to work out what I was going to talk about on the Free Fridays, took me a little bit but now I have some ideas now. This week I'll talk about where the idea for Magic Act came from, next week there will be talk about side characters, then a look into the Research Rampage I did for Magic Act and finally a Prototype cover that will inevitably be replaced.

Free Friday! - Inspirations for Magic Act

Magic Act is an idea that has been languishing on my idea back burner for a long time. Originally the fae were not even involved, it was just a kid without magic trying to blend in with magic users. There was no plot, just the bare bones of an idea. Even the romance side of things is a more recent addition.

Magic Act really started taking off in my brain when I was doing research and world building for the series I am currently editing, the first story of A Curiosity Piqued (Formerly Magi PI). I had been looking into folklore to decide what folklore creatures existed in that world and as I did so I found myself placing many of the folklore things relegated to just superstition in that world into Magic Act as real things (I'll talk more about research stuff on another Free Friday). The idea of faking magic to magic users was appealing, the idea of deceiving the Fae was even more so.

I find the slight of hand in magic tricks fascinating, in high school my physics teacher used to use tricks like that as rewards. Some I worked out eventually, some still baffle me to this day. I like the idea of having my MC mix some magic tricks with science to pretend to have magic was a fun idea. I'd read a couple of Isekai manga where the characters had ended up in the past and used science to fake being a fire demon to scare off someone. I honestly though that is was a clever use of the knowledge difference. While the fae world is not completely disconnected from the modern world the advantage the MC has is that the fae are 1) not expecting a human to have ended up in their realm 2) not interested in human entertainment enough to have encountered magic tricks before and finally 3) they think they are too smart/powerful to be tricked like that because they are usually the ones doing the tricking.