#ask holly vorpahl

[hollyvorpahl]

For the WIP ask game: ❄️, ⚽️, and 🎶

So I'm working on a few projects at the moment so I'm gonna answer for at least three of them. I hope that's okay.

The WIPs I have currently are:

1. The Princess Guide to Love and Necromancy (there's also joke typical YA genre title, A Tale of Lace and Bone but I like the other title better)

2. Tales from the Drunken Duke (and its sequel The Guild of Lesser Glories)

3. A Vow from the Winter Lord

4. Of Glass Pens and Enchanted Treats

Toughest aspect of my WIPs:

1. This one is newish. I've wanted to write a story like this for a while but I had doubts anyone would actually like it or want to read it. I still have those doubts but I want to write it anyway. 

2. So, this one has a lot of... self criticism. I have the hardest time believing the concept that other writers/authors don't pen excellence in the first draft. I start to compare my drafts to finished books and it makes me feel like crap. I want this one to be light and sweet but as I write, I read things like Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree and I feel the ease of his words and then spiral. Why can't I write like this? There's no way he struggled or had to change anything. 

3. I have the most for this one yet I continuously doubt my abilities to pull off a serious Fantasy Romance like this. I guess you can say I'm intimidated by the scope of it?

4. There's a lot of the story that I don't have and I find that really daunting. 

Genre of my WIPs:

1. Fantasy Romance. This is the only one of them that I guarantee gets spicy.

2. Slice of Life Fantasy with a touch of Romance. 

3. Fantasy Romance

4. Slice of Life Fantasy with a touch of romance. 

WIPs Playlists:

So I don't really make playlists. I have an easily distracted mind and I write in quiet. If I have music going I find that my mind gets sucked into the music and I just listen. Music is a form of art I wish I could do. It's an art form I admire with my whole being. That being said, I'll share some of my favorites that remind me of how I'd like a score of my books to sound if they were turned into an animated movie or tv series. A lot of these were used as ambience while I wrote until I came to terms that I get more done in quiet.

-The score for the movie Stardust

-The score for the videogame Fable 

-The themes written by Aiden Chan for The Mighty Nein and Vox Machina. "A New Kind of Hero", "Beyond" (Pike's Theme) are a couple of favorites. 

-The Rise Undaunted's "Long May He Reign"

-There's a little piece of the score for A Knight's Tale called "Guinevere Comes to Lancelot." This has been something for me since I heard it. I downloaded it onto my iPod back in high school. It carries this small memory for me. My little sister and I didn't get along well, but the night before she had to do something (I don't remember what, probably a presentation or something) she asked if I was still awake. I was and asked what was wrong? She told me she was nervous and couldn't sleep. She asked for help so I played her the song. After that, she would ask me to play it for her or tell her a story to help her fall asleep when she was nervous. Sorry to get mushy.

Thanks for the ask! I hope these were okay answers lol

[hollyvorpahl]

4, 6 & 8 for the wip game

4. Describe the main characters?

I have so many characters so I'm just gonna do a few.

Marian is a human with orangey copper hair, gray eyes and freckles. Her hair is usually cropped chin length. She dresses very practical. Her clothes are usually 1700s based but her gowns for the First Day celebrations are not historically accurate and I'm not sorry about it.

Dot is a Halfling (like a Hobbit with smaller hairless feet) with long vibrant red hair and brown eyes. She's got small pointed ears and she's a little fuller in figure. 

Princess Jocelyn is a short dainty woman with a softer round face, brown curls and brown eyes. Her main inspiration is Princess Claude in Reign. I wanted my extremely feminine Princess Necromancer to have brown eyes and brown hair because most Princess archetypes have blonde hair and blue or green eyes. I also just think brown eyes look friendlier and warmer.

Athello has one of my favorite character designs though. He's based on Critical Role's Artagan and David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King. I wanted him to have soft blue skin, long white hair that's in these thick waves or curls. I feel like we don't get a lot of non straight Elf or Faerie hair. No offense Thranduil, you're still gorgeous. He has strange eyes too. I wanted the whites to be black with just a ring of periwinkle for the iris. I've embraced the long Faerie ears too. He has the sorta Tinkerbell inspired wings, the art of them is colorful but that might change in the next piece to be translucent. Still experimenting with that part. It's explained in the story that he's a Sprite and is actually like 6 inches tall but when becoming Winter Lord, the position granted him his new size. I try very hard to make my characters realistic in appearance. I don't want any of them to be super over the top gorgeous because I want young women to find them approachable. However... Athello is the one character I refer to as "Soooooo pretty..." 

I have some other art of him I should probably post. It's very pretty.

6. What kind of readers would be fans of this wip?

Fans of Fantasy Romance that leans more on the romance side. Honestly, if my brain would let me just write and not concern myself with building the world to the point of burn out, I'd write Bridgerton in a Fantasy world. Still might.

8. What are the vibes/aesthetics of this wip?

I typically go for cozy vibes. Very Bag End vibe or Princessy sorta thing. I want readers to come to my books for an escape and to relax. Enjoy a sweet (maybe a little spicy) romance. I want my stories to be a big warm blanket against the often miserable world.

[hollyvorpahl]

4, 5, and 6 for the writer meme!

4. Satisfaction in life, finding your purpose (no matter how small) and the bonds with the people who make you better and your presence does the same for them. I hope that makes sense.

5. Movies, music, other books. I find inspiration in a lot. I'm sure that's common for all writers. I want to write stories that make people happy. Sometimes it'll happen when I'm watching a movie and my brain will snag on something in the story and latch there. For example, and this is something I have yet to do anything with but really want to, in Legend there's a moment where Lili vows that she will marry the person who brings her ring back to her then chucks it off a waterfall. The first time I watched this, as a child, my brain pieced together that Lord Darkness would have the ring and dilemma would be whether she will honor her vow and marry the bad guy or will she break her word and not marry him? Neither. He doesn't have the ring and it's not even brought up again until the very end. Wasted! A few years ago I watched the movie with my husband and remembered this and was moved to figure out a full story to go with it. I haven't yet but I will someday.

6. I think critique is a good thing. How else is your work going to get better? That being said, I dread it. It's hard to work on something, basically put your heart on a plate and have people tell you there are things they don't like about it. It can be extremely hard to hear. Typically, I hear the criticism, allow myself to be upset but afterward I think about it again in a more logical way.

[hollyvorpahl]

Also, for the wip ask game: please pick one you really want to answer!

12. What inspired this wip?

A Vow from the Winter Lord: I've wanted to write a Faerie romance story based in a Winter Court for a long time. A lot of Fae Romance is Dark Court or Spring Court. Winter is my favorite season and when I was a kid I got a chunk of my winters in one of the most beautiful winter areas, Alaska. There's just something magical about the quiet world in a snowy winter. It takes the littlest amount of light and makes the world glitter. I had bits and pieces to a story but not enough. It wasn't until I read Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik that I started to piece more together. I liked the book but it wasn't really what I was looking for. So I was finally able to put together what I wanted from a Winter Faerie romance. 

The Dot Duology: This one started as a DnD side thing for myself. Almost a decade ago, I started playing DnD. My first character was a Halfling Wild Magic Sorcerer named Beth. She liked to cook. My best friend and I would rp a story with her and an oc my friend made that was set in our own world. This actually got me back into seriously writing on my own again (long story). Few years later, a module for DnD came out called Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. I played a revamped version of Beth that I renamed Dorothy Lynn Pippetwhistle (the last name was from an Asmr video by Goodnight Moon Asmr) or Dot. Her whole backstory was she wanted to open a tavern then expand into an Inn. The DM indulged this completely. We'd do quests then in the downtime when others were doing stuff for their factions, I was building business for my tavern. It was the most fun I've ever had playing DnD. I started to write about Dot on my own to relax at night after a hard day. Nothing serious. But then I was talking to someone about it and they got super excited about the idea. See, I didn't think there was a market for something like this. Low and behold, there is! So I started to develop it into a serious wip.

A Princess Guide to Love and Necromancy: This one is gonna reveal something about myself I hope you're ready for. For a very long time, I've loved the idea of a Princess in a tower falling in love with the Dragon guarding it. I also really like this little scene I have in my head where a knight comes to rescue the princess but she fights him off because she's happy in the tower with the dragon. And the dragon comes running, clearly worried and she's all annoyed because this is the second time this week that she's been attacked in her home by a jackass in a can. I matched this with the aesthetic of a DnD character idea I had for either a Necromancer Wizard or Shadow Sorcerer. Picture Lottie from Princess and the Frog but medieval and wielding scarier forms of magic. I like the contrast. I love all of my stories but some of them feel like I'm writing more for the reader. This one is the one I write for myself. Idk if anyone would ever want to read it but I do. It's the one I also feel the most guilty for writing. It feels like a waste of time because it's the least likely to sell. I have this enormous sense of...duty (?) about my writing being something that'll make our lives easier and any time I'm using to work on something that won't sell is time wasted and I'm a failure. Just to be clear, this is all me. My husband encourages me to write what makes me happy and tells me that he thinks it'll sell really well (I don't believe him). I work full time, so does he. Our bills are paid and everything is fine. My brain just hates me.

[hollyvorpahl]

6, 23 and 29 please!

Also, I apparently can't DM you if we're not mutuals? But I'm happy to keep talking like this if that's what you're comfortable with. :D

6. What kind of readers would be fans of this wip?

I could see fans of Legends and Lattes liking The Dot Duology and Of Glass Pens and Enchanted Treats. They're very low stakes stories that focus on the day to day of a young woman and the community she meets.

A Vow from the Winter Lord would maybe attract fans of Sjm and Elise Kova. However, it's still on the less epic scale. Important stakes but not full scale war style. So maybe those who liked specifically the romantic side to the story but didn't care much for the brewing war. 

23. How would you describe your writing style?

Um... a concentrated dose of my sense of humor? I don't see myself as inherently clever and I'm really not. So if you're reading something of mine that has a clever line or something funny, it took forever to come up with. The line also passed The Husband Test. If I have a line that I think is funny, I'll ask my husband if I can read him something. I read the scene in full with little context (he knows my stories so he understands what's going on) and if he laughs then it was actually funny and I keep it. 

For example, in A Vow from the Winter Lord, there's this lovely moment between Marian’s father and her love interest Lord Athello. Athello asks why Gregor calls Marian "Spark"? He explains that when Marian was little, he was very standoffish with her because he didn't quite understand the whole father thing yet. His wife left Marian with him in the forge one afternoon and she watched him work and would squeal with delight anytime sparks would erupt from the piece he was working on. This started their bond as father and daughter and he began to understand. He's called her Spark since. Athello calls Marian his "Little Duck". So Gregor asks the same of Athello. The answer, it feels like I'm explaining the joke so I'm sorry it isn't funny here, is that when Marian and Athello met she had been cursed by a Hag to be a duck for mouthing off to her. So Athello just sorta looks over at him and says, "She was a duck when we met."

Or lines like "Once you have animated your skeleton (that is the one you have arranged on the table, not your own)..." in A Princess Guide to Love and Necromancy. 

I see my narration as being a friend to the reader. A nicer, less foreboding version of Lemony Snicket. It gets to be clever and fun because I agonized over it for weeks.

29. Books or series or movies influenced your writing style the most?

How far back you want me to go? All the way? Okie dokie! Disney movies, particularly Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hunchback and Hercules. Disney's Gargoyles and the Aladdin TV series too. Not Disney but still great is Anastasia. David Bowie in Labyrinth left a huge mark on my choices of love interest for my characters. The first few Barbie movies, Nutcracker, Rapunzel, Swan Lake and Princess and the Pauper. They really drove my love for feminine yet active protagonists. Most of which don't rely on combat training. Lord of the Rings, of course. Tamora Pierce was a big one. Ella Enchanted and Fairest were others. The Chronicles of Narnia, even though now I see how preachy they are. Neil Gaiman, particularly Coraline, Sandman and Stardust (book and movie, I actually like the movie more). The Merlin tv series and Tin Man had something to do with my writing too. Same with Once Upon a Time. Terry Practchet even though I haven't read a lot of his work. Lemony Snicket and unfortunately Harry Potter. Also... don't judge me but The Tinkerbell movies. I love the hell out of them and I'd be lying if I said they weren't an influence in A Vow from the Winter Lord. There are more but I'm drawing a blank now... I actually have shown my husband a lot of these things and he points out the things he recognizes as influences in my work.

I went into my settings and turned that thing off so you should be able to DM me now. I didn't realize it was on to begin with. I'm sorry.

[hollyvorpahl]

It's not weird at all that you appreciated me appreciating art of your character! I put those tags in knowing you might read them, and I meant them 100% ^^

And thank you for your answers! The one to Spirit was actually really funny because my writing has also (once) been compared to Terry Pratchett, and they were absolutely wrong because the paragraph in question was nowhere near worthy of that, but it still made me all fluttery and jittery with joy for like two days straight :D

And your answer to Rain really made me want to read those scenes and read for myself the emotional build-up to them... so that's good ;)

I'm so glad lol and I'm even happier that you liked Amorie's design. I meant it when I said your tags made my day.

Send me as many questions as you like. I love talking about my writing. Most people in my life will ask but you can kinda tell that they don't really care. Their eyes start to glaze over and they aren't really listening.

I know what you mean about the Terry Pratchett thing! It felt so nice to hear but I know full well that I am nowhere near his level when it comes to my writing. I think the most realistic compliment I've gotten wasn't about my writing but the story itself. I used to work at this place and one of my coworkers came over to my area and mentioned she heard I write stories. I told her I did and she asked me to tell her one. So I started telling her about one of the plots in detail. Part way through she had to go do something and said, "Pause." People usually forget about my stories at that point and I never finish telling them. She came back the next afternoon (we got super busy and she was all over the place) and said, "Okay, unpause." I was a little confused and she was like, "So Marian discovers that the Blue Faerie guy she helped is the Lord of Winter. She's also the twelfth chosen one to do the prophecy and the Fall Lord guy has killed all of the other girls that were supposed to do it. What happens next?"

I was floored. She remembered my story (some details were a little off but still). After that she would come over and ask me to tell her about another story. She says she'll buy the first 50 copies of each book when I self publish them. I told her that's insane and because she wants to beta read them, she'd get a copy for free.

I'm excited for people to read those scenes too. That is if I can ever get them right lol. I have the scene where Marian and Athello confess their feelings for one another and I've edited it like six times already. I want it to be perfect and I'm never completely happy with it.

Sorry to respond with such a long answer. You're always welcome here!

[hollyvorpahl]

Elemental writer ask: Rain and Spirit?

Thank you for the ask! Your reblog of Amorie's art made my day. I hope that's not weird.

Rain: Have you ever made yourself cry with your own writing?  If so, what was it?

Not that I can think of. There are moments that choke me up. Dot giving Nephimos the chair and offering her home to be his. Athello confessing his love for Marian and her dissolving into a bumbling mess because she loves him too. Phoebe explaining her love for the Wizard of Oz. Dot losing the Drunken Duke and trying to not be upset in front of her adopted son and Nephimos. I usually save the tears for the nagging voice in the back of my head telling me I'm a bad writer. 

Spirit: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received on your writing?

This actually ties to the crying thing. I was told by someone that my writing reminded them of Terry Pratchett or Lemony Snicket if either of them wrote fantasy romance. I sobbed like a child. It was a coworker but still... I could barely contain myself.