James C Struck

#Char-Roleplay for 8/8

Naldumiel would step in in a heartbeat, and probably beat some heads in with his staff. He’s a deeply empathetic and passionate man, he’s just also desperate and is willing to go to great lengths to protect those important to him, one person in particular.

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Kenris is also the deity who rules over the final harvest of the year and the transition to winter, and as such is associated with sleep and dreams. He rarely speaks directly to mortals, preferring to send messages and portents to people while they slumber. 3/3

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Kenris is first and foremost The Reaper, the god who gathers souls as they die and guides them to the Afterlife. He is not a judge, and in that way is very similar to Death from the Sandman comics. He has a deep love and empathy for humanity, since he sees them at their most desperate.2/3

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#MythAugust for 8/8

The deity I’ve fleshed out the most is Kenris, God of the Reap, mostly because the first part of the story revolves around the KenrisDay harvest festival (equivalent to Samhain/Halloween). 1/3

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#WIPSnips for 8/8: check instead of update.

Just Annika being a snarky badass. For reference, an aiglos is a magical spear some Duskers use to focus and amplify their elemental Weaving abilities. Bonus points if you know where the name comes from, drop a comment if you do!

#WriteSky #YAFantasy

#QueerPrompts for 8/7

In Mnemosyne, the royal family is in a precarious position. The king is old and failing mentally, the crown Prince is openly gay and has no heir, and his sister is sickly.

Then the MC Thea finds out something about the royal family that could ignite a civil war.

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#WIPSnips for 8/7: often instead of frequent

I think I may have shared this section before, but it’s still one of my favorite early interactions between Tim and Vee. Also, I’m a sucker for “shy quiet meets loud enthusiastic, opposites attract”. ❤️

#MythAugust for 8/7

The gods in Mnemosyne are aspects of the cycle of seasons, therefore they are intimately tied to the world and have no separate abode. There is always someplace in the world where it’s snowing and another where it’s summer at the same time.

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Utterly different processes. The opening scene of a story is all about the hook for me, get the reader asking questions in their head. The end of a story is all about answers, or at least much longer and more involved questions.

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I write regular short stories, erotica, and poetry. The first two aren’t that different from writing a novel, you just imply the backstory instead of showing it, but poetry is complete different. Writing stories is like running a marathon, poetry is like archery.

Why ya gotta attack me like that? 😳🤣

🎶 I’m soooooo tired, I’m feeling so upset
Ohhhh I’m so tired, I’ll have another cigarette. 🎶

Yeah, let’s just say the mortals are meddling in things they don’t understand in the name of “progress”. It’s not going to end well for them.

#WIPSnips for 8/6: compete

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I think Dr. Daniel Lum is my favorite secondary character that I’ve ever created.

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#MythAugust for 8/6

Religion in the world of Mnemosyne is mostly a social construct. Many intellectuals consider The Nine to just be a holdover from the nation’s agrarian past, personifications of the cycles of nature and nothing more.

They’re wrong.

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They’re excellent, especially the first two. The third is still very good but it gets really grim at one point. Her second trilogy in that world didn’t grab me the same way the first one did, but the third one (which takes place a century or so later) was quite good.

As for the winter solstice, have you read any Jacqueline Carey? Her description of Longest Night in her Kushiel books is pretty close. Basically the solstice is their New Year, starting off very solemn and becoming a celebration of light conquering dark.

At the point I am in writing it it’s all just cultural, the religion is really all just worldbuilding in my head. However, the mystical/divine may come up later down the road. I’m very much a pantser so I’ll let you know when I get there! 🤣

I actually covered that yesterday! 🤣 Let’s just say it’s…quite the opposite. bsky.app/profile/curi...

#WIPSnips for 8/5: leader instead of boss

Facially, the twins Vee and Gideon look a great deal alike, but the first time Tim sees them standing next to each other he notices they couldn’t be more different.

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#MythAugust for 8/5: hierarchy

Each of the 8 primary gods “rule” for a period of 45-46 days out of the year. The one exception is Pathos, who is the mother/father of the other 8. They only have a single day, the winter solstice, but it is the most important holiday of the year.

#Writesky

I don’t know if you saw my posts earlier this month, but my goal was to develop a creation myth and religion that would support a world that accepts all forms of identity, orientation, and relationship structure.

Did I mention Maros and Pynoth are both male? 😁

#WIPSnips for 8/4: positive

When a Seeker for the Children of Dusk finds a new recruit, they usually take several weeks to ease that person into the realization that magick is real and other dimensions exist.

Vee….kinda skipped that part with Tim. 🤣🤣🤣

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#MythAugust Day 4

There are no factions in my pantheon, it’s essentially one big polycule. In fact, unusual weather is explained away as the deities having flings. For example, slang for an early Spring storm is “Maros having a tryst with Pynoth” 🤣

#PolySky #WriteSky

#MythAugust 3: Morality

The gods of my pantheon are all based on the cycle of the seasons, and therefore are neither good nor evil. Now, is Aethila or Pyroth more capricious than her Maros or Sorena? Of course, but thaws also mean floods, and even flowers have thorns.

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I’m in a holding pattern while my editor is working on Children of Dusk, so I decided to dust off a short story idea about an exiled swordsman with a bounty on his head trapped in a small town by brigands on one side and a flooded river on the other.

#Writesky #SaturdaySnipper

The way I always put it is “I have worlds in my head and they want out.” 🤣

Today's writing quote: “He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.” ― Charles Bukowski #writingquote #quote #writinglife #authorslife #writingcommunity #writesky

#WIPSnips for 8/2: engage

I don’t have any occurrences of that word in the manuscript, but here is an excerpt of a training session, which I think gets the gist.

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#MythAugust 2

The world of Mnemosyne has a pantheon of 9 deities: 4 gods, 4 goddesses, and one that is androgynous who is mother/father to the other 8. They each rule for a portion of the year, and change on the major holidays (based on the 8 sabbats of paganism)

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