“Liliana.” “Stop,” I hissed, hands over my ears as panic sharpened. I ducked into the aisle, feeling like I turned each corner the moment whoever I was following turned another. “Stop it!” I rounded another corner, and saw myself. She stood shrouded and still at the far end of the aisle, wearing a pale imitation of my face, twisting wet hair soaking through slick fabric that clung to her shoulders. Blood gashed across her chest in a claw pattern that felt too familiar, like I’d seen it before. There was a chunk missing from the side of her neck, about the size of a clenched fist. Her eyes were open, but they were glassy, vacant, clouded in a nauseating, milky film. I screamed.

From chapter 22 of "Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade"

As Lily's mental state starts to completely unravel, suddenly the whispers and reflections take on a more terrifying form...
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Oooooh THAT's what that card does

Also rewatching these at the moment and having a great time! Cumberbatch's Smaug is a character-defining performance that has infected the way I read the character's voice in the book more than Hamill's Joker!

For the same reason "lisp" has an "s" in it

Exciting day :))
Today I picked up the first fully printed copy of Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade from Staples!
This is always a favourite moment in my writing process; holding an actual physical copy of my story just makes it feel so real. This story means the world to me, I cant wait to share it

And filler episodes. Some of my favourite character moments happened in episodes that had NOTHING to do with advancing the main plot whatsoever.

The eight episode structure is awful. It's never enough time to resolve the plot in a satisfying way; that's why every show ends on a lame cliffhanger now

Thank you so much :)) it's been a wild year and a half 😅 I will keep you in mind!

Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade is finally at a point where it's ready for beta readers...

That's how I'm choosing to phrase it, and not that my wife pointed out that if I sit here, going over it again and again, just trimming words off, it will never be read 😅😅😅

Gatekeeping is such a weird concept, and the question is always the same; why are people who like things so hostile toward people newly discovering they like it too?

"I don't care how you got to my weird niche, I'm just happy you're here" is the only correct response.

Thank you :)) love a locked house mystery :))

The bodies of Mr. Caldwell, his wife Margaret, their three children, and two servants were all accounted for. Neighbors attest that no member of the household had been seen for near a month. Upon entry, officers reported no obvious sign of disturbance. Yet the bodies were discovered in places that defy plain reason. Our correspondent learns from a gentleman close to the inquiry that one servant lay posed on the cellar steps as if resting, while one of the children was found in a wardrobe too small for concealment. Mrs. Caldwell’s body was seated upright at the dining table, while her husband was recovered in an upstairs room, and all accounts attest the door had been bolted behind him. How they came to these curious positions, no witness can say. More unsettling than location was the condition of the remains. Physicians noted a pallor beyond ordinary death, the bodies wholly bloodless and flesh removed with a precision not easily attributed to any natural course of decomposition. Stranger still was the unnatural cold that lingered about the corpses despite the season. The coroner’s report, submitted yesterday, offers little comfort. No poison detected, no illness common to all or evidence of violence. Death had occurred days, perhaps weeks prior to discovery, and authorities confess themselves at a loss.

From chapter 5 of "Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade"

While researching the ruined manor in which she first encountered the sinister black dog of Ebonhollow, Lily stumbles upon an 1886 news article, and learns the house's terrible history

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“I should have said something.” “But you didn’t,” she cut me off, suddenly sitting up to meet my eye. “And the thing is, I know you. I know you weren’t just being selfish. But you weren’t there, and I needed you. Not to run the stall or sell stuff or hand out bags, just to be my friend. To stand next to me like you said you would. The way I would for you.” I stared down at my hands. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered again. “I don’t even know what to say. I didn’t mean to just disappear I just…” My voice trailed off, but her eyes demanded the end of the sentence. “I got pulled into something.” “Yeah.” A pause settled between us, heavy and awkward. Then she rolled her head to the side and looked at me. “I’m not mad, Lily.” “Could’ve fooled me,” I smiled weakly. “I’m just tired.” She returned my smile, but smaller than I’d ever seen it. Almost too small for her face. Then she stretched out and rolled over, and I placed my hand on her shoulder. Quickly, her hand clutched mine, too quickly. It trembled as she squeezed and so I gave a squeeze of my own. “You can tell me all about it in the morning.” “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

From chapter 17 of "Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade"

Another of those golden LilyxMaddie moments that makes me ship the living daylights out of them.

Every night, sleep came heavy as sickness. Instead of relief at the end of a hard day’s work, I slipped into something thick and feverish. I’d wake tangled in sweat-dampened sheets, clinging to them as though they were the last bit of reality left as my heart pulsed in painful thuds. The dreams wouldn’t stop. They came harder each night, vivid yet fragmented and always spinning just out of reach when I tried to recall them too clearly. But the feeling stayed. An unease that gripped me by the spine as I scrambled to remember what year it was, or who I was. Because every night I found myself in borrowed skin, looking through borrowed eyes at things that felt too real. I was starting to feel it. What everyone in Ebonhollow talked about. There was something in the air, in the cracks of the pavement or the dim light of lamplit alleys. You don’t notice it at first, but eventually you breathe it in and it settles into you. I’d felt it since the day I arrived, but back then I’d called it charm or quaintness. Looking back, I think that was just the first layer.

From chapter 9 of "Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade"

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #WritingCommunity

Write the story you want to read, because you're going to need to read it... like seventy times

I never slowed my pace, boots slapping against pavement. Windows passed on either side, most of them dark but some faintly lit from within. My eyes darted for those glimpses of life, as curtains twitched and shapes, that might have been furniture or might have been people, stood perfectly still. At one point, I think a face appeared in an upper window as I crossed the street below. But I tore my gaze away. I didn’t want it to be him. Streets narrowed as I ran deeper into the district. Around me, rotting brickwork bulged and sagged, old shop signs creaked overhead, their faded lettering barely legible beneath decades of grime. The roads twisted when I expected them to run straight. Alleys seemed to appear where none should have been, dozens of open mouths waiting for me to take a wrong turn and vanish forever. Ebonhollow was closing in around me, its crooked bones grinding together as it shifted, rearranging itself without apology, only a whispered threat. You don’t get to leave. In the wild, terrified core of my mind, I started to believe I’d never escape. That all of Ebonhollow was somehow part of him. That it too, like the shadows that cowered at his feet, twisted and reshaped itself to the will of Lucien Veyne. It felt as though, if I were to stop even for a moment and chance to look over my shoulder, I would see Thornmere again, impossibly close, its black corpse waiting for me. But I knew if I turned, if I allowed myself to hesitate for even a second, I’d stop. That invisible line was still there, drawn taut from my heart all the way back to Thornmere, back to him.

From chapter 32 of "Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade" and Liliana's desperate flight from Ebonhollow

Writing update, day forty-two
86,120 words. One chapter edited.
Starting to notice less and less that needs trimming, that has to be a good thing right?

The darkness surged, the face folding back into the writhing, inky blackness. The dim green of his corpse-like eyes grew bolder, shimmering in the dark with a renewed and fiery fury. It started as a rumble, then split into a crackling, insidious growl. A growl I recognized. Terror held my gaze long enough for a monstrous, black paw to strike the creaking boards, the outline of monstrous jaws curled back over glistening, slavering teeth. I ran, and I jumped. For one horrible, weightless moment, there was nothing beneath me. Then my hands caught the far edge and I slammed into the floor hard, the bones of the house cracking under my weight. I managed to haul myself up just as it gave way entirely, and I fell. The world became nothing but splintered wood and screaming pain as I crashed through a rotting staircase, the steps collapsing in a chain reaction that sent me tumbling through to the next level. I landed all wrong. My leg folded beneath me, agony tearing a sound from my throat before I could stop it.

From chapter 37 of "Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade"

Note: Please excuse the repetition of "monstrous" here that somehow survived the last two rounds of editing 🙄

Writing update, day forty-one;
86,245 words. Two chapters edited.
Short day today, just editing for unnecessary dialogue tags, overused adjectives and trying to come up with better verbs where I'm over-relying on adverbs

Writing update, day forty;
86,398 words. Act four and epilogue edited. ACT EDIT COMPLETE
Finish the second edit of the story and manage to knock over another 2000 words off the word count :)) next step will be to listen to it in its entirety and see how it flows in one sitting 🎉

Writing update, day thirty-nine
86,907 words. Six more chapters edited. Act three edited
I feel like this is getting easier as I go. I know what to look for, the sentences that feel clunky, words that don't need to be there. Little by little, the true story is taking shape from the word salad :))

He does :)) it's his favourite form for hunting. The skeletal, bat-like creature is his true form, but he hides it behind a layer of umbramancy and psychic camoflage :))

Missed the tablet one because I'm thick 😅

Oh God I'm always scribbling little doodles on sticky notes and notepads 😅 this is just a small sampling from the first sketch of the two mains all the way to a semi-polished one I did on my tablet 😅

Writing update, day thirty-eight
87,285 words. Five more chapters edited
I feel like I've reached that point where I'm adding more than I'm cutting. I just get so cross when I'm reading and first-draft me forgot something obvious, and first-edit me missed it too 😅 come on team, get it together 😅

Writing update, day thirty-seven
87,417 words.
No actual editing done today, I just wanted to correct a plot hole which occurred to me last night. Ended up finding a page that wasn't doing anything and rewriting it to kick some extra dirt in my MC's face while they were down. Sorry Lily!

Writing update, day thirty-six
87,013 words. Act two edited.
Another ten chapters done today, halfway through the act edit. We're finally closer to 85k than 90k 😁😁 changing that number was so gratifying :))

Writing update, day thirty-five
87,980 words. Act one edited.
Blitzed through ten whole chapters of edits today. The changes from the plot edit have done wonders for the first act, I love the new build up to Lily's arrival in Ebonhollow rather than just getting there as the story starts. Feeling 😁!!

Post from Julia Fine that says, "Write the book you want to read because you will have to read it 75 times."

#writerslife

“It’s like I keep feeling this pull,” I said finally. “Like there’s some invisible rope wrapped around me and it keeps pulling me back into the dark. It’s taking everything I have to just dig my heels in and hold my position, to not fall back into whatever hole I managed to crawl out of recently.” Maddie was quiet for a moment, her eyes scanning mine. Then she reached over and took the tote from my hand, setting it on the table between us. “Okay,” she said. “Well, you’re here now. With me. With us. So, whatever that pull is, it doesn’t get to win today.” She wrapped her arms around me and buried my face in her suffocating curls. “And if you feel it again, you come tell me. I won’t let you get pulled away. I’ll get my own rope, and with the three of us pulling, it’ll give up in no time.” “Or I’ll get torn in half at the waist?” “Or that,” she admitted. “But I get the top half, because I like your hair.” She tussled my bun in her open palm and we laughed.

From chapter 15 of "Dark Wings: The Thirteenth Shade"

Another one of those Lily/Maddie scenes that makes me wish the story had gone differently