A lone, mature Oak tree at the edge of a field on a fairly flat landscape, with trees and countryside stretching to the horizon. The Oak is shaped by the prevailing South-Westerly wind and mid-way through April there’s the first hint of green on its branches after the long, wet Winter. The wide trunk and lower branches are ivy-covered, always green throughout the year. The sky is a light blue with pale lines of cloud and contrails, with one tiny heart-shaped cloud bright in the sunshine.

At last, the first hint of green on “my” Oak tree. Last week there was no sign but a few warm, sunny days have made all the difference.
And there’s the bonus of a tiny, heart-shaped cloud, bright in the sunshine.
#Oak
#OakTree
#EnglishOak
#HeartOfOak
#Sussex
#Berwick

#LateNightWrite

Name’s Emil Bronze and I’m currently doing rewrites for #HeartOfOak, book 1 in a fantasy epic about a reincarnated tree-god with amnesia and his return to power in a world that doesn’t want him

#WeeknightWriters

Name’s Emil Bronze, I’m a fantasy writer working on #HeartofOak

This week, thanks to geopolitics, has given me a headache

On the writing side, I have made yet another discovery of poorly written chapters

Another 4 chapters have been added to the overhaul list…

P A I N

#AprilWorldBuilders

Gelwood of #HeartofOak, falls under one of the 13 councilors of Rykensvik, for regional governorship, but locally, it’s something akin to a mayor but without a congressional body

The story doesn’t really touch the local government, so it’s largely a “continue as normal”

#AprilWorldBuilders

Gelwood is the most prominent town in #HeartofOak. It serves as the crossroads between human civilization and Oakengrove’s wilderness and the home of the famous Green Thorn Warband

It’s a rural farming/cattle town with a population just under 10,000

#SFFChat Q1

#HeartofOak is a full-bodied fantasy adventure with a pound of grandiose world building, thoroughly mixed with a multitude of spices, like family trauma, survivor’s guilt, self-discovery

Held together with the sauce of “What-if’s” & “rapid escalation”

#MOCQ #OCSky

Oakengrove is a muscle druid, by D&D standards. He can punch his way through things and actually does in #HeartofOak

He also has a lot of crowd-control spells at his disposal, but his personal favorite is a thorny vine whip

Hell, #HeartofOak is a post technological collapse Roman-era world with muskets and sailboats

Some people have old-world relics, including steam trains or geiger counters.

#SFFChat

Name’s Emil Bronze, I’m a soon-to-debut fantasy writer working on #HeartofOak

I’m not much of a dancer myself, but I do like swing dancing

Book one of #HeartofOak is given a somewhat arbitrary timeline because the Mc discovers that his immediate neighbors are attempting to start a war with him and need a year to prepare

A screenshot of a word tracking program

#Accountability post for today. I got a ton more writing done which involved rewriting a chapter that had SIX (6) different scene cuts

So that’s getting broken up into 3 different chapters.

#HeartofOak #WritingCommunity

Actually starting real revisions for #HeartofOak. It’s been so long overdue and I’m only just now putting in the heavy labor of rewriting half the book

#AwesomeCharacters

I present Syna, main antagonist of #HeartofOak & #AllianceofOak

She is a human deity of the life cycle. She dresses unremarkably because she believes, and regularly voices, that all deities should be background noise in the lives of mortals

#WeeknightWriters Intro

Name’s Emil Bronze, I’m a fantasy writer working on finishing his first book

#HeartofOak is currently going through heavy rewrites with about half the chapters being rebuilt from the ground up to clean up flow and consistency errors that were pointed out to me

#WeeknightWriters Q1

Still trying to edit #HeartofOak into V3 which will, once done, be resent for beta reading round 2 and hopefully get better responses

#AwesomeCharacters

Character deaths need to serve a plot point, IMO, whether that’s dismissing the character as no longer plot essential, or to up the drive/stakes

#HeartofOak has an entire chapter dedicated to an character’s death and the “coming to grips with reality”

Displays a water-color style book cover on a 3d model of a book against a solid green background. The cover art depicts a single large tree amongst grass and a small treant figure above the title who is resting on a hill.

A wild goose chase for knowledge

Beyond the boundaries of home

Into distant lands unknown

To rediscover oneself

To redefine one’s future

Under the guise of good intentions

And make monsters of Men and Gods

#W #A #F #LGBT #IN #WSPit
#HeartofOak

Displays a water-color style book cover on a 3d model of a book against a solid green background. The cover art depicts a single large tree amongst grass and a small treant figure above the title who is resting on a hill. Written on the book, is as follows: HEART OF OAK THE START OF AN EPIC FANTASY SAGA Book 1 of the Oakengrove Series The Ad is written as follows A FANTASY EPIC INFLUENCED BY A GENERATION OF GAMING Heart of Oak 97,000 Words The First Book in a Fantasy Saga

THE ANCIENT WORLD OF SALIORAH IS A POWDER KEG ON THE PRECIPICE OF WAR. FUELED BY PETTY POLITICS AND THE AMBITIONS OF MAN, IT FALLS UPON THE COMMON MAN TO TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS. WHEN A MYTHICAL TREE CREATURE IS REINCARNATED. A WARBAND OF PLUCKY ADVENTURERS MUST TOE THE LINE BETWEEN FRIEND AND FOE IF R THEY WISH TO SEE THE NEXT DAWN. WHEN MAN CHOOSES VIOLENCE OVER DIPLOMACY. IT FALLS UPON CREATURES OF BALANCE TO PUT MAN'S AMBITIONS TO REST. WHAT CAN ONE PERSON DO WHEN THE DOGS OF WAR BEGIN TO BARK AT THE GATES? Blurb HEART OF OAK

Comps, Tropes, & Themes Heart of Oak Left to Right Cover art for the 2004 game “Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” CRFATER THAN YOURSELF EXTRA-PLANAR INFLUENCE PRIMARY INSPIRATION ==== Fan art for the 2005 game “Shadow of the Colossus” BEATING THE ODDS LARGER THAN LIFE ENEMIES ==== Cover art for the 2018 game Valheim MYTHOLOGICAL INSPIRATION MAN VS MONSTERS ==== Cover art for the 2025 indie book “Songs of Broken Bells” by Lily Lockwood LGBT+ Representation Self Discovery ==== Cover art for the book DragonLance: Autumn Twilight World building through discovery ==== Cover art for the anime Overlord Gods VS Man Grand Strategy ==== NON-HUMAN MALE MC. JOURNEY OF SELF DISCOVERY LARGE CAST OF LGBT+. VARIED SPECIES & RACES EPIC LARCE AND SMALL SCALE FIGHTS BRINGING JUSTICE TO A TROUBLED WORLD EMOTIONAL HEALING & REPAIRING FAMILY TIES SERVING A PURPOSE GREATER THAN YOURSELF

#W #A #F #LGBT #IN #WSPit
#HeartofOak
A Generation of Gaming, written into one comprehensive story

Explore the greed of Gods & Man

Rediscover the love of the self

Hidden away are the dangers of the obfuscated shadows

The real monsters are wolves in sheep’s clothes

Power is not immutable

I’m still in the middle of doing rewrites for #HeartofOak and I axed out the old chapters for Falcher’s arc. With 3/6 replacement chapters fully written, my word count has dropped from 97,000 to 91,600, but chapter count is up from 26 to 31

#WritingCommunity

#AwesomeCharacters
#HeartofOak takes course over 7, from May to December

#AllianceofOak will be the next 12 months

The whole #OakengroveSeries will probably last about 3-5 years

Carrhae Liquidators is a 1 month time span, Carrhae Reclaimers is 5 years later, also about a month long

Unconfirmed for #HeartofOak but something I personally find highly entertaining

Before Dmahdi joined the Green Thorn Warband, she hooked up with a goblin in her hometown

Dmahdi, a 6’6” orc with 280lbs of abs, plowed a 3ft, 80 pound goblin who was ten years older than her

#OCNSFW #NSFWOCDaily

#HeartofOak is built upon the ashes of my older Ember Wind series which was a Sword Art Online fanfiction

I have a town, commonly referred to as “Poppy’s town” because I wrote the name once, forgot it, then could never find it again and now I’m retroactively naming it when possible

At some point I want to get art of Odis, #Saliorah ‘s Dragon God. He’s a bronze/copper scaled dragon of significant size/age but hasn’t hit ancient status.

He has two forms, full wild dragon and his more tempered look that resembles lizarfolk / D&D Dragonborn.

#HeartofOak

#FebruaryWorldbuilders
#HeartofOak

Souls are very much real and tangible things. While most will go their whole lives without ever encountering them in person, some people have daily exposure

I have a whole chapter in book one “The Harvest Girl” dedicated to finding out what comes after death

#Critterary 1. Welcome Post! 2. Vampires 3. Felines 4. Cryptids 5. Free Monday! 6. Canids 7. Werewolves 8. Dinosaurs 9. Dragons 10. Prehistoric/Extinct Animals 11. Aliens 12. Free Monday 13. Aquatic Animals 14. Aquatic Creatures 15. Reptiles 16. Spirits 17. Amphibians 18. Hybrid Creatures 19. Free Monday! 20. Birds 21. Feathered Creatures 22. Marsupials 23. Horsie Creatures 24. Small Mammals 25. Humanoids 26. Free Monday! 27. Large Mammals 28. Gods/Demons 29. Invertebrates 30. Anything I missed! 31. Farewell Post!

#Critterary 10
The Emporian Ministry of Historical Records, prior to its rebranding, had documented over 270,000 known species to have gone extinct in just animals alone since Emporia’s Founding at the end of the 2nd Era, over 20,000 years prior to the events of #HeartofOak

#PretendPanel

#HeartofOak is currently on version 3, which is requiring such heavy revisions that it’ll probably enter a version 4 & 5 before even hitting an editor

Version 1 was scrapped halfway through and replaced with version 2, version 2 got heavy grammar and other fixes

A #FantasyIndiesJanuary 1. Introduce yourself & WIP 2. Free Friday or what are you looking forward to this year? 3. Saturday Snippet 4. MC’s Goals 5. Writing Habits 6. Tropes you’d like to see more often 7. First line of your WIP 8. Your writing strengths 9. Free Friday or social media tips 10. Saturday Snippet 11. Interesting Lore in WIP 12. Shout out other Indies! 13. MC’s pet peeves 14. What do you most wish to improve on this year? 15. Last, Current & Next Reads 16. Free Friday or How do your characters handle stress? 17. Saturday Snippet 18. Aesthetic Boards 19. Characters’ weaknesses 20. Your hobbies 21. Who does your MC look up to? 22. Where do you draw inspiration from? 23. Free Friday or New Beginnings in WIP 24. Saturday Snippet 25. Animals in WIP 26. Memories that your Characters Cherish 27. How has your WIP changed since you first came up with it? 28. MC Habits 29. Favorite Fictional characters? 30. Free Friday or WIP sub-genres 31. Monthly wrap up

#FantasyIndiesJanuary Q1 (I’m very late, I know)
Name’s Emil Bronze, I’m a fantasy writer working on finishing his first book. As per usual, I’ll be sharing #HeartofOak, my high fantasy epic that follows the story of a reawakened tree god in a fallen world

I had an idea #WritingCommunity

I’m thinking, that when I finally finish #HeartofOak, and throw it to the market for publishing, I’ll send some gift boxes to my betas and my editor with the finalized copy and some acrylic standees of the Hero Forge models of the book characters

Make it memorable

This 4 page manga set depicts one of the early scenes of #HeartofOak

#BluePit #BluepitHype

Oakengrove’s Character Reference created by @artcher.bsky.social and #HeartofOak cover art made by @caranraug.bsky.social

I also have a 4-page manga panel by a friend, Venohime, who does not have a Blue Sky account. See below