B Plot
This post will be about the confessions of a fantasy romance author. At least, that’s how I first pegged my writing career to be ten years ago when I started writing again. One of the major issues I must fix in the fantasy series is world-building. There’s simply too much of it. Pages of it at a time. I became engrossed in explaining the world (a rather cool world) in detail that I lost the plot.
There are twenty-nine books (!) in that series, fully written but needing deep edits before I can publish them. That’s 2.5 million words to rewrite but rewrite I must because I botched the world-building.
I will find the energy to do it because that series is near and dear to my heart. Somehow, I will find the energy. I promise.
Rishab (@elkloriaseries) asked me to go into detail into some of the cool worlds I’ve built. I won’t add any spoilers, but I’ll include some hodge-podge snippets in the different worlds I’ve created. I’ll lean more towards scenery as information on culture, economy, and social set-up for the romantic interactions tend to need more space than a paragraph or two.
Fantasy Series ~ The Nearer Realms (Book 1 publication date - unknown)
North of the settlement, Sanders stood on a boulder, his head angled towards the night sky. Thousands of fireflies blinked blue and purple in a vastness of sparkles. Transfixed on the inky blank above, the vastness of the night twinkled millions of points of golden light, but only one home of the true and proper gods. A planet, pink with rings, to the east was the eternal Home to those he knelt daily in prayers.
Cyberpunk series (series is yet unnamed (Book 1 publication summer 2022)
Hunched forward, João inspected a silver spoon. Two hundred years old with the mark of an unimportant silversmith, the spoon was tarnished and from the defunct kingdom of Britain. Its only value was for scrap to be repackaged into low-grade wiring.
The door to his shop opened, and silver chimes sounded a not-quite-welcoming sound.
Clad in black leather and a low-cut tank top, Angelo strutted towards him. He has his mother’s almond eyes, and his father’s means streak, and the same grit and edginess all Stranded had. Never at home in Nippon, but unable to return to Brazil. Stuck in a place that didn’t know what to do with them and unable to go to a place they’ve never seen.
Western historical (Mines and Metal series and Book 1 publication winter 2022)
At the edge of the unending Prairies was a series of rocky cliffs and land so inhospitable that the earth cracked open for miles, barring all travel. Pocked and scorched and ragged, the gouges on the ground were three-thousand-year-old scars that shied away from existence.
The wind didn’t howl, more of a low-grade eerie whistle that blew in the ear. Deep and powerful, the desolation of the end of all rolled up and down the mountains into a swirl of opportunities and hope. No sweet-nothings, but a low hum that was constant and rattled the bones to ensure the desolation that was outside reverberated and sunk into one’s marrow.
The end of pocked earth led to an abundance on the Prairie. The foot of the mountain that sprawled into an unending carpet of swaying grass that spanned all realm of possibility for those who had the backbone to withstand lung-seizing cold and endless calving season of labour that left insomniacs asleep for days on end.
Contemporary Romance (Book 1 of the Outdoorsmen Series release fall 2021)
James pumped his legs up the incline of the hill. The ground parched from three years of mild drought was loose and full of exposed roots. He pressed upwards. To his left, a bog with swaying cattails from the breeze blowing across the St Lawrence. A vast forest jutted out of rocking outcroppings, rolling hills, and ringing inlets and coves to his right.
A haze hung over the region, part smog blown out of the Ottawa Valley, part heat captured on the kilometres of the 401. Tractor-trailers leaving their marks on the region in an endless plume of belching smoke and cars zooming by farting out their exhaust, pretending no one noticed. The trees noticed.
On top of the incline, James stood, puffing air. The majesty of the landscape captured his imagination, touching on some past of ancestry, connecting him to them and the reasons they kept pushing west from Halifax until they reach this spot. This spot of contrasting greens and tall trees. This spot where forest sounds soothed and inspired. This spot in the middle of nowhere that offered enough abundance that if the farm failed, there would still be enough to provide for a wife and children, and parent, and grandchildren, and neighbours, and parishioners, and the occasional settler who wandered too far as to exhaust their funds.
This spot. Of beauty and abundance and history and future.
Contemporary sports romance (Novella 1 of the Heartened by Sport Series released in December 2021/January 2022)
Miranda hoisted a hip on a barstool with a broken leather cover. The entire place smelled of the 1960s—old pot, a house with a smoker in it twenty years ago, and stale beer. Yet the blue and white colours of the Toronto Maples above the bar were bright and modern. The patterns of the hockey jerseys lining the bar ranged from modern to when the Leaf’s were called the Toronto St. Patricks, were white on green still ruled.
She bit into her gourmet burger, ignoring the outdated paper placemat under the plate.
The flat-screen televisions above the bar were muted but displayed sportscasters adamant in their views on who would win this game or that. Politicians debating the merits of going to war never had such fervour.
A drop of warm grease trickled out of the corner of her mouth. She dabbed it with a paper serviette, uncertain if she caught it all, indifferent if she had.
Somewhere behind her, a pair of men shouted at the television screen. The Blue Jays gave up three runs on a single play, and the patrons had lost their reasons to live.
I have 16 worlds in the works (no word of a lie!) I hope you appreciated snippets into the worlds I’m building.
Thank you for reading. Please note that I have a newsletter you can sign up to to receive updates, advance snippets, and writing advice. You’re welcome to reach out to me on Twitter @reneegendron to continue the conversation
Thank you, @elkloriaseries, for the post suggestion.