As I was deciding the topic for this week’s blog post, I realized I haven’t really shared much about what I’m working on in my own writing life. I’m not overly secretive about it, but I do tend to shy away from sharing because I struggle with showing people “unfinished” work. There is truth to the saying, “it’s never going to be truly finished,” but I take that a little too seriously sometimes. Here’s a very brief summary of the main plotline of my series, as well as a small peek into how I keep it all organized.
I’ve mentioned maybe once or twice that I’m working on a trilogy. It’s lumped under the main title of The Maker Series, with really pretentious titles for each book. The first book, Fulcrum, is the introduction to the story. We meet most of the main cast, leaving a few surprises for the second book. We meet the main character, Brangienne Frankovitch. She goes by Frankie. I get a lot of grossed out looks when I say her name, but I chose it a long time ago, and calling her something else would be a lie. She’s from a small made up town in Kentucky, and she’s revealed to be the chosen one. Yes, it’s a cliche story, but she’s not a teenager! She’s actually 25 years old, working a really chill job as a grocer’s assistant (she stocks, she runs the registers, she unloads deliveries, she’s everything except a manager). She lives with her best friend, Sam Wiseman, in a house she purchased two years out of high school after choosing not to go to college. Sam is a returned veteran of the armed forces (or so he says), and when they run into each other at the store while he’s buying food, he tells her he doesn’t have much going for him. She invites him to come live with her.
It turns out, Sam is not Wiseman, but Bayn, and he is a soldier, but not for the world Frankie knows. He’s from a place called Amaranth, and he’s a member of a private security firm sent to be her protector. Protect her from what, I hear no one ask? The Moarteans. See, when the world began, time had already been happening for a while. We were more of an experiment devised by those who created time. The Thrice Unbound created the First Four, who in turn had Milton Fogg and Tobias (no last name, he’s got the Beyonce vibe going on). Through some shenanigans, the two boys cause an all out war between themselves, and in order to settle things down, the Thrice Unbound allow them to each create a world. The one Milton Fogg creates is our world, our time as we know it. The one Tobias creates is called Telaroth (renamed Lazarus after some stuff goes down there). Tobias devises a way to rewrite the DNA of all his male citizens to turn them into sort of super soldiers (called? Moarteans). He’s doing this because he wants to destroy Milton. In the course of things and a lot of bad stuff happening in Telaroth, later Lazarus, it becomes apparent that his way of life is actually decreasing his chances of survival, and thus: Lazarus is born.
Frankie learns all of this, and is then taught how to fight (because it’s one of those stories, you know? She has to learn to fight). She loses family. She loses friends. She loses parts of herself, literally, because the Makers (the people of Amaranth) also have a way to change DNA. Never one to be emotional, Frankie has intense feelings rear up in a way she’s not had to deal with before, and with that comes anger, defeat, and hopelessness. The friendships she does make along the way keep her grounded, but she will, of course, never be the grocery girl from Lowell ever again.
The second book is called The Keeper of Time and in it Frankie learns the truth about all things, about how she’s been bamboozled. She’s been coerced into a fight that shouldn’t even be happening, but here she is. She goes on a sort of spirit quest to find herself (and a character vital to the end game–it’s a road trip book, I know, cliche, but hey! quests are important to life. Whether it’s to the gas station for drinks with your best friend at 2:30 in the morning, or to find a broken priestess wandering the metaphorical desert, a journey is a journey is a journey). She also finds herself in the hands of someone she wasn’t prepared to see ever again, someone she thought was a distant memory (not a romance, lawls). By the end of the second book, with further trauma to add to what happened in the first, Frankie returns to Amaranth to find it in an uproar. A militia has been formed and people are ready to storm the castle gates, in a manner of speaking. Frankie can’t convince anyone of the reality of the situation, so she escapes into Lazarus.
Which brings us nicely to the third and final book, Lazarus Rising. I’m aware of the biblical implications here, but the larger metaphor is the only association to the Bible story of Lazarus. I don’t want to go into too much summary here because I want to hold this one as close to my heart as I can. It’s the end of the ride. The last bus stop. The culmination of nearing decades of work. Frankie faces incredible challenges, often left with more questions and more bruises both physical and mental. But she is resilient. She prevails in the face of her torture. For a time. Maybe. Am I being mysterious enough?
The world of the Maker series is a complex one because technically there are three separate places: Fulcrum (our world), Amaranth (also known as The World Between Worlds), and the “alternate reality” of Lazarus (formerly known as Telaroth). The easiest way to keep track of all my thoughts on this came about in the form of a journal. I’ve been compiling notes on characters, settings, and all kinds of other things, and eventually the language of the Moarteans will be housed in the journal (yes, I’m going the extra Tolkien mile by creating a language). A snippet or two of the journal is included in this post, but it is by no means complete. So far, I’ve gotten spreads done for all the characters (from all books), and now I’m working on getting the settings down.
Setting is more than a place, which is obvious, but bear with me. When I started working on the pages for Lazarus, it struck me I’d never committed anything to paper about who the Moarteans are. I’ve done rough notes for previous drafts, but the race was never really part of the story except for a few instances. This became an issue fairly quickly because the third book takes place almost entirely in Lazarus. I’ve never gone into who these people are, and now I’m planning an entire book with them? Part of why I began the worldbuilding journal was so I could have a designated place of reference. I know there are apps and programs that help writers sort things into their proper places, but I’m a far more visual person, so I needed to feel the place as I wrote it down. I needed to be the ball so to speak.
By giving myself the opportunity to physically create the Moarteans (on paper, anyway), I’ve allowed myself to fully immerse in the world I’m hoping readers will enjoy. This is not by any means the way I’d recommend people work out their worldbuilding. What I’ve chosen to do suits how my brain functions. I think I mainly wanted to showcase, finally, what I’ve been spending so much of my free time on the last little while. It’s a handy reference tool. It will house everything there is to know about my books in one place. As I’m getting ready to end this blog post, I’m already planning on spending some more time working on my journal tonight.
Find what makes you soar and fly, my friends.
salisbury.fake 