Well folks. I’ve done it. I am here. I have officially moved cross-country from Houston to DC. The drive was long but relatively painless, except for the fact that I started feeling under the weather in the last couple days of packing and by the time I reached Virginia I had a full-blown cold. It’s still kicking my ass several days later. My mother and I did the drive together, for which I am very grateful. And I visited the George Washington campus for the first time on Tuesday, with my mom, my dad, and even my stepmother tagging along to follow me around while I gaped at everything lol. I’ve been on a decent number of college campuses by now, but this one is very impressive. And a bit intimidating, as it is right in the middle of DC and just a few blocks away from the White House!
My mother went home yesterday (I feel bad that she had to drive back by herself). And I am currently sitting on campus awaiting orientation. More specifically, I’m sitting in the Flagg building, which was built in the 1890s (I believe?) and houses the Corcoran School of Art and Design. I’m still a little flabbergasted that I’ll be taking courses in this very beautiful old building!
And then classes officially begin next Monday. Unsurprisingly, I am both excited and nervous. Very nervous. People who know me well know that I am an anxious person by nature, so nervous is my default mode. But still. I’ve also chugged like half a bottle of Dayquil (slight exaggeration) to make it through orientation today. Hopefully, I’ll be able to properly rest and recover over the weekend so I’m not a zombie during my first class on Monday.
I’m still very much in a state of confusion right now, with most of my stuff in boxes and an unsettled routine and all that. But once I’ve gotten a handle on the first week or so of the semester and started settling in, I’ll make an effort to get a book review or two written and posted. Lord knows I’ve read enough in the last few weeks. It’s just finding the time to sit down and write about any of it is even more challenging than usual right now.
I believe I have mentioned at some point in the past that my mother and I rescue animals. Strays, fosters, and even two dogs literally on the slate to be euthanized for no other reason than because their owners surrendered them and the shelter had no room to take them in.
At the height of our rescue efforts, we’ve had living in our home six dogs and twelve cats at one time. Yes, the house is a zoo. I don’t always love it, but we do what we can.
One of the hardest parts about rescuing animals so consistently (besides the immense amount of daily work) is that sometimes we lose several in quick succession, a long string of losses, one right after the other. The average pet owner with one or two or even three pets usually has long breaks in between losses, but when you live with so many animals, the losses seem never to end. It’s been especially bad the last few years.
Mieko in 2016
In September 2019, We lost two of our cats, my mother’s beloved Mieko to cancer, and my girl, Bobbi very unexpected to a brain aneurysm, just a week apart from each other. We lost a dog, Lady, to cancer in late 2023 (she was one of the two we had rescued from euthanasia at the shelter in 2019, so at least we gave her a few more years than she would have had otherwise). In Spring 2024, we lost our sweet middle-aged cat, Freiya, to kidney failure. A few months later, in December 2024 (just before Christmas in fact), we lost our oldest cat, Grady. His loss we at least expected. He was not as old as some cats live, at 14, but he had thyroid problems and had been in slow decline for awhile, so we were somewhat prepared.
Eilonwy in 2022
Now, not even a year later, we’ve lost two more quickly. My youngest cat, my baby girl, Eilonwy, died very unexpectedly on May 26th. She’d eaten a piece of string that strangled her intestines. She had emergency surgery, but could not recover. She was only four years old. Her death was a blow I’m not sure I’ll recover from any time soon. And, just yesterday, we had to let our oldest dog go. Like Grady, this was not unexpected. Abbey was 15, or possibly 16 (a stray we rescued off the road, thus her name, a reference to the Beatles album, Abbey Road). She lost the use of her back legs a little over a week ago. The vet was trying some treatments to help mobility but they weren’t working. And on Thursday and Friday, she stopped eating. She was a very tired old lady, who lived a good long life, and she was ready to rest. On Saturday, we let her go.
Abbey in 2021
Still, knowing its coming never really helps that much. Especially not for my mom. Abbey was her dog primarily. They loved each other very much. While I am sad, my mom is inconsolable. I understand, of course. The one loss that still lingers the hardest for me was a long time ago now. My cat Sebastian, my love, my boy, who I had from six weeks old until his death one week shy of 18th birthday. Most of my life. He died in 2014, and it still aches like a new wound some days. Grief is strange like that.
We all take these losses hard. Some days I wonder how many more such blows we can handle, and we have so many more animals that we love and cherish and will one day lose. It is our duty as pet owners to care for our animals up to and through death, no matter how painful it is. And there are so many benefits from having a loving cat or dog in your life. Yet, part of me wonders if the pain becomes too much at some point, the losses too many. I sometimes think that as we lose more to illness or old age in the future, I might stop bringing new pets into the house. My heart is tired.
Hello all! It’s been quite a long time since I touched this site or posting anything new to the blog. I have no illusions that I will be able to start actively updating the blog on a regular basis again, though I keep telling myself I should, and want to. That said, I felt it was time to update a few things and make an effort to at least drop a line from time to time. As such, please indulge me while I share some news of my life.
First, I am about to embark on a new adventure. I have been accepted to the Master’s Program in Museum Studies at George Washington University beginning in Fall 2025. I will be moving from my home in Texas, where I have lived now for nearly 17 years, to Washington, D.C. to attend graduate school full-time. Again. I am both excited and nervous to be returning to grad school and an academic environment nearly 7 years after I left my PhD program and adjunct teaching position to work in the private sector. Ok, terrified. The word is ‘terrified,’ but it’s a good kind of terrified. A “getting out of my comfort zone”/”going on an adventure” kind of terrified. It is my fervent hope that this new degree path will lead to work in the museum field, though where specifically I will end up is anyone’s guess.
Due in part to this new adventure, I have made the difficult decision to start phasing out my freelance editing services, with plans to officially close shop at the end of August. This is not an easy decision, but a necessary one. In addition to returning to school, this decision is influenced by the rise AI and decline meaningful work. While I had some mild success working with self-publishing authors, and certainly enjoyed what I do, in the last year the work has dried up primarily due to the rise of AI options. I am against all forms of generative AI in writing, editing, or artwork, etc, and not only because of the threat to my own work. I firmly believe use of AI is unethical. It is theft of others’ art and intellectual property. And the quality is sub-par anyway. On top of that, it is enormously damaging to the environment.
That said, I can’t control if other writers choose to use AI for their writing or editing needs. It is certainly much cheaper (though you get what you pay for). I and many other freelance editors have seen a drastic drop of available work and a concurrent increase in potential clients who willfully misunderstand what kind of work editors do and what a fair price is for their services. In any case, I’m waving the white flag. I will continue taking on new projects through the end of the summer, with completion dates no later than end of August or early September. After that, I will be closing shop.
My third bit of news is that, in addition to my freelance work and preparing to return to grad school, I also completed revisions of the novel I’ve had in progress for some time, The Supernaturalists. I am now officially querying with agents in hopes of traditional publication. It’s taken me such a long time to get to this point and I am hopeful that I will be able to pursue publication while working on my new degree. (Fingers crossed). I am already hard at work writing the sequel, and I’m about halfway through the first draft. I hope to have a finished draft by the end of the summer, before the Fall semester starts. I also have a couple short stories out on sub with literary magazines and will share news if/when either of them are picked up for publication.
THE SUPERNATURALISTS: In 1920s Cleveland, empath Thomas wants to be left alone with the ghosts of WW1. Former spy Sebastian needs to find the Wall Street bomber. When mobsters & magical terrorists throw them together, they’ll need to find the line between trust and attraction if they want to survive.
Of course, my life has been strange and busy the last couple years and there is much more I could (and may later) talk about both good and bad. But these are the big life developments I wished to share for now. While I know myself well enough to realize I will not be able to keep up any kind of regular blogging schedule, I currently plan to post at least a couple things in the new future. First and foremost, I wanted to share some of the best things I read in 2024 and the first half of 2025. My main goal has always been to talk about books, so I want to do that! From there, we’ll see how things go!
Hello folks! I wanted to share happy bit of personal news. My short story, “In the Empty Rooms” has been published by online lit magazine Haven Speculative, and is now officially out to the public today. It’s part of Issue 10 on their site.
Haven Speculative is an entirely volunteer, non-pro magazine that could use any and all support you can spare! They publish all stories and poetry for free on their site, but you can also download an ebook version of each issue by subscribing to their patreon, which I highly recommend. They are publishing some great work by new up-and-coming authors.
I particularly loved To Kneel at the Altar of Your Bones by Valo Wing, from Issue 8 back in March. (Fun fact: I had the pleasure of working with Valo during the Futurescapes Workshop last August).
Allow me to indulge in what might be a somewhat controversial book take for a moment. We, the book community writ large, have got to stop being so precious (see secondary definition here) and pearl-clutchy about the physical object of the book.
But let me back up for a second.
During my undergraduate Literature degree, I took a class from one English professor who, on the first day of the semester, picked up his copy of the Norton Anthology of British Literature and chucked it across the room. The room gasped and watched in stunned silence as the enormous book flew across the room and landed in a crumpled heap, pages folded and bent.
This professor strode across the room, picked up his anthology, smoothed a few pages down, closed it, and put it back on his desk.
And then he announced to the room that the book is not a sacred object.
The stories, imagination, knowledge, or information contained within the book are certainly sacred, but not the physical object itself. It is merely paper and ink — and usually fairly cheap paper and ink at that. And whatever we need to do to that physical object in order to best access, understand, and appreciate the knowledge within — be it writing in the margins, underlining, folding pages, or even ripping the book in half to make it easier to carry — are all fair game.
That lesson was absolutely invaluable to me. I carried it with me into graduate school, and eventually imparted it to my own students when I taught.
There are, obviously, exceptions. Certainly no one is advocating for beating up first editions, or antiques, or beautifully-printed hardcovers. But your average, standard publication, trade paperback? It is not sacred. Please stop acting like it’s the Shroud of Turin.
This brings me back to where I started.
There have always been people who judge those who dare to dog-ear their book pages, or write in their books, and so forth. And there always will be. It’s a fact of life, and I accept that. And certainly no one is saying you have to do these things to your books if you don’t want to. But in recent years there has been a huge uptick in those who are very vocal in online spaces (as so often happens with the internet), acting as if those who adapt a printed book to their needs is tantamount to the devil. People who rant and rave against someone dog-earring a page, or behaving as if a disabled person who tears a very large book in half to make it easier to hold has just ripped an infant in two and should be executed. It’s absurd.
Not coincidentally this kind of judgy behavior has gotten worse with the rise of book subscription boxes and the craze in recent (last 6-8 years) of more and more “special edition” and “collectible” books. Now. Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with special editions and collectible books. I have a good handful of beautiful, illustrated, signed, extra-expensive special editions that I adore. They have their own shelf in my office. I keep them dusted, out of harsh sunlight that might bleach the spines, and away from harm. I paid a lot of money for them, and they are absolutely works of art and should be treated that way.
That said, there is a growing trend/attitude in a large number of buyers who will only buy a book if it’s a special edition — with sprayed edges! Exclusive dust jackets! Illustrated end papers! Signed and numbered! And certainly only in hardcover! The book subscription boxes are constantly tripping over each other in the scramble to find more and newer and better ways to outdo the competition with their exclusive perks. More and more the focus drifts away from whether a book is actually good and readable and toward its collectibility and exclusivity.
While this has absolutely been a major boost for some authors, it truly only helps the big names. The buzzy TikTok titles. The authors known for catching the attention of subscription boxes and having a million slightly different “exclusive editions” in various places. I love that some authors are seeing major boosts in sales from these things. But it is also harming the vast majority of midlist authors who never get hardcover releases — only trade paperback, and sometimes only ebook releases. The authors who have been publishing consistently for years, sometimes decades, without ever getting quite mainstream enough for the big flashy TikTok campaign or the special edition from Illumicrate or some other big subscription box. Or the debut authors who weren’t lucky enough to warrant the big initial marketing push from their publisher, or catching the eye of that one BookTok reviewer who could make them the next sensation.
I firmly believe that these two attitudes (the pearl-clutchy sacredness of the physical book, and this obsession with exclusivity) go hand-in-hand. If the book is sacred, only the prettiest, flashiest, most valuable packages are worth buying/reading. And both readers and authors are harmed by this attitude.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t buy (or make) pretty special editions anymore. Or that we must buy every random paperback we see. Or that everyone is required to treat their books with more roughness. I’m just saying maybe we, as a community, need to unclench a little. Stop worrying quite so much about the resale value of a bloody book, and just try getting the fullest out of the content on offer.
(Also, apologies if I got a tiny bit rant-y here. But if I can’t rant a tiny bit on my own blog, where can I?)
I apologize for being absent so long. Without getting into too many personal details, the last several months have been extremely rough on a professional, personal, and family level and I have been, as they say “going through it.” I am in the process of getting various projects back on track.
One of those projects is, of course, this website. Those of you who have been subscribed for awhile will notice the major overhaul to the website. I have officially transitioned from “Night Forest Books” to my official author name “Amanda Haimoto Rudd.” This is the name I will be working and publishing under in the future, and I decided it was time to stake my claim on the domain.
At the same time, I decided to gift myself with an author logo. I admit that this is a bit of “putting the cart before the horse” as I am not actually ready to publish any of my several WIPs yet. However, because I knew I wanted to overhaul the aesthetic of the website, I decided I wanted to finalize the style and look of whatever logo I wanted to use in the future – particular the color scheme and font choices.
And I am so happy to be able to unveil my official logo. The image is of a Japanese kirin (in Chinese: qilin), which is sometimes called the “Asian unicorn,” though they’re not really all that similar. The kirin is visually described as being part deer, part dragon. In Japanese lore the kirin is a symbol of nobility and purity, but also of justice and righteous anger. The kirin is gentle but fierce when protecting the vulnerable and fighting for what is right. I knew it was the image I wanted for my brand as a way to honor my Japanese heritage (as well as adopting my grandmother’s Japanese family name), and because the kirin is a good representation of the things I wish to embody in my fiction.
I commissioned the absolutely amazing team at Qamber Designs for the logo, and they did not disappoint. They were a delight to work with at every stage. I had fairly solid ideas of the look I wanted (the kirin, the purple/blue/pink “bi flag” color scheme), and they took those ideas and ran with them. They gave all kinds of great suggestions and many options to choose from as we narrowed down to the final look. The final logo is everything I hoped it would be. If anyone else is in the market for author branding (or book covers, they do those too), I cannot recommend Qamber Designs HIGHLY ENOUGH. They were marvelous.
Having received the logo design, reworking the website to match it was a fun project. There are a few things I still intend to tweak or add on later, but I figured it was close enough to final look that I could safely switch the site back from “coming soon” to “live.” I didn’t want to leave it down too long.
I have updated some information on my freelance editing services. I have also added new information on full writing coach services as well. And I tweaked a couple small things such as my about page and the contact page. I also hope to add a couple more bits and pieces to the “personal writings” tab within the next few weeks. And I will, of course, be getting the book review blogging back up and running soon as well.
If anyone has any questions or concerns, as always, please feel free to reach out! Thanks all, and have a good rest of your week.
Hi folks! Quick post here in advance of my regular Friday post, because I have thoughts about the future of this blog (and my blog/website in general) that I would really appreciate some opinions/feedback on.
ALL THE OPINIONS!
I have played around with a lot of variations on my name and my (imagined) business names over the years, including: Amanda Rudd, Amanda Marie Rudd, Night Forest Books, Amanda Haimoto, Amanda Haimoto Rudd, etc etc etc… This has extended to different emails, different IG accounts, a few different blogs, as well as the usual suspects like FB and Twitter, not to mention publication names.
As an academic, I published under my legal name, Amanda M. Rudd (on that note: I did not realize I have a Goodreads author profile, due to a publication in the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction! I just discovered this!). However, I recently decided that if/when I publish fiction I want to use the name Amanda Haimoto Rudd (Haimoto being my Japanese grandmother’s family name).
I debated for ages on whether I want to keep all my different hats separated: accounts for my academic work, book review blogging, freelance editing, fiction writing, etc. At first, I thought the answer was YES. But now I’m leaning toward compiling everything together and cutting down on the various names I use online to JUST Amanda Haimoto Rudd.
To that end: I would merge my OLD blog (“Amanda Rudd’s Blog”) with this current one (“Night Forest Books”) under a new domain = amandahaimotorudd.com (as of this writing that domain is still available… *cross fingers*). I would also get rid of my @night.forest.books IG account, and link my @amanda.marie.rudd IG with the new blog to reduce the variations.
I do not know for certain if exporting the data from this blog to the original “Amanda Rudd” blog would automatically bring my followers with it or not.
I guess the questions are: 1) does this plan make the remotest sense? 2) would my current followers (email or WP Reader) care about me switching things to a new domain, provided that does not change your subscription status? 3) If it DOES mean losing your subscription status, would you be willing to re-follow? 4) Am I just WAY over-thinking all of this?
Hello all! If you take a look around, you’ll notice that I have been tinkering with the site a bit! I have a new static landing page, and I have added other pages as well. Don’t worry! The blog is still running and will be easy enough to find under the “Blog” tab. And if you subscribe by email you’ll be sent directly to the new post anyway, without having to navigate anywhere.
However, I’d love it if you folks took a look around when you have a chance. As mentioned in my previous post, I have gone ahead and added an information page specifically for freelance editing, for which I am now open. Even if you yourselves are not in need of such services, I would greatly appreciate if you could share the word with any writer-type friends who might be!
In addition, as you may see in the “Featured” column on the Home page, in the coming days/weeks I will be adding a separate page/tab for my personal writings (not blog posts or book reviews, but poetry, snippets of fiction, and creative nonfiction kinds of things). AND I will be linking to a new little side project shop I am in the process of putting together on Etsy.
In the meantime, you can definitely still expect a full book review post from me this upcoming Friday!
(Also, I’m not entirely happy with the header image still, so that will likely continue to change for awhile.)
Hello folks! I just have a few updates this week. We have officially hit December and the holiday season, and there are only 5 Fridays left in the year (including today). I know! I’m shocked and horrified by this as well. I hope everyone is having fun preparing for their various holiday-season traditions (there are so many holidays in so many religions and cultures around the world this time of year, it’s pretty amazing!) And I hope that the concurrent issues of shopping, travel, dealing with family, etc don’t stress anyone out too badly (they always stress me out plenty).
As we are nearing the end of the year, and all that entails, I wanted to give you heads up that weekly posts will probably be a bit spotty this month. I have one book review in draft right now, that I will probably post next week. And I am planning to do a “My Favorite Reads of the Year” list in time for the New Year. That might be it from me for the month. I suspect most people aren’t going to mind too much; they have other things to worry about besides reading my blog posts, lol. But I apologize for the slow-down anyway.
In other news, I am considering starting to take on freelance editing work – this kind of editing (developmental and copy/line-editing) is usually for folks who are preparing to indie or self-publish, but can be useful even for those planning to submit manuscripts to agents/editors in traditional publishing. I have done some editing work in the past, but it has always been for friends, or friends of friends, for small amounts of money or pro bono. I have recently picked up a couple new potential clients (we’re still hammering out confirmations) based on word-of-mouth, and it has made me think I might like to try making it more official. I might post the information as a page here, or possibly make a full website landing page for everything. But in any case, if this is something anyone out there has been looking into for a project, feel free to contact me!
I am also thinking about some things I would like to do for the blog starting in the new year.
The blog I ran in the height of the blog-popularity from 2011-2015 or so was not huge — I didn’t have thousands of readers or anything — but it did fairly well. It had around 500 subscribers, lots of comments, averaged a couple thousand hits a week, etc. This new one doesn’t get a fraction of that engagement. I know the blogging heyday is past. I can’t expect anything like that again, but it’s still disheartening. I keep wondering if writing this blog is like screaming into a void that no one else hears or cares about, and I would be better off just redirecting this writing time/energy back toward my own personal writing. On the other hand, I do enjoy writing these little book reviews, and my main goal originally was to help support and spread the word about books/authors that I really love. I’m just not sure I’m even doing that if NO ONE reads these (except for DirtyBuddha, the only reader who consistently looks at/likes every post! Shout out to you! Thanks!)
On top of all that, I’ve had ideas for things I wanted to write/talk about that I haven’t yet because, as few readers I have now, I fear that people will care even less about these other things. Most of them are still book-related (though not all), but they aren’t book reviews and if that’s what most of my readers (few as they are) are here for it would feel like a waste of time to even sit down to type these other ideas out. The problem stems, I think, from the fact that I have advanced degrees in literature but I stopped teaching and I feel like I have all this information and all these niche interests floating around my head with no useful outlet.
I talked to my best friend about that a bit, and she gave me some good advice that kind of boiled down to: don’t worry about what others think. On one level, that’s kind of the point of a blog, to share content that you think/hope others will engage with, so you kind of have to care. On another level, though, she’s right. If the blog is for me, for talking about things I’m interested in (even if it’s aimed at an empty void), then does it really matter? And, she said, maybe you’ll write a post that will show up on someone’s google search someday, for someone with the same niche interests who never thought anyone else had ever written about the topic before, and even if that’s the only reader you ever get for that post, won’t it be nice to be there for the one person who really wanted to read it?
It’s a nice thought. Though it still begs the question of how much time and energy I should pour into this blog, and how much of that time is a waste that should be aimed at things that will have more long-term benefits (like finishing one of my damn novels).
In any case, it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Some of the things I’ve been thinking about writing about include an old course syllabus idea I had for (anti)war novels, and one for planetary romances, and one for time travel narratives. While these would all at least still be book lists/discussions, it feels like people only care about new/recent releases these days, so I don’t know that anyone would care about reading lists of mostly-classics. I also have thoughts on indulging some more of anime nerdiness – for instance, I’ve considered writing about Robotech (an American dub/adaptation of a Japanese anime that aired in 1985, and one of my personal obsessions). I’ve also thought about writing about art more. And I’ve had a grand idea for a big essay about an obscure 1940s novel called The Journal of Albion Moonlight bouncing around my head for years. So yeah, the ideas are ALL OVER THE PLACE.
I suppose what I’m saying is that these are things that might happen in 2023, but I’m not certain yet, because despite my best friend’s assurances that it’s my blog and I can do what I want with it, I’m still a bit tired of screaming into an empty void. If anyone has an opinion in one direction or the other, please feel free to comment.
My final announcement is a big one for me personally. For the first time in TWELVE YEARS, I have successfully “won”/completed the NaNoWriMo challenge! I cannot tell you how excited I am to finally accomplish this again after so many attempts! I actually hit the official word count goal, 50k words, on Monday, November 28th. And then I spent the last two days of the month seeing if I could stretch that word count a bit before Nano was officially over. I finally ended up with: 55,828 words, nearly 6k over the word goal!
So yeah, I’m pretty stoked about that!
Anyway, that’s a lot of information and ideas to throw at you all so I’ll stop talking now. If anyone has any opinions/feelings on any of this, please feel free to comment! In the meantime, have a good weekend and happy “start of December and the mad-rush to the new year” season, everyone!
We are reaching the end of October. It is therefore that time of year again! It’s NaNoWriMo season, my friends!
I think at this point most bookish types are at least vaguely familiar with Nano, but for the uninitiated NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. Nano takes place in November (Novel, November, get it?). It started in 1999 and is run by a nonprofit group at the website www.nanowrimo.org
It’s a challenge, essentially, to write 50,000 words (of the first draft of a novel) over the course of just 30 days in November — 50,000 was chosen as the official word count goal because it is the rough average length of a published novel. (Sort of, the technical definition of a novel is a piece of fiction writing that is 40,000 words or longer. The average length has gone up in recent years and is probably more like 70-80k words at this point, but 50k is a good goal post for the challenge.) You sign up to join the challenge on the website, and keep track of your word count, follow other writers as “buddies,” and generally try to have fun. If you succeed in writing 50k words by Nov 30th, you officially “win” and get a printable certificate, some cool discounts from various participating business partnerships, and bragging rights.
I’ve been participating (or trying to, anyway) most years since 2010. The ONLY time I’ve “won” was in my first year in 2010, when I actually wrote 70k words towards the first draft of my novel Midnight’s Knife (currently at 160,000 words total, in the 2nd draft). That year, I was unemployed and taking a year break between the end of my MA degree and the beginning of my PhD, which was the ONLY reason I actually managed to succeed. Every other year, as I try to write while also working/studying, I have failed miserably. I have never made it past 25k words since then, and some years don’t even break 15k.
But I try most years (I’ve skipped a few), and will again this year. I am currently unemployed again, which might give me a better chance at winning. BUT I am actively looking for/interviewing for jobs, and will hopefully have a new position soon, which will no doubt kill my chances at hitting 50k. But that’s all right. I need the work. And any writing progress is good progress.
This year, I will be starting a new project I’ve had rattling around in the back of my brain for a few months now. I’ve been telling my brain to wait, to put that back where it came from, and so on, for ages. And I decided that now was the time to let my brain pick up the idea and run with it for a while. I’ve been embracing the “Pantser” method of late, so beyond the basic premise and main characters, I have very little idea of where I’m going with this, but its going to have ALL THE VIBES.
It’s a secondary world setting, loosely inspired by Victorian England, featuring period-appropriate imperialism, and an immigrant family from a conquered/“annexed” country vaguely inspired by Japan. I’m stealing from everywhere for this story (including the Victorian England setting, and the Japanese immigrant experience). This stealing also includes: 1) a main character inspired by Ann Elliott from Jane Austen’s Persuasion, 2) the MC’s immigrant mother based on my Japanese-immigrant grandmother, 3) a main Love Interest loosely based on a combination of Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack) and Julie D’Aubigny, and 4) an undead warlock I stole pretty much wholesale from a rural Ohioan legend a Ohioan friend told me about.
I don’t have a title yet so I’m just calling it the “Wesmaris Project” for the moment (Wesmaris being the name of the imperialist country that is the main setting).
Tags include: Victorian aesthetic, imperialist bullshit, immigrant family trauma, wlw, mutual pining, femme/butch, introvert/extrovert, magical beings, shady deals with fay in creepy forests, found family, undead warlock, thread magic, stitch-witchery, downtrodden women getting power and getting revenge, soundtrack by Florence + the Machine and Amazing Devil
And here’s the mood board I spent far too much time on:
Mood board made using Canva and images from Pinterest
Amanda Haimoto Rudd 