Why, hello there!

How are you today? Good? Good! So am I!

For today’s blog I thought I’d share some fun behind-the-scenes facts about the writing of the Blades of the Goddess series. These are just some general, overarching facts — eventually, I’d like to do an annotated version of chapters 1-8 of Lost Blades, where I can share fun facts, inspirations, pictures, and whatnot, but that will be a far more granular project. For now this will have to do!

Chapter Titles

The books don’t have chapter titles, because most of the other high fantasy books I read don’t have them, but while writing it was useful to have something that told me at a glance what happened in that chapter. Because I knew these were not going into the books themselves, and because of who I am as a person, these tended to be silly references to other things or song lyrics, and only barely related to the actual happenings of the chapters (I just needed a tangential reminder to the main event within). Not even my beta readers saw these! They were really just for me.

Some of my favorites in Lost Blades were:

Ch 1 - A Series of Unfortunate Events
Ch 2 - Escape from New York
Ch 6 - I’m on a Boat
Ch 8 - One Piece vs. Naruto
Ch 9 - Over the Garden Wall
Ch 10 - Murder on the Orient Express
Ch 16 - Mirror Mirror
Ch 18 - This is Halloween
Ch 22 - Assassin’s Creed
Ch 28 - Failure

Music

Music is a very personal aspect of writing for a lot of authors. Some need music to write, and others need it to be dead silent. For those who do like music, some people want it to match the tone of whatever they are writing, others just want noise in the background somewhere. I like having something ambient (absolutely no lyrics — if I am trying to write words, then having words happen nearby tends to mess me up), and I don’t want to keep messing with a playlist or finding other songs. I ended up finding a 4-hour long track of ambient study music that is now my go-to. It’s something that can drown out any other random sounds happening in my house, but doesn’t distract me from what I’m actually typing!

If you are curious, this video was playing while I wrote probably 90% of the Blades of the Goddess titles: Video

When - the Writing

I am indisputably a night owl. Almost all my writing happens after 6pm, and I would wager most of it actually occurs after midnight. I sent the finished draft of Blades Reforged to my beta readers and editor at 7:10am — not because I got up to send it at that time, but because I had written throughout the night and that was when I finished it XD (I went to bed shortly after). There have been jokes about how I stay up later than some of my west coast friends.

That said, weekends vs. weekdays don’t really matter too much — as long as I can stay up so I can sleep in, words are going to get written :)

When - the Idea

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s still fun. I started writing Lost Blades for NaNoWriMo in 2011, and wrote what would become chapters 1, 2, 5, and half of 6 in that year (the point of views switched each chapter originally, so the original chapter order was 1 (Jamirh - Casino and Jail), 5 (Takeshi - sentencing and banishment), 2 (Jamirh - escape jail and Lyndiniam), 6 (Takeshi - meeting the pirates). The newer flow is much better, and incurs less whiplash in readers!).

However, Gaia as a concept had been around since 2010 — I was originally writing Ebryn’s story, which takes place 1000 years before Lost Blades. Prepping to write that story was how I found out I am not an outliner :)

Also, since I come from a Dungeons & Dragons background, some of the first content I produced were maps and character sketches. I still find it difficult to write without a map if I know my characters are going places!

Food

I still remember a fellow writer asking me what snacks I kept on hand for when I write, and my response was “….what?” XD

I do not eat while writing — it interrupts my flow! Also it is hard to eat and type simultaneously. I need my hands on the keys. But having said that I can write for long stretches of time. Stretches of time where I do, in fact, need to eat. So I have alarms on my phone reminding me to take breaks and eat!

Knowing that, you might think the prevalence of food in my writing is because I’m hungry — not so! Many of the foods you see characters eating or mentioning in Blades are foods that I had for dinner around the time of writing (the barbecue chicken on the Sea Spirit is a prime example of this). Other foods are ones I researched to fit a certain culture or theme (Jeri, for example, makes stuffed cabbage rolls in “Yellow” — while I grew up with the Polish version, this is the Romania one!). I think food is a fun way to… ah… “flavor” your writing!

Pets (and Pet Sitting)

I have quite a few friends who ask me to cat or dog sit for them — and I find this a great time for writing! So here’s to some of my pet pals who were with me while writing parts of Blades:

Juno
Luna
Tenzin
Ted
Ginny
Bella
Bibbit
Scout

My own pup, Malcolm, was present for the rest of the writing. After I finished Lost Blades, I did a recorded read-through of it for my brother — he had a “my boy!!” counter for every time he could hear Malcolm in the background.

Walking

I think best while walking, but I loathe the outside. So instead, I do a lot of brainstorming while walking in circles around my house! I tend to get more steps on a writing day than on a non-writing day. I often keep a notebook open on a table that I walk past with a pen and highlighter nearby, so if I have to write something down it is easy to do so.

Iron

Hilariously, while I was in the later part of the draft for Broken Blades, I was diagnosed with high iron in my blood — something that Takeshi has due to the [redacted] in the beginning of the book! Life imitating art. My hematologist found this amazing when I told him and gave me a whole bunch of information of what could happen in later stages, since Takeshi’s situation was much worse than mine. I did not end up using most of this, but I still have these notes just in case.

And that’s it for today! I’ll do another blog at some point that is more inspiration-specific, but other than that, what kinds of behind-the-scenes info are you interested in?

Fun Facts about Blades of the Goddess