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Recent Updates:
BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS is now available for preorder. You can see the announcement here.
It’s available everywhere you buy your books.
Want my recommendation on where to preorder?
Get the Ebook here: Campfire
Get Paperback and Hardback here: Bookshop.org
Project Progress:
Publication of BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS is on track!
Still not much progress on book 2, far too distracted.
All other projects are still on hold.
Recent Fascinations: The Final Month of Waiting
What else could I talk about in July other than the coming storm of August?
I thought about starting a new running series, a month by month breakdown of the books that have shaped me, but as I sat down to start working on this month’s newsletter, I found it impossible to think of anything besides AUGUST.
Next month, my book comes into this world, despite the screaming, the tears, the mental breakdowns that have happened since I first put words on the page back in 2021. Despite the continued chaos in the world around me, my little beautiful story about found family and Mississippi and standing up for what you believe in will come into this world on a hot Summer Saturday. What more could I have ever asked for in life than this?
At this point, the trepidation is beginning to give way to pure excitement. I can’t wait to sit across a table from potential readers, pitching my book to them. Even if it is just a handful of them, even just one, I know that that feeling will be an absolute life changer. Still, of course, I am also feeling that constant growing sense of terror. One person would be an honor, but what will NO people be? Is that possible, even though I have done everything that I can. I don’t think that there’s any real risk of my launch being so catastrophic, but of course logic isn’t quite the ruling emotion during something as momentous as a debut novel.
In this moment before the release of my novel, though, I struggle to find something to say that I haven’t said so far. I’ve talked about my plans, what I hope to accomplish, the processes that brought me to self-publishing. At this point, I think the main thing I haven’t talked about yet is the primary inspirations that brought BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS into being.
One of the great frustrations of any author is the perennial question “Where do you get your ideas?” This will not be an exploration of where I got the “idea”, as if there could ever be a single origin point, but instead an exploration of the more nuanced influences that are present in the pages of BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS. This will be spoiler free, and will focus on big picture ideas. In order to break it up into more manageable concepts, I’m going to talk about my inspirations on the various elements of the book. Starting with:
Setting:
I think that out of everything, this is the most obvious to anyone who goes into the story knowing me. The setting of BRN was inspired by, top to bottom, the Jackson Metro.
At the time I started writing the book, I was not living in the metro, but had just started working in Downtown Jackson for the State Legislature (god help me what a hell of a job that was), and the surrounding area was front and center in my mind.
However, anyone coming into the story with any concrete knowledge of the metro will recognize immediately that something is off. The names “Calarine” and “Varinz” are, as far as I know, made up and not inspired by anything from reality. While local landmarks are referenced, nothing is exactly as it should be. There is no “Risen Range” outside of the metro.
For me, exploring the region through this process of manipulation and change was an absolute blast, and by far the best part of writing the book.
However, there is one big part of the setting that might, for local readers, stand out like a sore thumb.
The Belhaven.
For readers not from the Jackson Metro, the name Belhaven might not mean much. For locals, though, Belhaven is a neighborhood and university in the area. However, astute readers will notice that it is categorically impossible for any library at Belhaven university to BE the Belhaven of BRN. What exactly IS the Belhaven’s history, and more broadly, why is this area called the Calarine Ruins instead of some other identifiable part of the Metro? Well, I’d say just read the books, but I’m afraid those particular mysteries won’t be explored for a few more entries in the series. I will give a concrete statement that: The Belhaven of BRN is not Belhaven University, or anything in Jackson. Geographically, the university, and Calarine as a whole, do not fall within the bounderies of the City of Jackson.
That’s as much as I’m willing to say, but don’t worry, I promise it’s all worth it. In the meantime, the best thing to do with the setting of BRN, and especially the Belhaven, is just take it as casual anachronism, and maybe try to piece together exactly what happened to this world to make everything turn out how it has.
Characters:
This conversation is a little more complicated.
There are a great many characters in the books I can’t discuss at all, because to do so would be to provide so many spoilers that it would make the book near-pointless. So, I’m going to stick to discussing the two of the main characters, Sarah and Sibella.
Sarah is a character with a lot going on. Several people in my life have asked me who I based her on, and there has been a lot of speculation on that, but I’m afraid I will never be able to give any real, concrete answer. The reality is that Sarah came into being on her own, and was helped along in no small part by my editor, who helped me fill in the voids present in her character in the first draft.
There are parts of myself that I used in the creation of Sarah’s character, though. Her anxiety and mental spirals are very much pulled from my own mental health struggles. Her fears, frustration, and grief over her past are also, at least in part, based on pieces of my own life I find frustrating or shameful. Perhaps, though, the thing that is most heavily based in my own experience is her penchant for blind, foolish overconfidence. More than once I have, to borrow a phrase from Andy Griffith, gotten my britches caught in my own pitchfork. While exactly what happens to Sarah because of her overconfidence is beyond what I myself have experienced, those decisions are based almost entirely on my own past behavior. Her casual bullheadedness is based on no single person, but a broader concept of how I remember myself and so many others behaving at 19. Her apperance is another thing from nowhere, pulled together from disparate places to form a single character.
Sibella, however, is a much easier character to unpack. The inspiration for a “magic falcon made of paper” is quite obvious for anyone who’s ever seen THE PAGEMASTER. The idea of animate creatures made from the pages of books inside a massive library has always stuck with me, and that image was front and center as I crafted Sibella. Originally, he was supposed to be an owl, but after further consideration of what a nocturnal life cycle would mean for the plot of the book, I shifted away from that to a Peregrine Falcon. Looking back now, I think I would choose a Red Tailed Hawk, native to Mississippi if given a second pass at the first draft, but by the time I thought of that, Sibella’s identity as a falcon is too deeply rooted in his character and my own internal image of him. I do think, though, his non-nativeness to the enviornment around him will become something I address in a future book.
Also, to air out a part of his character that was not on purpose: No, when I created him I did not know that Sibella was a Greek word for a prophetess. I also did not remember the female vampire character from Scooby-Doo GHOUL SCHOOL, though I have seen that movie. It was all happenstance. I thought of the name Sibella and it stuck. It is absolutely possible that the name was rattling around in my head from something I read about Ancient Greece or that movie, but if pressed at the moment, I would have claimed the name was my own invention. Perhaps this little mix up will make it into the story somewhere in later entries, we’ll see.
Those are the only two places I’m going to go into any real detail on my inspiration. I thought about including sections on the plot and world building, but I think discussing either of those subjects in too much detail will pull some of the magic out of the story itself, so sorry. Maybe when book 2 is closer to release, we can have that conversation, but not just yet.
For now though, I think that about covers it. I can’t wait for all of you to read this book. I hope you love it at least half as much as I do.
Thanks for Reading.
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