Would you read a book where the protagonist already knows how this ends, and tells you anyway?
Writing Parasite Wars.
Worldbuilding and craft notes.
https://a2rkcreative.beehiiv.com/
Would you read a book where the protagonist already knows how this ends, and tells you anyway?
Camorr, canals and cons and gorgeous decay, class written into every cobblestone.
Vehl's Reach, floating above a volcano, one half breathing filtered air, the other breathing metal, the machinery beneath keeping both alive.
Which city would you actually write about?
Tomorrow: Chapter 1 of The Decadal Shift.
Six days before an eclipse that only happens once a decade, one ShadowSider stops asking whether the wall gets another name added to it this year.
He starts deciding whose.
Friday. Free. Link in the reply when it's live.
Indie authors will always be treated as less credible than traditionally published ones.
No matter how good the book is.
His Dark Materials gave everyone a daemon, a piece of themselves outside themselves. Shadowhunters gave warriors a parabatai, a bond stronger than family.
Vehl's Reach has The Binding: SkySide operators paired for life, sworn under oath.
What's your favourite SFF bonding system, and what does it cost the people who don't have one?
Would you read a book where the system isn't evil, just incomplete, and that's somehow worse?
Vertical worlds, ranked by how honestly they admit who's load-bearing.
Coruscant pretends the lower levels don't matter. Vehl's Reach at least keeps a record, even if it's hidden in a corridor nobody from SkySide walks through.
Honesty isn't kindness. It's still rare.
A villain who chose to be cruel makes a better antagonist than a system that became cruel because nobody ever had a reason to fix it.
One is a decision. The other is just inertia.
Dune built an empire around control of a single resource. Whoever holds the spice holds everything.
Vehl's Reach runs on a simpler version of the same logic. Whoever holds the breathable altitude holds the city.
What other SFF worlds turn one resource into total political control?
"I asked a SkySide registrar once whether the Council Tower wall had a counterpart. She did not know one existed. I do not think she was lying. I think the two walls were simply never meant to be read by the same person."
— Eshal, Archivist of the Fourth Vault