Blackstone Academy, the "Janie" story, and percolating
I realized today, as I talked with one of my early readers (one of my Mythic Greece players who was kind enough to actually read and think about some very drafty chapters of what I hope becomes the Blackstone Academy novel), that the people in the Blackstone Academy novels are people I can gossip about. Some of them, in particular the professors, appeared in early drafts of a story (called "the Janie story" because I didn't have a title for it) that I intended to write about a young woman leaving to go to college early and discovering that her college was actually a school to train magic users. Some of those same concepts came over into the Blackstone Academy, and some of the characters came along as well. But instead of doing a tale about the incarnation of the person who would be the villain of the Age as the World Age shifted (something I may still experiment with, but not in this book), I decided to do something that drew more on local history and less on cosmic forces at work.
But some of those back story elements are still there. One of the main professors has brought along all the baggage he originally had in the other plot, though I suspect none of it will ever come out in the Blackstone Academy novel. It's all in the back of my mind, though, and until I discover whether or not it's true in this incarnation, I can gossip about the past as though I'm certain. This is what happened. This is what formed this character.
I've always loved reading blog posts where authors gossip about their characters--or answer reader questions about what happened next/before/between. (sartorias is wonderful at this--she knows so much more about her characters than there is room for in her novels!) But before today, I hadn't ever had the experience where my characters could be gossiped about, and I'm excited to think that I have characters with that kind of back story, that kind of past living in my head.
But some of those back story elements are still there. One of the main professors has brought along all the baggage he originally had in the other plot, though I suspect none of it will ever come out in the Blackstone Academy novel. It's all in the back of my mind, though, and until I discover whether or not it's true in this incarnation, I can gossip about the past as though I'm certain. This is what happened. This is what formed this character.
I've always loved reading blog posts where authors gossip about their characters--or answer reader questions about what happened next/before/between. (sartorias is wonderful at this--she knows so much more about her characters than there is room for in her novels!) But before today, I hadn't ever had the experience where my characters could be gossiped about, and I'm excited to think that I have characters with that kind of back story, that kind of past living in my head.