Nancy Foster's Blog

 Yes, I probably should write on my blog more often. I feel like writing here is akin to screaming into a void where nobody is going to read it.

Older posts I have meandered about some inner aspects of my worldbuilding. If I am in the mood sometime, I might get back to writing more ramblings. At least if I die abruptly and my books become surprise cult hits, there is canonical material out there.

I always drew as a kid and have tons of scanned scribblings I rescued from school notebooks that I had to throw away to make space.

Some aspects of my drawing never change, such as how I always draw jawlines and eyes first. Or how I draw ridiculously slender arms. It's more of a drawing style and what feels most comfortable for me.

Even though social media ensures algorithmns murder art related posts, some reader friends always commend they enjoy it when I share art.

I don't share everything, lots of drawings I end up deleting without finishing.

Procreate is an amazing program. I really love it. I no longer use Photoshop because my old laptop motherboard was fried during an electric storm. I own Clip Art but I never understood how to use the program and there aren’t Spanish language tutorials.

Yes. I am a native English speaker and understand the language perfectly fine. But I have computer programs in Spanish to avoid OS instability issues where menus are organized differently. So, the variety of good tutorials is slim.

I draw with trial and error and some people have told me my art is evolving. I can't quite see the changes myself, except I am more careful fixing proportion errors due to my astigmatism earlier in drawing stages.

Seeing art by other artists might have also helped me. I am terrible following long video tutorials, but I like experimenting with different brushes and color shading. And I think that explains part of my improvements.

Anyhow, I recently finished this Tioja drawing. It isn't perfect, but I am much better drawing hands. Lips continue to be a struggle for me, but I am expending increased efforts at drawing backgrounds and proportionate wings.

I am slowly drawing the 12 gold saint houses in Caballeros del Zodiaco pixel style. This project might take a while because the houses are difficult to stay 100% proportionate. Cleaning up takes ages. But I will certainly like to share an animation I plan to do with an overlay of the epic music. Procreate dreams makes this possible and very user friendly.

I would also like to draw backgrounds from my own books and have characters do stuff like summon phantom beasts.

 I went ahead and commed the cover of a Science Fiction story I have been starting to work on, and the artist known as TheStreetDog23 went far beyond my vision and produced the most gorgeous cover ever. I still need to get a full-fledged typography for the cover. That is going to be tricky, which is why I don't have an official goodreads profile for the book yet.

I am still tinkering with the blurb, so that isn't ready either. Someone online commented ACOOH might be a bit similar in a few aspects to a book called Murderbot Diaries. I have not read this series, so I have no idea. Usually my books can't be comped with other work. Half of the time, readers have no idea what to comp them with and mention they are a teeny tiny little bit like The hobbit or LOTR because there are fantasy elements. Which is true, but so vague that I always return to square 1 and have no idea how to market my stories.

As for A curse of optical haptics, I was taking a course on computer science and that word popped out. And I instantly knew I NEED A BOOK WITH THAT WORD IN THE TITLE. So everything surrounds the concept of tactical technology that is vague Sci-Fi material, but the story is so wild since I am going pretty unhinged with it that I am unsure what genre it really fits into. The only thing certain is that Leenx takes no bullshit from anyone.

I have written around 18,000 words of the story. More elements of the worldbuilding are cooking in my mind. There will be weird alien races in them and other random stuff. I think one of the few normal scenes is seeing a net appear from a ceiling and taking someone away.

Quite frankly, I would be shocked readers will not find the book to be absolutely weird, wild and scratch their heads after reading it. I already know how it ends (no, I will not spoil it), it's now the voyage where I need to get. I tend to be an overwriter, but I will hope this book stays at 80,000 words tops. I will go nuts if it suddenly balloons into 100,000 word territory. Oh please don't be so long, pleaaaase!

Anyways, even though I probably spoiled things a bit because I didn't do a fancy book cover reveal (I am working on a shoestring budget and feel too shy asking for blogs for those fancy showcases). But here is a cut-up low resolution version of the cover. I might print it and paste it on the wall to inspire me to cook up those chapters quicker and finish writing it. With some luck, it will be available in 2024.

 Bit of a late announcement, but at approximately 94,000 words (including a long ass glossary and brief story recap), I finished writing the sequel and finale of the Fragmented Fates duology a few days ago. It is being read right now by a trusted beta reader.

Now, why did I end up dividing this book into two halves?

1) I didn't want to release a 160,000 word book. I am an overwriter and new information about characters pops up as I chaotically write the story. 160,000 word books are a very hard sell, but 80,000 word stories are easy bite-sized treats. The final chapter of Talgel's monologue was written after I sliced the books in half to make it feel like an actual ending of act 1, which is why it is so short.

After finishing the sequel that without other filler is around the same length, it would have been a titanic feat to have churned the entire story in 120,000 words. I would have had to skip too many scenes. Both books expanded as they are barely offer time for downtime at all. The extra 40,000 words gave the sequel plenty of extra time to expand some connecting scenes that makes the time skips far less jarring.

2) I just wanted to get A book published in 2023 and was not writing sufficiently fast enough to get the job done.

Savior on the zenith follows a much darker path from its more cheerful 1st half (a titanic feat given readers all agree it is a very dark story). Tioja starts living among harlequins in an underground city and interacts with his rambuctious younger half brother Gulraj.

Book 1 spends an inordinate amount of time having Talgel move the chess pieces in position and now she gives the reins of the story to Tioja. As part of my plan for the cover, it will be a mirror of book 1 in a way with a darker pallette to exemplify the more serious tone of the story.

Will there be more action?

Yes, certainly. Readers hurting to experience harlequin society firsthand will get their chance here. And yes, we get fights, quite a few of them, in fact. Tioja will grow a lot in this story.

Now that I have finished the book, I feel a sense that every protagonist has made their trip and returned home. There is still plenty of potential canonical story left between the finale of the duology and the begining of the Ominous Book series, but chances are I will never write it because I want to focus on other projects. It was still a fun story to write, challenging at times because I had to envision a totally different and youthful Tioja.

Until next time!

 Chances are most people that have stumbled into my blog have not read any of my books. Those few people that have read Fragmented Fates might have noticed Talgel's body is posessed by a evil spirit so to say that taunts her and lets her see visions of inane future events that only waste her time.

The demon does this on purpose out of spite and also because it is only using Talgel for its own agenda. An interesting concept I mention in the end of the book is how the demon explains to Talgel that harlequin elf phantom beasts are the manifestation of the secret innermost desire of the summoner.

Talgel wanted to obtain the power of Absolute Truth to know if she would have a Happily Ever After with her love interest Jarahad (readers can easily guess this will be a no given she rejects his hand in marriage the whole novel for no apparent reason).

And one of the characters that ends up summoning an uncontrollable phantom beast later in the story secretly wanted the power of Absolute Destruction. Which I dare say is quite a nifty ability given how versatile it is. The character later on discovers as the years pass that the ability is not just destructive. It can read all sorts of seemingly invisible traits of whatever object is within the area of view of the ability. The summoner can see the true blood ancestry of anyone standing within their beast's line of sight, magic tuning element and if they posess other sources of obscure magic that can't be seen by regular means. A person disguising as a human won't be able to hide their harlequin or elf ancestry. This magic skill will prove pivotal in the Fragmented Fates sequel that I am close to finishing.

Jarahad later in the book also obtains his own phantom beast which manifests as a semi-transparent green armor. His innermost desire is the power of Absolute Protection, which makes sense given all of the hardships he endures ever since he was born. The armor can be moved with his mind, rearranged into various positions. He can use it as a means of transportation, and can even fly short distances with it.

Given most demonic beasts are invisible psychic abilities, Jarahad's armor beast is of the more unusual kind that can be easily visible.

Are there other characters that will summon their own demonic beasts in the sequel?

The answer is a huge YES!

Fragmented Fates hints a character that isn't born yet named Gulraj will have his own beast. It will prove to be pivotal in the sequel, even though he seldom uses it.

Some of the halflings will have beasts. Nurran can summon a gooey phleghm that changes the property of metal. This will become useful in the future as he spends his time constructing semi magical weapons that don't have all of the pitfalls of true harlequin steel. Sadly for my readers, this beast won't be shown in action in the book sequel.

Another character will obtain a beast that gives him telepathy, which suits him very well. The downside is that the ability of Absolute Communication will inevitably drive him towards his self-destruction sometime in the future. I hint about the character's death in future books but never reveal their name. In case anyone is wondering, this is the character that dies using their beast at inopportune times.

Well, I am getting sleepy, so I will finish this rant that will be left for posterity so that obsessive fans 20 years from now have semi-officialñ confirmation of ther theories surrounding some of the Easter Eaggs I spread around in my books.

Happy searching!

Welcome everyone, I am proud to announce the long awaited book Fragmented Fates by Nancy Foster is finally available on preorder on Amazon. This prequel has been a pet project of mine for the past 3 years, and I hope to finish the second half of this exciting duology in the next few months.
So, if you enjoy this book, please give this book a chance, feel free to write a review and if you enjoyed it, please spread word of mouth.
So, without further ado, please click on the cover of the book below and visit the website on Amazon and preorder today!


 

My book is competing in the #SPFBO9 competition. There are zero guarantees my book will reach semifinalist status because the competition is insanely fierce, but there are already several people that are interested in giving my book a chance. The ebook isn't even out yet and I already have my first 5 star rating on goodreads! Yahoo!

Oh, this is the goodreads link. Click HERE.
Thanks!

 I know it has been a very long time since I have last written a blog entry. Some readers are well aware I sometimes work up to 3 jobs with fluctuating schedules, so I am not always able to write books.

So, what is Fragmented Fates?

When I wrote the 4th book Diaspora, snippets of the story of the exiled Grey Clan are offered but never expanded. We then get to learn a bit more about it in the 5th, 6th and 7th books. I believe the story of the founding of Almjarhad is awash in good writing potential because of the intertwining of so many stories meshed together along with complex characters.

And so, I gave it a try because there is just so much story to tell. One problem I began to face 3 months ago was that I wanted to reach from point A to point B. While the first half of the book had a lot of chapter revisions to make it entertaining without going either too fast or slow, the chapters of the last third of the story felt very rushed because I was desperate to keep the story beneath 120,000 words.

I do not feel satisfied with the last chapters I wrote due to word count constraints. Editing costs of a 150,000 word book is untenable for me. It isn't easy for me to reunite over 1000 dollars and I also want to get a customized cover which will easily cost 400 dollars. Therefore, I decided to cut the WIP into a duology and felt surprised by how filling the first 30 chapters feel. We cover the most pressing initial plot points, the endless drama caused by Talgel's manipulation, and the satisfying conclusion to this section of the story.

Even if a person never, ever reads any other book, Fragmented Fates covers enough story to feel interesting without being overwhelming. And, contary to An Ominous Book that rightfully annoyed plenty of readers due to the cliffhanger, this book wraps a lot of the pressing plot points and yet leaves insane amounts of story potential in the open.

I need to save money for a sensitivity reader for Talgel's scenes, so it may take a while longer to get the WIP ready for beta readers. I am close to finishing the few corrections for Jamarnid's scenes. The sensitivity reader that I hired enjoyed the WIP very much, which made me feel very happy.

Getting some feedback from beta readers would be great. Since I risk causing major plot holes with my main series, there are plot changes I cannot do. But I would feel appreciative if readers checked it out and told me if they liked it.

In the meantime, I am sharing a piece of comissioned art for one of the 4 main characters named Talgel. Enjoy!

 On the next entry to this fun self-assessment writing activity, I have to begin veering towards supporting characters because there isn't a lot of female main characters in the series.

Why is this?

Well, because I love centering a huge portion of the plot around the Äimite Guard which due to its stringent training requirements, has a horrible gender imbalance where only 8% of the guards being female at the most.

So chances are I will start to see plenty of less important characters failing this test.

Lord Yu espouses the kind of nobleelf Lord Spaulding detests because she is living proof the Red Clan's unique Clan Leader selection criteria based on hair color is a terrible idea.

And yet despite garnering little respect in the mainland, her people love and respect her and she seems far smarter than what you'd think.

Click on the image to get An Ominous Book on Amazon!

1. Does the character shape her own destiny? Does she actively try to change her situation and if not, why not?

Lord Yu knows she is the next in line to inherit leadership of her clan. Her mother Tesra is dying of heart disease and she has pretty much already taken over duties as the clan's official figurehead.
Far less abrasive than Tesra, Yu uses her mother's terminal illness as the perfect excuse not to visit the mainland during the nation's most important ceremony in Book 3. This is with the purpose of training Richard and Vincent without unwanted prying eyes.
In book 1, Lord Spaulding warned her not to open the magical chest and showed the scar tissue on his arms as proof of its inherent danger. Against all common sense, Yu decided to veer inside.
At first sight, one would argue Yu's decisions are done under her free will without coercion. Sadly a spoiler from Book 3 proves this is not entirely true. And so she loses half a point.
Points: 0.5/1

2. Does she have her own goals, beliefs and hobbies? Did she come up with them on her own?
She wants to assist Lord Spaulding and Richard. She helps Spaulding free of charge because she is fond of him (mostly because they are the only clan leaders we meet early in the story that are mortal), whereas she finds Richard to be cute looking and believes he deserves to recover his rightful place as the king of Ayrtain.
Her beliefs are quite straightforward, but as I mention in question 1, her free will is not entirely preserved. There is no way to know if she agreed to any of the things she does in the story outside of taking the magical chest to the Elf King's palace.
We also never discover what she does in her free time.
So...
Points: 0/1

3. Is her character consistent? Do her personality or skills change as the plot demands?
Yu is a master in deceit and takes advantage of being viewed as an obnoxious clown so that King Salman never sees her as a real threat. A lot of this behavior seems to be an act.
Being raised by Tesra likely had an influence. She knows perfectly well she can barter the Elf King's cooperation under the constant threat of letting human armies enter the kingdom's territorial waters and wreak havoc. I doubt Yu would go so far because she doesn't seem to detest Lord Froylan like her mother does, but it's a good way to keep the kingdom from meddling into her personal affairs which helps move the plot forward.
Points: 1/1

4. Can you describe her in one short sentence without mentioning her love life, her physical appearance, or the words ‘strong female character’?
The incessantly loud and boisterous heiress to the obtuse Red Clan that likes to set her own rules.
Points: 1/1

5. Does she make decisions that aren’t influenced by her love life?
Despite the seemingly innapropriate flirting on Spaulding (which was more of a prank than anything serious), she agreed to take the magical chest to the capital as a personal favor to her friend... and to satiate her curiosity because she wanted to confirm whether the artifact was as dangerous as Spaulding claims.
I still have a hunch a lot of the things she did for Richard was because she was attracted to him.
Points: 0.5/1

6. Does she develop over the course of the story?
In this respect, sadly not enough. She proves a veil of increased distrust of the government when she hopelessly watches Spaulding's brutal flogging. Even though she skipped further visits to the capital to protest Spaulding's suffering, by this time in the story, her actions are not fully governed by her willpower, and so I sadly can't give her any points. 😢
Points: 0/1

7. Does she have a weakness?
I would suppose laughing so loud that makes icicles in the ceiling fall to the ground could be counted as that. Add a dabble of being crass and sprinkles of overconfidence when it comes to underestimating dangerous magical artifacts and she is definitely no Mary Sue.
Points: 1/1

8. Does she influence the plot without getting captured or killed?
Yu moves the story forward in book 3. First she trains Richard and his servant Vincent even though she knows she could get arrested if the guard finds out Richard is in the country. She gives both humans money and a map to the place where they will encounter Lord Spaulding. She later on asks her mother to send her phantom beast to the mainland to invite Richard to her city for an important message that drives the plot forward.
And sadly... well. Despite all of her contributions to the plot, she has to get a half point due to a... well, that is a spoiler.
Points: 0.5/1

9. How does she relate to stereotypes about gender?
Yu learned from her mom to make her own rules. She can flirt with anyone she wants (even an underage human! Yikes!), doesn't care what the mainlanders think about her, and still she has a good fashion sense that frequently makes men stutter.
She knows she has curves and is not ashamed to flaunt them. Might go overboard a bit.
Points: 0.5/1

10. How does she relate to other female characters?
Yu seldom visits the mainland due to geographical constraints outside of her duty to the Elf King to be present during the New Year Festival and so she doesn't have a lot of chances to interact with the main cast.
She doesn't spend much time interacting with Nelida and is instead flirting with her brother Richard. Yu found the girl to be cute but most of the scant conversation was surrounded on her frequent taunts directed at poor Spaulding.
Yu has a nice relationship with her mother Tesra albeit due to Tesra's illness, we don't have a lot of chances to see this in action.
Even though Yu knows Seiran pretty well, Seiran has a far stronger relationship with Tesra and thus they are just amicable acquaintances at best.
Points: 0.5/1
**********
The score is in! Yu gets a... 6.5. 😨
Sooo... I guess she barely squirmed into a ⭐⭐⭐ score. It isn't like... terrible given she only appears briefly in the story, but the test sure is enlightening.
Better luck next time, Yu!

Continuing this fun self assessment exercise, I wish to follow up with Leilandy. She only makes a minuscule appearance in An Ominous Book 1, and then becomes an important antagonist in books 2 and 3. And spoiler! Book 5.

With so many subplots ocurring concurrently in the story, Leilandy sort of gets tossed under the rug which is a letdown because she is the only 100%  human mage in the series to become massively overpowered without being under the influence of any of the 4 Ominous Books.

She is the most human character of them all, and a reflection of the society she grew up in. I sympathize with her, albeit I don't precisely like her either. Earlier when I wrote the books, I had pondered whether either she or Trevilin could be in the hunt for the Green Book because both of them were earth mages until I ultimately scrapped the idea and went in a different direction instead.

So sit down, steal an elf's mace and summon an earth golem! 😎

Click on the image to get An Ominous Book on Amazon!

1. Does the character shape her own destiny? Does she actively try to change her situation and if not, why not?

Leilandy's survival was an accident even the Ominous Book was incapable of predicting. The book decided to keep her alive because it wanted to exploit her burgeoning hatred of the Elf Kingdom to further its master plan. In this regard, Leilandy couldn't choose to survive the extermination of her family because her mother gifted her an ancient stone necklace that was a family heirloom and the it saved her life.
She also had no chance to oppose wearing the metallic mask that is an outdated tradition of her country. In this regard, she couldn't blame her suffering on the Elf Kingdom because it isn't a cultural export of the kingdom.
What she did have was the choice to ask Trevilin to teach her how to use magic. At first sight, her petition seemed innocent enough, but it is veiled by a mattice of jealousy for Richard being first in line to the throne (which she falsely attributes to his gender instead of the fact the Earlrose family had a stronger claim to the throne). Learning magic would be fruitful because she took advantage Richard was unable to awaken his magic to usurp the throne and planned to force Richard to live the rest of his life under house arrest far away from the capital where he couldn't be a nuissance.
The subsequent invasion of Ayrtain in book 5 was commanded by her with the purpose of being the new queen and to someday conquer the Elf Kingdom.
Points: 0.5/1
2. Does she have her own goals, beliefs and hobbies? Did she come up with them on her own?
We don't get to see her enjoy hobbies in book 2 because she suffered the worst punishment due to wearing the mask. Constrained by the threat of being tied to a chair if she exposed even a smidget of skin in public and forced to wear uncomfortable clothes that made it impossible to do exercise, she spent most of her free time praying. The book doesn't hint whether her prayers were genuine or because there wasn't a lot of other permissible activities.
Her disdain for the Elf Kingdom was imbued by her society which became unfettered hatred after she ended up expelled by Richard. Taking advantage the kingdom isn't well liked in many foreign nations, she somehow ended up in Hataraj, learned the language, and chose to marry a thuggish warlord she both adores and mistreats.
The siege of Ayrtain is entirely her doing and she proves to be a pretty resourceful commander despite having poor combat skills.
Points: 1/1
3. Is her character consistent? Do her personality or skills change as the plot demands?
She initially tolerates her cousin Richard and dislikes the Elf Kingdom, but her hatred grows in equal amounts as the story progresses.
She is heartless, demeaning and sadistic. She feels no remorse seeing humans starve to death in a gibbet and enjoys being cruel to captured elves out of spite.
It is no surprise she treats her lovers with equal amounts of lovebombing and as peons. We can see proof of this by the way she obtains the loyalty of both Knight Ralph and her husband Kumar.
Her stone collar is no ordinary piece of jewelry. It becomes increasingly powerful and has rendered her essentially immortal. Had she bothered to train in magic rather than become too reliant on the necklace, she could potentially destroy the kingdom.
Points: 1/1
4. Can you describe her in one short sentence without mentioning her love life, her physical appearance, or the words ‘strong female character’?
A bitter heiress to the throne that wants to blame every misfortune in her life to the Elf Kingdom whether or not this is true or not.
Points: 1/1
5. Does she make decisions that aren’t influenced by her love life?
Her ultimate goal is to regain her perceived birthright to become the Queen of Ayrtain, become a more powerful earth mage and someday destroy the Elf Kingdom for killing her parents.
Ralph and Kumar as just two artifices she uses to make it easier to attain her wish.
Points: 1/1
6. Does she develop over the course of the story?
She starts out as a jaded young teenager that has suffered through the trauma of losing her family for reasons out of her control and evolves into a bitter, cruel woman that just happens to be both beautiful and a competent earth mage.
Points: 1/1
7. Does she have a weakness?
She doesn't know anything about her stone collar nor its weaknesses. Her judgement is clouded by her unfettered hatred of the Elf Kingdom so she never bothers to learn the full extent to her magic or show the humility to apologize to Richard and make ammends.
Had it not been for her stone collar, she would have been considered to be a below average human mage and any apprentice Aimite guard could have easily defeated her with ease.
Points: 1/1
8. Does she influence the plot without getting captured or killed?
Yes. She awakens her magic, imprisons her cousin Richard, purges the capital of knights that remain loyal to her cousin while continuing to increase her grip on power.
The stone necklace ensured she remained unharmed when she emigrated to Hataraj and she willingly learned their language and culture because of a common hatred for the Elf Kingdom.
Book 5 however has a plot spoiler and that means I had to knock decimals here.
Points: 0.5/1

9. How does she relate to stereotypes about gender?
Even though Leilandy is quite ladylike in her choice of attire, she is outspoken about her racism, mistreats men (both lovers, enemies and allies alike), and quite resourceful when it comes to emigrating to a hostile foreign country to settle down. She doesn't believe a woman should be denied the chance to become a queen and is very adamant in choosing a husband as long as he is capable with the sword, blindly obeys her every command and can satisfy her sexually.
The book seems to prove she is a bit of a contrast to the gender stereotype during her magic training where she is caught talking to flowers with the demureness of a lady while at the same time being able to summon an unladylike rock golem shaped phantom beast.
Points: 1/1
10. How does she relate to other female characters?
Leilandy only shares a strong relationship with Nelida. At first they get along very well due to finding common ground about disliking the Elf Kingdom. Leilandy even tries to guilt-trip Nelida into taking her side at least once.
Upon discovering Nelida (now under the full control of the White Book) not only is a capable air mage but she confessed she murdered their family, they become sworn enemies.
Leilandy ceases to have a relationship with Nelida but lets her posessed cousin wreak havoc to the Elf Kingdom because this made it easier to imprison Richard who is accussed of withcraft and because Nelida was busy killing elves which is something she agreed with.
Points: 1/1

*****
Point total: a whopping 9 points out of 10! 🥳🥳🥳
5 stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Perhaps Leilandy is blindsided by predjudice against both elves and men, and she has to rely on the magic of a stone necklace to become overpowered instead of learning how to fight better. But she is a pretty formidable female character that doesn't get the attention she deserves.
She should get a few extra points just because she looks so damn badass carrying a mace and has the audacity to talk back at Froylan. Very few characters are dumb enough to do that.

 I have decided to begin the "Strong female test" of the Ominous Book series on Nelida Earlrose, the troubled little girl that spends a good portion of An Ominous Book driving her poor elf uncle Spaulding insane due to being a complete pain in the ass spoiled brat.

When I first had the idea of writing this series, it featured the death of the vast majority of a human royal family by a batshit crazy magical book to advance its own nefarious purposes and Nelida was the unlucky sap that became infected by it. She gets to enjoy a lot of suckiness (many of them magnified because again, she is insufferably spoiled) but she is one of the drivers of the initial story.

Ahoy spoilers, if you don't want to be spoiled before this post, go read my book and feel free to come back! 😉

1. Does the character shape her own destiny? Does she actively try to change her situation and if not, why not?

In chapter 3, Nelida and Richard meet Lord Yu, the "colorful" heiress to the Red Clan who came to Spaulding's estate after Trevillin begged for her help.
Annoyed out of his wits, Spaulding wished his friend had chosen someone he didn't detest to help him. Too bad Trevilin got caught by his supervisor sneaking out of the job and grounded with unpaid overtime. Beggars can't be choosers when you plan to bend the law, I suppose!
Nelida already had a basic grasp of the Elf Language thanks to her classes and the two siblings discovered Spaulding was hiding a magical chest in his castle.
While it seemed both kids agreed to find it, Nelida could have urged her brother to behave instead of meddling into Spaulding's private affairs. Nobody coerced her to look in the pantry. She opened the door and discovered streak marks on the stone flooring which indicated the existence of a hidden trap door and got infected by the artifact that drove the story forward.
Given a lot of Nelida's behavior during the story was spurned by the book that posessed her, many things don't apply, but she did beg her uncle to learn magic.
Points: 0.5/1
2. Does she have her own goals, beliefs and hobbies? Did she come up with them on her own?
A lot of her initial goals is geared towards returning to her old life in Ayrtain and to be able to eat meat whenever she wanted. But it isn't so easy when you're a penniless 6 year old girl in a strange country where you neither speak the language or understand the rigid society that will never change to appease you. Hamarin offered the sheer basics of the language and culture in his daily classes without explaining anything about the existence of magic because Spaulding assumed they would soon depart his perfect solitary life and it wouldn't matter.
Nelida isn't seen doing any hobbies, except perhaps for her penchant for mischief looking for dangerous magical artifacts. The things she does do that are within her control given her young age and overall weakness are under her free will.
Her beliefs however are very straightforward: elves are fastidious, she misses the normalcy of the home she left behind and wants to return to it but learning so many things about her uncle's country and the existence of sorcery has marked her forever.
Points: 1/1
3. Is her character consistent? Do her personality or skills change as the plot demands?
Nelida grows during the course of the story. She continues to have a preference for human customs and cuisine, but she learns how to become less unappreciative, more open minded and caring.
Halfway in the first novel when she is delegated to the grim task of protecting her cousin Herb who is bedridden from disease, a badly injured Spaulding borrows his dagger for protection while he searches for help and she tries her earnest to keep her cousin alive within her limited abilities (she fetches for some water and tries to keep his fever under control). She is weak, practically defenseless, worried about her kidnapped brother and beyond exhausted, but she does not back down in this scene and stays awake until her uncle returns. I would really like to know what do readers think about this scene but I personally like seeing her in a positive light for a change.
The Nelida that we meet in the first chapter and at the end of the book shows some consistency in her character, but we can agree she will never be the same person ever again.
A lot of her growth seems stunted in book 2, but I believe it is marked by the trauma of her new life situation as the third in line to the throne. Her memory has been erased because the Ominous Book has no need to carry through with its plans at the time.
Because of the uneven growth of her character development in Book 2 partially because she no longer had full control of her body anymore, I had to give her a half score.
Points: 0.5/1
4. Can you describe her in one short sentence without mentioning her love life, her physical appearance, or the words ‘strong female character’?
A spoiled little girl that is forced to adapt to a foreign country and is loyal to her family.
Points: 1/1
5. Does she make decisions that aren’t influenced by her love life?
Given she doesn't have much of a love life, this would ring true. She looked for the magical chest due to boredom and wanted to learn magic to protect her older brother.
She has a crush on Lord Siri, but the influencing roles are reversed. She is the one that demanded him to get a haircut because he looked too much like her uncle.
Points: 1/1
6. Does she develop over the course of the story?
If she had been given a dagger and the command to stay put while her cousin was feverish while her uncle searched for help in the start of the story, she probably would have demanded to go with her uncle and abandoned Herb.
Fed up with being saved over and over again due to being unable to use magic served as a source of motivation.
Sadly for her, the fact she had been posessed by a magical book that used her body like a puppet to serve its own interests did knock half a point. The book did its best to emulate Nelida's decisions, but it isn't the same thing to have a false notion of free will.
Points: 0.5/1
7. Does she have a weakness?
Nelida probably has too many to tell! She's crass, spoiled, prone to temper tantrums and pretty poor at getting into someone's else's shoes.
She laughs at her uncle's spelling mistakes without acknowledging Human isn't his maternal language and being incapable of awakening her mana like her brother did made her feel jealous.
Points: 1/1
8. Does she influence the plot without getting captured or killed?
Well, nobody told her to open a hidden door in a pantry to get herself infected with a dangerous magical artifact, right? 😒
Funny thing is that even though this crucial event is the cause that moves the story forward, doing so proved to be her demise because she was never the same person ever again.

Points: 0/1
9. How does she relate to stereotypes about gender?
Nelida loves femenine human clothes and feels ashamed of wearing skimpy clothes. Elvish swimsuits are too revealing for her taste and she spares few jabs in the book to complain about wearing clothes she doesn't like.
That isn't to say she fits in a square box as a passive lady. If she had known how to use sorcery early in the story, she would not have hesitated in fighting in self-defense.
She shows no real interest to become a nobleman's wife when she grows up. Being only 6 years old in a family that was left in financial ruin, she was quite open minded to absorb Hamarin's teachings which did prove to offer some use in Book 2 as she tried to be a more neutral mediator between Richard and his cousin Leilandy.
Points: 1/1
10. How does she relate to other female characters?
Nelida mostly interacts with 2 female characters.
Book 1: Seiran where she soon formed a brief but amicable relationship. As a tomboyish outcast, Seiran didn't show offense when Nelida would speak her mind. Nelida seemed quite entranced by the elf's knowledge.
Book 2: Leilandy Aethinford. This is a tricky relationship. Both Leilandy and Richard were at complete ideological opposite ends when it came to their opinions of the Elf Kingdom. Richard espoused a nearly religious devotion to the kingdom and seemed to resent being forced to live in the relatively ordinary Ayrtain. Leilandy meanwhile grew up biased against elfkind even though she never traveled to the country or even met an elf other than Trevilin.
Nelida was then sort of stuck in the middle between both cousins where there was no truly right side. She appeased Leilandy because she hated eating vegan cuisine but she sided with her brother because they both appreciated their uncle. Nelida and Leilandy had a degree of common ground in this respect and her cousin even attempted to coerce her into agreeing with her on political issues more than once.
Points: 1/1
*****************
So, how did Nelida do? A pretty good 7.5!!! 🥳🥳🥳
In my star rating meter, she got 4 stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Go Nelly!
Well, this was a real fun writing exercise, and I shall soon present the next post.
See ya!

I sometimes read Spain books. In fact, the last 3 books I finished reading are all Basque literature published in Spain (luckily they all had Spanish translations).

I am reading a non fiction book by a Spanish author right now!

There are very few fiction books written by Latin American authors, be it trad or indie. A lot of it is cultural. Mexicans are (in)famous for not reading books for leisure... like... ever. Former President Peña Nieto became a national mockey for both hiring a ghost writer to write the thesis dissertation for his masters degree that also plagiarized over 4 books word by word over the fact he was unable to answer the question of his favorite 3 books. At least Homer Simpson mentioned he loved to read TV guide. 🤷‍♀️

Spain has a huge trad book history and it is far easier to find books both indie and trad by Spanish writers. It is obviously the largest and well established market in the language. I think the English language readers that are happy the "eeeeevil feminists" are getting a taste of their own medicine are only seeing the Carmen Mola scandal from a far more egletarian anglo society lense.

Hate it or love it, ultra progressive viewpoints are not mainstream opinions in hispanic societies. Progressives are a very small minority of the population that get a huge amount of media attention but people don't think like that in real life. I don't see people in Spanish speaking countries to widely adopt inclusive language anytime soon.

I find it to be quite embarrassing while English language editorials were pushing to publish diverse authors since 2015, Spanish trad editorials waited until 2018 to emulate this formula. This is especially worrying because the vast majority of book readers in Spain are women. Men in Spain simply don't read books so editorials should have realized long ago they ignored the interests of their customer base for far too long.

Of course, plenty of men will complain about the reverse discrimination and how they are having a really hard time nowadays getting trad published anywhere. They always ignore the fact this is the everyday life of women who have historically been forced to publish with gender neutral pen names. Most aspiring female authors simply give up. Female readers like me are forced to swallow whatever is published even if we cringe deep deep inside about the often ridiculous ways male authors write women. I sometimes like reading these books with such abysmally cartoonish female characters because the 1 star reviews are so damn fun to write.

Women authors have historically had minimal leeway to write bad books. We had to work 10 times better and be scrutinized 10 times more. And I won't even start talking about how we are always under a magnifying glass being ridiculed for not wearing the right makeup or the right clothes or our weight... I get panned from all of those things all day so much that it entices me further to dress like a slob for the fun of annoying people.

The Spanish language criticism of Carmela's authors is very different from the rosey English viewpoint. One female reviewer suspected in 2020 Carmela was 3 men and has the facebook post to prove it. She thought at the time Carmela was 3 publicists that wanted to join the female author fever bandwagon. The reason was simply because they couldn't find a trad deal because editorials are now so uber vehement in reducing the shameful 30-70 ratio or risk irrelevance to the country's increasingly demanding female readers. She even suspected Carmela was the name of an ex of one of the guys. It's quite amazing she pretty much nailed the truth.

Critics of the Spanish feminist blogs and bookstores that lauded Carmela's books as grrl powerrrr mention the books had plenty of clues Carmela's books were examples of menwritewomen due to the ridiculously huge libido of female characters and the way male coworkers treated female characters which is totally unreal in real life among hispanic societies. They don't mock the authors as such (sometimes even giving the authors credit for being clever enough to dupe everyone for so long) but they focuded their ire towards the blogs and bookstores that blindly eco chambered whatever is written without even bothering to read the books.

After deliberation, Planeta couldn't disqualify Carmela's authors because they didn't break any rules, but I predict their rules next year will be far more stringent. If this blooper happens ever again, the female dominated reader clientele will stop buying Planeta books which in Spain's dire economic situation means bankruptcy.

If there is one good thing from all of this, Spain's grimdark and thriller female authors are getting a lot of free publicity.