Syreeta A Moore's Blog

Hello Questers! This is going to be a progress and project update, as well as what’s been taking me so darn long.

To start, the project that I’m working on, as many of you already know, is book 1 of a trilogy. It’s been confusing to many as well that I have an already published work under the same series (“Mystactral”) but that’s the prequel, unofficially. I didn’t think I’d have more ideas, and if I did, I wasn’t certain I’d be motivated to write or publish them. Yet here we all are! So, right now, I’m working on book 1 of The Elder Beast Trilogy. This is going to be a soft-apocalypse dystopia meets the fantasy world of Mystactral in an interesting blend of genres and characters. I’ve taken thorough precautions in the world building, so the difference between the world switching isn’t jarring, rest assured.

The trilogy is going to be long. Book 1 (The Island of Flowers and Faeries) is already 148, 160 words and it’s not done yet. It’s taken me over two years to write, and three, officially, in May. The goal is to be somewhere around 180k when book 1 is done, but I’m getting close to the end and I’m not one for uselessly stretching out the plot. My official deadline (that I made a friend give to me because otherwise it would be unofficial) is May 1st to be done with draft 1 and my first wave of edits, and onto finding Alpha Readers. There will be a blog post about that when the time comes.

Some of the reasons it’s taking me an exhaustingly long time to write this:

I started writing this book while finishing up my first year of university (I’m still not sure why I thought it was a good idea).After university I worked at a summer camp with little Wi-Fi, and continued to travel in rural areas the rest of the summer (little Wi-Fi lasted almost 3 months).I got a job working at a library, which inspired me to get out of a reading slump, and I ended up reading like 40 books in five months. When the pandemic hit, I ended up using the time to really rest. I mostly read and played a ton of Animal Crossing, but I think I managed to write at least 20k in the longer weeks of lockdown. I also watched a ton of anime, but that’s not important.My library job allowed me to work once regulations and restrictions were in place, so I went back to work sooner than most, which I’m lucky for.I moved out of my parent’s place over the summer, balancing two jobs to pay the bills. I did participate in Camp NaNoWriMo and got in almost 35k.I picked up new hobbies like longboarding and I spent many hours falling.I lost the library job and replaced it with a bookstore job. Cue more reading. I ended up reading around 70 books in 2020. The last major thing was participating in the official November NaNoWriMo. I did not win but got in another 40k. As you can see, NaNoWriMo is a great way to motivate me to write.

So writing, though very dear to me, is not my only hobby nor my main job. It actually provides an incredibly small amount of my income, if any, so I prioritize it differently than if my writing gave me enough money to pay bills, or even get gas or groceries. But it doesn’t, so I treat it like a hobby.

Some things to look forward to (aside from the new book) in a hopefully chronological order:

My parents got me a Cricut so I can make better stickers! And I’ve been practicing my digital art skills so they look more professional too. So far I have Serina, Kale, and Jack stickers ready to be added to the online shop.The animation I’m working on is a Book Trailer sneak peek for The Island of Flowers and Faeries! It’s 30 seconds long and won’t really make sense unless you read the book (which is bad planning on my behalf) but it looks really cool! I have about 8 more seconds to animate before it’s done. I’m commissioning a different artist to make a cool compilation art for all 12 main characters (Thersel, Serina, Sivin, Higashi, Lyean, Wisteria, Valerian, Jack, Kale, Alexa, Gaelyth, and Scarlette). Hopefully it will be in full color, and in a good enough resolution that I can make them as big as a poster. If not, that’s obviously fine, but how cool would it be?Alpha Reader sign-ups.This year’s Annual Summer Giveaway in celebration for Mystactral’s 3rd anniversary!Updated Character Portraits (Along with 5+ characters introduced into the line-up!).Beta Reader sign-ups.The Island of Flowers and Faeries cover reveal.

So there’s lots of good stuff coming up to combat my laziness in writing fast. Sometimes my creative juju runs low and I get burned out and there’s no cure beyond taking time away from the project. I’ve learned to not feel guilty about taking time away, too, which helps.

Thank you all for understanding, and I hope that as I finish up my draft, edits, am through with Alpha and Beta readers, that I can find a well-known publisher to take on my project.

Petra is a Children’s book by Marianna Coppo. I read this book in 2020 from my local library.

“It’s cute, simple. and easy to read. Perfect for non readers and beginners.”

Nobody Likes a Goblin by Ben Hatke is another book I read in 2020.

“I LOVED reading this book. I am a librarian so I read lots of kid’s books as I shelve them (shh, don’t tell my boss

[image error]

Say what?

That’s right! You can buy signed copies of Mystactral right here!

This process unfortunately takes a while, because if I don’t already have a copy on hand, I will be the one ordering my own book (like a loser, because I don’t just get handed a copy of my own book whenever I want! LOL) and then I have to sign it, and then ship it off to you!

I always like to have a few copies available at all times.

Because shipping and books in general are expensive, here’s the cost:

Paperback: The original price on Amazon or Author House is $20.99 so I will sell it here for $25.00

Hardcover: The original price on Amazon or Author House is 30.00 so I will sell it for $35.00

E-Book: Unavailable because I literally won’t sign your phone, kindle, or other e-reader. I might sign the case. But please don’t actually ship devices to me.

If you’re like, “Syreeta! These prices are too high!” First I’d like to say I’m sorry. Secondly, I didn’t get to name the price (I promise). And lastly, you’re not just paying for the book! You’re also paying for TWENTY (20) original images! ALL hand drawn by me. As far as I’m concerned, buying a book and a portfolio all in the same tiny bundle that I call a book is actually a solid deal.

[image error]Health Potion – $2.00





[image error]Poison – $2.00

Cast a different sort of spell!

[image error]Love Potion – $2.00

Wisteria’s Potion bottles are a series of laptop stickers by J. S. Spaulding that he designed just for me. Half of what I earn also goes to him! Support two artists at once.

[image error]Chibi Stickers from my 2020 Summer Give-away. They are $1/character or $8 for the whole pack.

Want all the stickers shown here? For all 10 Chibi pals and all 3 potion bottles, you can buy them for a total of $10.00 (a value of $14.00, so you save $4.00). AND there’s always Free Shipping.

That’s an impressive save right there.

[image error]Thersel Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Thersel means…

Sky Mountain in Elvish. Well, according to a website I use for some of my character names. It’s available for public use so I’m totally allowed to use it in publication–so are you if you want!

[image error]Sivin Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Sivin in this portrait

is after he has transformed from his runty, puny self. Now he actually looks like a kid!

[image error]Serina Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Did you know?

Serina’s surname is Andromeda? She also has a tattoo of a star on her collarbone. What can I say? I love the stars.

[image error]Higashi Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Higashi

is actually iconic for all his scars. They’re fun to draw!

[image error]Wisteria Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Wisteria

Is fun to draw, but her curls take a lot of time for them to look nice!

Fun Fact! I named Wisteria based off of my favorite cartoon character when I was 7. Her name is Wysteria and she is from the 3rd Generation My Little Pony series!

[image error]Lyean Portrait 2019 – $8.00



Lyean…

only has an old drawing for now. He’s the hardest to draw, and good portraits take up to 2 hours!

[image error]Valerian Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Valerian

is cursed to be a black cat through most of the prequel. Let’s see if his curse continues in book 1 of my new trilogy!

[image error]Kale Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Did you know…

that Kale isn’t named after the vegetable? He is actually named after a movie character named Kale in a film called Titan A. E.

[image error]Jack Portrait 2020 – $10.00



Did you know…

It was actually a last minute decision to make Thersel and Jack half brothers…or are they?

[image error]Ice Queen Portrait 2020 – $8.00



The Ice Queen

Is loosely based off of the concept of the White Witch from Narnia. She has nothing to do with Frozen!

Her portrait also gets a villain discount!

Just as a fair warning, there are some minor spoilers, some pertaining to the plot of the first book. Continuing onwards, Wisteria is the most iconic example of a magic user in Mystactral, but maybe the properties were not really expanded upon in a way that was appealing to most readers. Although it’s fun to discover world-building properties in the sequel or other preceeding books, having immediate satisfaction from a blog post will suffice for now.

Magic comes in more forms than one may think. There’s liquid magic, kinesis magic, conjuring magic, spellbook magic, black or forbidden magic, and more. Let me elaborate on them.

Liquid magic is magic that comes in the forms of potions. It’s physical, tangible, and easy to use and manipulate. This is actually Wisteria’s specialty. She is a master at creating potions and has hundreds of potion recipes memorized.

Kinesis magic is the manipulation of physical attributes of this world by using magic and the mind. Element controllers manipulate elements by using their body, mind, and magic to benefit themeselves. Serina and Kale are different from each other, however, because Serina was born with the power and Kale had to learn it. As contrasting as that may seem, as Serina never seemed capable of manipulating her element until she met Kale, the power was always within her. Kale had to learn how to manipulate the magic within him, train his body, and meditate to strengthen his mind. Serina just needed to train her body and learn how to focus. Think of martial arts as a wand–it is the physical attribute that focuses where the magic needs to go. Wands use motions and direct the magic where to go. Martial arts creates a visual inside the controller’s mind and thus allows the magic to be directed in what it has been trained to do. Kinesis magic doesn’t always require martial arts for successful results, but it does help.

Conjuring magic is Witch and Wizard magic. They are conjuring up magic into a point and direct it to do what they will. Wisteria and Gigi (/Valerian) are masters of their craft. Conjuring magic can be anything from summoning something like a bottle or a chair to conjuring an attack spell. Think of conjuring as creating. You are creating a bottle that occupies space close for your use. You are creating a directed sense of pain into your opponent.

Spellbook magic is pretty self describing. I will explain why not everyone can just read off a spell later, but essentailly a spellbook is kind of like a recipe book for magic. The owner can buy spellbooks for thing like cooking, household chores, candle making, teleporting, demon summoning, medicine and healing, and more. There are more kinds of spellbooks that are more complicated than what the average Being could use, but most of the ones on the market are pretty versatile for the Basic Beast. The more…intriguing ones are considered relics.

Black and Forbidden magic. This type of magic, as usually expected, is frowned upon in some cultures. Reanimating the dead, magic that forces death upon someone, forcing love upon someone for a (near) permanent measurment of time, summoning the Elder Council, and stealing someone’s innermost secrets. No one, except for the Elder Council, is powerful enough perform magic that could destroy the world, change climates, move mountains, and intense things like that.

But here’s what you may have been wondering about: What are the limitations to magic? Why would Thersel not be able to use hydrokinesis but Kale and Serina can? Why can’t everyone use Relic Spellbooks? What’s the Elder Council?

The limitations of magic are like stamina: You can leisurely go through your day but if you workout, exercise, walk a lot, play sports, or something else, your stamina depletes. You feel tired and need to eat or sleep to replenish yourself. The same goes with magic: the more spells you use, the more exhausted your magic is.  The more you workout, the more stamina you have. Likewise, the more you practice magic, the more magic you’ll be able to practice. Most Beings do not regularily practice magic so they do not have the capacity to use a spell that would require a large amount of magic.

Serina and Kale are capable of hydrokinesis because of body and magical makeup, genetics, and species. There are many other factors like mental willpower, environment, practice, and enchanted items. Enchanted items are directors of magic, like the earring Thersel wore while battling the Jaakuna Ikimono (distributed to him by Liz). Thersel, Lyean, Higashi, Sivin, Jack, Wisteria, and Gigi cannot use Kinesis magic because their magical makeup contradicts their abilities.

Lyean, Higashi, Sivin, and the wolves rely on transformation magic to revert to and from their animal and human counterparts. Jack is two beasts inhabiting one soul and therefore his magic is holding his body together. If he were to lose control of his magic, he would be split apart into an elf and a horse. One would die if that were to happen.

So what’s the Elder Council? Hopefully you’ll never have to find out.

So many stories that are written are written with the intent to inspire introspection, finding double meanings, or are references to a completely different story or allusion than what the author put down on paper. So often the word use is meant to be referencing something other than what is literally said. So what about Mystactral? How is it supposed to be read? Is it a story that means so much more than the literal “Boy saves the world” trope that I went with? Or is it surface level in the sense of there are no strings attached to what I wrote?

I wrote Mystatcral with the intent that sometimes people need a refuge from the real world. They need some imaginary place to escape to for a temporary release from reality. I wrote the story that, if I was 11 or 12, I would want to read. It’s a story that I still need to return to time and again.

In the sense of how to read Mystactral is another thing. It’s a story that, if you want, doesn’t need to be anything more than a magical world where a boy and his friends save the world. Sometimes, that’s the most fun a story can be if that’s what the reader wants.

There are ways to read it with a figurative lense, however, if that’s what one wishes to do. Take Sivin for example. He is small, anxious, and lives on the shoulder of someone bigger than he is. He doesn’t have any physical control over Serina, but his voice makes her second guess herself sometimes. Does that not sound like a tiny representation of what anxiety is like? If it ever came to be a physical manifestation, I doubt that anxiety would be a cute little furball for some people. It is for me, but for others, it might be a huge hulking monster that has the person attached to strings and the victim is like a marionette doll–completely manipulated by their fears.

Another thing that can be looked at with a figurative lense is the Jaakuna Ikimono. It literally means (or loosely translates to) Evil Creature in Japanese. It is a beast that eats light, like actual protons, and in the absence of light, it creates darkness. So with a figurative lense, the Jaakuna Ikimono is all the evil that we see in the world. All the vile things that people do or the tragic natural disasters that leave people without homes, all the sad things we see in the news, the Jaakuna Ikimono represents the darkness that these things create. It leaves people feeling desperate and helpless, vulnerable and barren. However, once someone decides to be brave, these tragedies can be conquered.

Thersel represents the hero we all have inside ourselves. Everyone wants to do good, to some extent, I believe. We are not perfect, however, and neither is Thersel. He is angry. What is he angry at? He was the cause of his mom’s death, his father abandoning him, he never got adopted, his life is created just so he would be killed by dragons, etc. Anything can be an internal battle. He chooses to deal with it in anger. Humans have flaws (and so do elves) but how we choose to react in the face of adversity is what defines us as a hero. Thersel forgets his anger and humbles himself so that he can concentrate on how to create a plan to defeat the Jaakuna. He’s not doing it for money, for fame, or for bragging rights. He’s doing it because no one else is willing to be brave. His choice is what defines him as a hero, as I know many of us reader hope we can choose to be as well.

There are many ways to look at Mystactral in a figurative sense. Sometimes reading it in a deeper meaning makes us feel more connected to the story because we spend more time with the book in our own thoughts. This story is just as good when read without that lense, however. The simplicity behind an elf with a sword against dragons and demons alongside his companions is just what I need. Maybe that’s just what you need, too?

So a question that even I battled for a while was if I should even incorporate is the character Jack, who is introduced in Chapter 11: Centaur. Here’s the spoiler: Jack and Thersel are brothers. Now, why did I make a forest elf and a centaur brothers? That seems kind of weird, unusual, and not to mention how that would…go down. In any regards, remember that it’s fantasy and nothing is allowed to be as it seems

After weeks of scouring the internet, to no avail I might add, it was actually my other author friend J. S. Spaulding that tuned me towards WordPress. Thanks for that! In other news, this is an extension of my ideas for Mystactral. Lot’s of concept art will be posted here (hopefully) for future characters, plot elements, etc. Do not worry, anything that could lead to a major giveaway for the stories will not be posted unless the future book has been out for a while or it doesn’t pertain to any significant scene (like a character that is already known gets a new outfit). Any of that aside, I think the only other thing I would post here are audio recordings of the book that’s already out (Mystactral: My Supernatural Tale About Creatures that Rule All Land. Those will be posted chapter by chapter (including the prologues and acknowledgments).

Fun Fact: Mystactral is actually an Acronym. The subtitle on the cover is what it stands for