Krystle Matar's Blog
January 17, 2021
Welcome to the Dominion - Part 2
So, Tashué decided he trusted me enough to give up his car... Now what?
There were some things I knew we had to save. Tashué chasing the serial killer who murdered children was some of the strongest writing I've ever done for him. It allowed me to examine parenthood and family, and let me write a male character who values those things. It let me look at the pressure we put on ourselves as parents, and all the many ways we fail, even though we love our families so much.
What makes a good parent? How do we measure success or failure when it comes to the humans we're shaping? Is loving them enough? Or maybe loving them is all that matters.
So Tashué carried that burden with him into the Dominion. Finding the body of a girl on the riverbank is central to the entire plot. Look, fellow parents, I'm sorry. But it had to be this way.
As for the rest...? I'm going to admit that there were a lot of pieces that I didn't know.
With Logan & Bronwynn, I tried to write a fully formed story, with all the threads figured out in advance, and all the characters fully realized, and the tone hitting exactly how I imagined it. When I got stuck or frustrated, I would scrap everything and start again. And again. And again.
But by the time Tashué and I were trying to figure out his place in the Dominion, I was on Twitter. I was following a lot of authors I admire. And watching them talk about how hard the drafting process is for them was a massive lightbulb moment for me. I realized I was expecting way too much of my drafts. I was also EXHAUSTED for parenting-related reasons, so I didn't have much mental energy to chase down the things I couldn't figure out. But I couldn't not write anymore. I needed it. Some days I only wrote a single sentence. But I never started over. I never went back. Always forward, always advancing, even if it was a single, miserable step at a time.
If I realized that something needed to have happened six chapters ago, I left myself a note mid-scene and kept writing like the event had happened. If a character popped up and I didn't know what their purpose was? Who cares? Keep going. Figure it out later.
(I'm not going to lie, Illea Winter threw a massive wrench things, shifting the story I thought I was going to write into something super political, and then she said she was going to-- well, you'll see.)
The result was everything that a first draft should be: unreadable, muddled, jumbled, confusing, not fit for human eyes, but FINISHED.
And 275k words.
With a lot missing.
It was immediately obvious that this "first book that starts the war" wasn't a single book. So I chopped off the first bit, the spot that had an obvious conclusion. Since the child is key, that arc had to have some answers. The relationships that were building had to have some future to them... or an end. I always knew what the book was about, but I needed to figure out what came before. Mostly I needed to figure out who Tashué was in this new setting, what life he had led here. Get rid of the car, get rid of the history we had built. Some of the characters that used to exist in his orbit didn't fit anymore. Pieces of his past didn't fit anymore. The early revision passes were about figuring out the sequence of events, and which order the scenes were in, and what needed to happen when. Later passes were about figuring out the emotional burdens characters were carrying, figuring out who fit where, figuring out how their pasts were affecting the storyline.
But every pass was about figuring out who Tashué was in this new world, this new time period. Who he was as a father, as a lover, as a friend. As a Regulation Officer. A big difference this time is that it's not actually his job to find out who killed the girl from the river. As a Regulation Officer, he's not a police officer in the way he was before. But I knew him. Even though it wasn't his job at all, I knew there was no way he would be able to let go of that girl.
While I was revising Tashué, I was invited to participate in a beautiful anthology called Dark Ends with my amazing friends. Doing that book with them really forged bonds that I'll never forget. (Guys, if you're reading this, I adore you!) Dark Ends got the story Tainted, which takes place from a POV from one of the characters Tashué encounters in his books, Glaen Forsooth. Glaen took me by surprise a little. He was a character I was using to examine the world, the magic system (Talent) and how the people with Talent were treated by the Dominion (not well). Glaen has a hard time, I'm not going to lie... But he kickes back. He makes some decisions that change the course of Tashué's life. And, well, the anthology is called Dark Ends, so...
As Dark Ends was getting ready to hit the world, Tashué's first book was making progress. It felt like I was really on to something, but I wasn't totally confident yet. I wasn't sure about the ending, and I couldn't tell anymore what bits were working and which were weak. I needed some outside eyes.
I sent it off to some fantastic writers. I can't say this enough: get to know other writers. They will inspire you, they will encourage you, they will lift you up, they will give you perspective on things that you can't see yourself. Helping them with their projects is an amazing experience. Having them help you is just perfection.
Tashué and I owe so much to you, Angela and Bjørn. He wouldn't be where he is now without you guys. Neither would I, for that matter.
There were some things I knew we had to save. Tashué chasing the serial killer who murdered children was some of the strongest writing I've ever done for him. It allowed me to examine parenthood and family, and let me write a male character who values those things. It let me look at the pressure we put on ourselves as parents, and all the many ways we fail, even though we love our families so much.
What makes a good parent? How do we measure success or failure when it comes to the humans we're shaping? Is loving them enough? Or maybe loving them is all that matters.
So Tashué carried that burden with him into the Dominion. Finding the body of a girl on the riverbank is central to the entire plot. Look, fellow parents, I'm sorry. But it had to be this way.
As for the rest...? I'm going to admit that there were a lot of pieces that I didn't know.
With Logan & Bronwynn, I tried to write a fully formed story, with all the threads figured out in advance, and all the characters fully realized, and the tone hitting exactly how I imagined it. When I got stuck or frustrated, I would scrap everything and start again. And again. And again.
But by the time Tashué and I were trying to figure out his place in the Dominion, I was on Twitter. I was following a lot of authors I admire. And watching them talk about how hard the drafting process is for them was a massive lightbulb moment for me. I realized I was expecting way too much of my drafts. I was also EXHAUSTED for parenting-related reasons, so I didn't have much mental energy to chase down the things I couldn't figure out. But I couldn't not write anymore. I needed it. Some days I only wrote a single sentence. But I never started over. I never went back. Always forward, always advancing, even if it was a single, miserable step at a time.
If I realized that something needed to have happened six chapters ago, I left myself a note mid-scene and kept writing like the event had happened. If a character popped up and I didn't know what their purpose was? Who cares? Keep going. Figure it out later.
(I'm not going to lie, Illea Winter threw a massive wrench things, shifting the story I thought I was going to write into something super political, and then she said she was going to-- well, you'll see.)
The result was everything that a first draft should be: unreadable, muddled, jumbled, confusing, not fit for human eyes, but FINISHED.
And 275k words.
With a lot missing.
It was immediately obvious that this "first book that starts the war" wasn't a single book. So I chopped off the first bit, the spot that had an obvious conclusion. Since the child is key, that arc had to have some answers. The relationships that were building had to have some future to them... or an end. I always knew what the book was about, but I needed to figure out what came before. Mostly I needed to figure out who Tashué was in this new setting, what life he had led here. Get rid of the car, get rid of the history we had built. Some of the characters that used to exist in his orbit didn't fit anymore. Pieces of his past didn't fit anymore. The early revision passes were about figuring out the sequence of events, and which order the scenes were in, and what needed to happen when. Later passes were about figuring out the emotional burdens characters were carrying, figuring out who fit where, figuring out how their pasts were affecting the storyline.
But every pass was about figuring out who Tashué was in this new world, this new time period. Who he was as a father, as a lover, as a friend. As a Regulation Officer. A big difference this time is that it's not actually his job to find out who killed the girl from the river. As a Regulation Officer, he's not a police officer in the way he was before. But I knew him. Even though it wasn't his job at all, I knew there was no way he would be able to let go of that girl.
While I was revising Tashué, I was invited to participate in a beautiful anthology called Dark Ends with my amazing friends. Doing that book with them really forged bonds that I'll never forget. (Guys, if you're reading this, I adore you!) Dark Ends got the story Tainted, which takes place from a POV from one of the characters Tashué encounters in his books, Glaen Forsooth. Glaen took me by surprise a little. He was a character I was using to examine the world, the magic system (Talent) and how the people with Talent were treated by the Dominion (not well). Glaen has a hard time, I'm not going to lie... But he kickes back. He makes some decisions that change the course of Tashué's life. And, well, the anthology is called Dark Ends, so...
As Dark Ends was getting ready to hit the world, Tashué's first book was making progress. It felt like I was really on to something, but I wasn't totally confident yet. I wasn't sure about the ending, and I couldn't tell anymore what bits were working and which were weak. I needed some outside eyes.
I sent it off to some fantastic writers. I can't say this enough: get to know other writers. They will inspire you, they will encourage you, they will lift you up, they will give you perspective on things that you can't see yourself. Helping them with their projects is an amazing experience. Having them help you is just perfection.
Tashué and I owe so much to you, Angela and Bjørn. He wouldn't be where he is now without you guys. Neither would I, for that matter.
January 9, 2021
Welcome to the Dominion
I make no secret of the fact that I've been with Tashué Blackwood a long time.
He and I have been through a lot together. He first walked into my stories when he was 18, and I was 14. (I know, a bit of an age gap, but I was in a hurry to grow up.) He was everything I wasn't. Everything I wished I was. Confident, independent, charming. Unflinching and unafraid.
He gave me the courage to be more fully myself.
When life threw me some curveballs, he gave me a safe way to process some of my pains.
He got a lot of words over the years. Some short stories, some attempts at novels (don't ask for them; they've gone the way of the 3 1/2 inch floppy disc, I'm afraid). I learnt a lot about writing while trying to tell his various stories. But he was always in a contemporary setting, always in "our" world.
Fantasy, on the other hand, was my first love as a reader. I can't recall what my first fantasy book was because I've just always read it. My mother read Anne McCaffery; my father read Tad Williams and Robert Jordan. They met at a D&D game. The first writer that was mine (that neither of them introduced me to) was David Gemmell. I saw Stormrider in a bookstore, and it was love at first sight, but my grandmother wouldn't buy it for me because it was still in trade paperback size. "Try one of his other books," she said, "one of the smaller ones. See if you like it first." So I picked up Midnight Falcon instead, and Bane the Bastard is the story that made me want to be a writer, rather than writing being a hobby I sometimes dabbled in.
So there it was. For years and years, Tashué Blackwood and the genre of fantasy were at war. Historical fiction tried to come and be a contender for a while, but The Research defeated me. Tashué would give me an idea, and I'd go off and work on that for a while... but then I'd get stuck. Lose interest. Fantasy would whisper in my ear, hey, what about...? Okay, fantasy. I trust you. I'd write some books, but they weren't ever good enough because I hadn't learnt the power of revisions yet. Tashué would get impatient in the background. I'd miss him. I'd go back to him for a while because he's just that irresistible.
And then, in my early twenties, he gave me the cop novels. Hunting down a serial killer who murdered children. Infiltrating a human trafficking organization. And, look, they were BAD, but I think that's the moment when the world at large was really starting to leak into my writing.
As I do, I got stuck on the third book in that series, and fantasy once again lured me away.
Enter the North Star.
I wanted to tell a "Rise of the Farm Boy" type story, where the clueless boy goes off to topple the evil empire, as per the predictions of a prophecy. I know, I know, it's been done a few times. But my twist on the trope was that the farm boy wasn't The One. The One was, in fact, the cute girl that he was falling in love with. Bronwynn was destined to be the North Star, and Logan was destined to continue the fight after she was gone, in her name.
AND I GOT STUCK.
AGAIN.
(This is where revision really comes into focus as something I needed to figure out. I would write a while, maybe a few chapters, maybe enough for a whole book. Then I would decide something was missing. I went in the wrong direction. It wasn't dark enough; this wasn't set up well enough; I think I did the wrong thing here; this character gets lost, this other character is GREAT and I need to go add them into the beginning. And then I would scrap everything and start again, and again, and again, until I was so hopelessly lost that I didn't think I'd ever write a whole book again. I'm not smart enough, I decided, to write a book With Politics™.)
So Tashué started tugging on me, as he does when I spend too much time away from him. But I really liked the world I'd built for Bronwynn and Logan. I wasn't ready to leave it yet. Though I couldn't seem to make the plot work, I had put a lot of time into figuring out my magic system. How it worked. What it cost to the people who used it. I really wanted to spend more time with it. But I really missed Tashué.
"Hey, Tashué, what do you think of jumping into this fantasy world I built?"
"I dunno... Does this mean I have to give up my car?"
"Yeah, honey, I think it does. But hear me out. I think this just might work."
Spoiler: we made it work.
He and I have been through a lot together. He first walked into my stories when he was 18, and I was 14. (I know, a bit of an age gap, but I was in a hurry to grow up.) He was everything I wasn't. Everything I wished I was. Confident, independent, charming. Unflinching and unafraid.
He gave me the courage to be more fully myself.
When life threw me some curveballs, he gave me a safe way to process some of my pains.
He got a lot of words over the years. Some short stories, some attempts at novels (don't ask for them; they've gone the way of the 3 1/2 inch floppy disc, I'm afraid). I learnt a lot about writing while trying to tell his various stories. But he was always in a contemporary setting, always in "our" world.
Fantasy, on the other hand, was my first love as a reader. I can't recall what my first fantasy book was because I've just always read it. My mother read Anne McCaffery; my father read Tad Williams and Robert Jordan. They met at a D&D game. The first writer that was mine (that neither of them introduced me to) was David Gemmell. I saw Stormrider in a bookstore, and it was love at first sight, but my grandmother wouldn't buy it for me because it was still in trade paperback size. "Try one of his other books," she said, "one of the smaller ones. See if you like it first." So I picked up Midnight Falcon instead, and Bane the Bastard is the story that made me want to be a writer, rather than writing being a hobby I sometimes dabbled in.
So there it was. For years and years, Tashué Blackwood and the genre of fantasy were at war. Historical fiction tried to come and be a contender for a while, but The Research defeated me. Tashué would give me an idea, and I'd go off and work on that for a while... but then I'd get stuck. Lose interest. Fantasy would whisper in my ear, hey, what about...? Okay, fantasy. I trust you. I'd write some books, but they weren't ever good enough because I hadn't learnt the power of revisions yet. Tashué would get impatient in the background. I'd miss him. I'd go back to him for a while because he's just that irresistible.
And then, in my early twenties, he gave me the cop novels. Hunting down a serial killer who murdered children. Infiltrating a human trafficking organization. And, look, they were BAD, but I think that's the moment when the world at large was really starting to leak into my writing.
As I do, I got stuck on the third book in that series, and fantasy once again lured me away.
Enter the North Star.
I wanted to tell a "Rise of the Farm Boy" type story, where the clueless boy goes off to topple the evil empire, as per the predictions of a prophecy. I know, I know, it's been done a few times. But my twist on the trope was that the farm boy wasn't The One. The One was, in fact, the cute girl that he was falling in love with. Bronwynn was destined to be the North Star, and Logan was destined to continue the fight after she was gone, in her name.
AND I GOT STUCK.
AGAIN.
(This is where revision really comes into focus as something I needed to figure out. I would write a while, maybe a few chapters, maybe enough for a whole book. Then I would decide something was missing. I went in the wrong direction. It wasn't dark enough; this wasn't set up well enough; I think I did the wrong thing here; this character gets lost, this other character is GREAT and I need to go add them into the beginning. And then I would scrap everything and start again, and again, and again, until I was so hopelessly lost that I didn't think I'd ever write a whole book again. I'm not smart enough, I decided, to write a book With Politics™.)
So Tashué started tugging on me, as he does when I spend too much time away from him. But I really liked the world I'd built for Bronwynn and Logan. I wasn't ready to leave it yet. Though I couldn't seem to make the plot work, I had put a lot of time into figuring out my magic system. How it worked. What it cost to the people who used it. I really wanted to spend more time with it. But I really missed Tashué.
"Hey, Tashué, what do you think of jumping into this fantasy world I built?"
"I dunno... Does this mean I have to give up my car?"
"Yeah, honey, I think it does. But hear me out. I think this just might work."
Spoiler: we made it work.
