The Plot!
Kia ora everyone!
This week I have really been dragging my ass trying to figure out what I can post about today, but that’s mostly because I have done some (in my humble opinion) really good work on a couple of my stories and as much as I want to share those with you, there are a couple of problems.
Problem Number 1: One of these stories is Olivia, which you can read the free version of here if you haven’t already. The reason this is a problem is that I said, not long after publishing the free version, that any future updates would be included in the for-paid version on my my itch.io page, and I want to stick to that. That said, later this week I will share some of it here, but only on the for-paid track, so if you’re not currently a paid subscriber, maybe consider it? You can also buy the story in its current form (25% until April!) at any time and receive all future updates for free. The choice is yours!
Problem Number 2: The other story is the tentatively titled ‘Underground’, which I posted a chunk of in December, which you can read here, and I just don’t know if I feel comfortable posting any more of that one just yet - but when I do, you’ll be the first folks to know!
Which leads me to a third problem: what to talk to you all about today.
So here goes:
If you’ve been keeping up with the stories I’ve shared here already, you might have noticed that they are… kinda all over the place, and that is kind of by design. I have always kind of intended the stories I am writing to be a part of the same universe, while also their own thing - the best case scenario I can think of is where a reader picks up one of these stories and can enjoy it on it’s own merits, without knowing a bunch of backstory or even whether or not it’s a part of a larger series. I feel like that could get confusing too, to be honest, so somewhere down the track, when I am closer to being done with a few of these, I will probably need some help.
But for now, I want to build out the worlds that these stories take place in with some genuine human (or, uh, vampire) moments, which I think you can see most plainly in Olivia - a story that I deeply enjoy writing, no matter how heartbreaking it is to feel like I am doing this to these characters. I feel like, if I write good characters then the plot will almost happen by itself as I just follow them to wherever they end up. The story of Olivia and Tabitha is in a lot of ways a tragic one, but it isn’t going to entirely consist of tragic backstory and tragic endings; there are happy moments too. Blissful moments. Tense and strange moments. Maybe even a couple of purely terrifying moments! And they aren’t alone in this world, either. There’s Vai in the far-future, Sadavir and Astrid in the near-present-future, and Bianca and Erica in the present-pre-apocalypse. What does present-pre-apocalypse mean? You will just have to wait and see! And there are also characters I haven’t shared with any of you yet, too.
I feel like I can’t really get into a lot of details here about where my stories are headed in terms of the major story arcs, because I don’t want to give too much away, but I also don’t want to over-promise either. But I will say this; these stories and these characters will go through a lot on their journey toward the end. Sometimes it’s just the minutia of day-to-day living, sometimes it’s literally the end of the world. Sometimes it’s an earthquake, sometimes it’s a really nice day at the beach. Sometimes it’s vampires. 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
On that note, I will leave you all with this tiniest of tiny little nuggets from the future, that I extracted from my word-salad of a Word document titled ‘synopsis’:
“Cigarettes were reinvented for some fucking reason. Probably vampires.”
Thanks so much for reading!! It always warms my heart to see the little number go up on the Substack dashboard that says how many people opened my post. I do not have any updates yet on when my serial about Tabitha will begin posting, but I hope it’s soon!!
One quick aside: a lot of Tāmaki Makaurau Aucklanders, and residents of Waikato and Coromandel are doing it really really tough right now due to the severe weather and flooding over the last few days. Some people have lost everything. If you have a few spare dollars lying around and looking for someone in need to send them to, you can donate to The BBM Program who are organising food parcels and other much needed support for Auckland residents. At the time of writing I did not have any information on how to support those in the Waikato and Coromandel areas who have also been affected by severe weather and flooding. If you have any leads on that, please let me know!
Stay safe out there, whanau! Drink plenty of clean water, don’t forget to stand up and walk around a bit every once in a while - and maybe don’t look at a screen while you do the walking thing? I love you. Please take care of yourself. Kia kaha. And for the love of god, please don’t swim in the flood water.
Thanks everyone for reading, I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚