Flowerlark Studios

It’s been a while since I did a project update, so here’s where things currently stand!

IRL woes have been taking precedence over project work over the last year, but I’ve been a busy bee as much as possible. Last month especially I made quite a bit of progress on several writing projects. The nice thing about prose is that it takes a lot less time to tell a story. The bad thing about prose is that, unlike a comic, I can’t just finish a page and slap it up as a completed piece. I have to finish the whole story and then spend months editing, illustrating, and compiling everything before I can show it off. While I could technically post novels one chapter at a time, I’ve found that releasing things serially before the whole thing is finished and polished really doesn’t work for me since my ideas for the story tend to change as I progress (side-eyes all my reduxes), and it’s a shame it took me almost 20 years to learn that about myself.

So! I have a whole bunch of things in progress, most of which are still years away from release. Here’s the main ones, in roughly the order I plan to work on them.

Secret Book: I can’t talk too much about this one yet for legal reasons. It’s currently my top priority and the rough draft is about 50% written. I hope to finish that draft in the next couple of months and then spend another month revising before I submit it. Expect a big announcement… in a few years, probably.

The Echo Beast: A short horror story about a mysterious and malignant cave. I will likely be submitting this one to appropriate anthologies. If it doesn’t make it into any after a year or two, I’ll self-publish it.

The Boy Who Shook the Earth: Kira’s backstory novella. The rough draft is about 75% written, and I’ve been working on it on and off since 2016. I want it off my WIP table. It’s going to be an absolute nightmare to edit since I’ve improved a great deal over the time I’ve been writing it. Originally, it was going to fold in neatly with some plot threads in the main comic, but I’ve been considering making the story completely stand-alone and querying with it.

Hacker & Hyde: Another short story, this one a cyberpunk. It was originally going to be an ‘alternate world’ side-story for Ashes about Rava and Oni, but like the Kira novella, it’s being changed to be a stand-alone story. This one will also be submitted to anthologies first.

Leprechaun Gold: This is an urban fantasy novella series. I’m currently planning on seven books, one for each colour of the rainbow. This story follows Persy and Than — the last two unicorns — as they escape from a religious cult and navigate the outside world for the first time. Persy is determined to find a female unicorn so he can continue their species, but it becomes harder and harder for him to keep denying his repressed homosexuality. Than only desires adventure, and Persy. Together, they must discover what’s most important to them and what their own personal freedom looks like in a heteronormative world. The first draft of book 1 was started last NaNoWriMo, but I only got about 20% of the way. I hope to circle back to it next year and churn out the rest.

Azrael Saves the World: A black comedy/social commentary about the end of the world. It’s apocolypse time, and the Angel/Horseman of Death is ready to reap the souls of sinners, but there’s just one problem — no one seems to care. Humanity, beaten down and depressed, is utterly indifferent to their imminent demise. Wait, no, there’s two problems. It seems Heaven had a bit of a scheduling error, and the apocalypse is actually one year away. Azrael decides to stay on Earth until the fateful appointment, and he has 365 days to make humanity care about the world before it’s gone forever. He can start with his new roommate, quite possibly the most apathetic man the archangel has ever encountered. Azrael Saves the World is a topical story about finding hope and purpose in bleak times. I will likely be working on this one in tandem with Leprechaun Gold since it leans on contemporary issues.

Untitled Elfpunk Novel: This is an incredibly self-indulgent novel that’s one part all my favourite tropes and one part venting about current social issues. I don’t know if I will ever release it since I mostly write it to cheer myself up. I tend to work on it between other projects, especially if I get writer’s block. So of course, I’ve put down more words on this than any other project. 😛 It also has a planned sequel. These books are going to be very slowly hacked away at whenever I need a mental break.

Other novels I want to write, hopefully after the above ones are done:

Children of Shadow: I don’t know whether I will ever be able to continue Ashes the comic, as much as I love it. But this is my biggest passion-project and I can’t let it die unfinished. Once I have more writing experience, I want to tackle the trilogy in novel form. It will be quite a bit different from the comic: Fawna will be the only animal character, and it will follow the urban fantasy YA formula a bit more closely. I think the story will be better without the split between the Farthing Wood-esque exploits of Fawna and Flowerlark and the grittier teen superpower plot. It’s going to just be the latter, with one talking fox joining the cast partway into the first book.

The Seven Deadly Virtues: Another urban fantasy trilogy. The Seraphim and the Hellions have been at war since time immemorial, fighting for the very soul of humanity. The Seraphim desire order, whereas the Hellions want to plunge the world into chaos. Kate is a Seraphim about to get her wings, but as they day draws near, her adoptive parents are growing nervous. Using her newfound powers of invisibility, she eavesdrops on them and discovers who her real parents are — the arch-Seraphim and the arch-Hellion. Born from this forbidden union, Kate has the potential to become either a Zionian, a unrivalled Seraphim who could usher in a new era of enlightenment, or an Abyssian, a Hellion with the power to drag the world into an unending dark age. Which she becomes will depend entirely on the contents of her heart. The Seven Deadly Virtues examines the toxicity and hypocrisy that can arise from organised religion, and the way faith is often twisted in order to discriminate against minorities and the disadvantaged. The story is neither pro nor anti religion, but seeks to explore issues around it from different perspectives.

Dark Wings: Like with Children of Shadow, I’m not giving up on Dark Wings. It was actually meant to be a novel trilogy all along, but I wasn’t very good at prose in my teens/twenties, so I made into a comic instead. Being a complex fantasy epic, I want a good few novels under my belt before I write it.

Untitled Dark Wings Side-Story: This is a comedy/murder mystery/gay romance novel that takes place in-between the The Boy Who Shook the Earth and Dark Wings. It’s a pretty fun romp that will shed more light on the Veslian Empire and follows some of my favourite characters in the Dark Wings universe (who were supposed to be introduced in book II of the comic but… well). Noritaka is freshly retired from the Veslian military. As a veteran with an outstanding service record, he’s entitled to a free education at the capital city’s best academy. Deciding to pursue alchemy, he runs into the elven professor Tynrael who seems untowardly smitten with him. While trying to juggle assimilating back into civilian life, focusing on his demanding courses, finding a boyfriend, and dodging his professor’s advances, Noritaka’s already complicated life takes a sudden turn when other professors in the alchemy department start turning up dead. Much to his chagrin, Noritaka has to put his education on pause and team up with the insufferable Tynrael to solve the case. As they follow the clues, they discover the murders deeply entwined with a sordid part of Tynrael’s past, and the elf will need Noritaka’s solid and dependable (if reluctant) presence to see him through to the end.

The comics?? – Unless my life suddenly has a VERY positive turn-around, it’s unlikely CoS will ever continue as a comic. I do really want to finish up the Eryl redux (I was only 14 pages away!!) once my life is doing a little better. I won’t be continuing it as a comic after that, but it will make me feel better to close off the first book. It was a good stopping point, and like CoS, the story will live on in prose.

Well, I think that’s about it for my current plans. Of course, things are always subject to change, especially depending on how the next few years shake out. If I manage to become agented, that will heavily affect which projects I tackle as I’ll need to focus on ‘sellable’ stories. I don’t know if that will happen, but I also don’t think self-pub as a career is going to be for me. I’m not a marketer, and having to keep up the constant promotion was one of the big reasons I got so severely burnt out on webcomics. Creative markets are overly saturated, and with the rise of AI, that’s only going to get worse. I don’t know what’s going to happen, either with my personal creative path or the market as a whole, so right now I’m just focusing on getting drafts finished and these stories out of my head. In what way I’ll end up putting them out into the world remains to be seen.