Rough Drafts, Adjustments, and TikTok

It’s been two months since I’ve posted to my blog, and I’m not sure how time got away from me. Late April, I started writing a new story I have titled Shadows of Somniera (SoS). I also decided that after 45,000 words, I was bored of Immersion, which was not a good sign! After lurking on TikTok for a few months, I posted an introduction. Then, during May into the first day of June, I managed to type up 20,000 words for SoS.

Shadows of Somniera

To expand on SoS, it is heavily inspired by a video I saw on Youtube of a fanmade Genshin Impact story. The end result will be heavily edited and changed into a game that reflects my stories and ideas, even though Genshin Impact (I love this game a little too much, the story is so good!) inspired it.

There are hundreds of books, anime, and other media out there about getting trapped or involved in a video game. My first encounter with the concept was Sword Art Online, an anime I watched in high school (the first two seasons). More recently, I’ve become familiar with the genre called LitRPG, which combines stories with computer game type mechanics. SoS isn’t quite part of that genre, at least at this time. It does combine fantasy and science fiction elements, but it doesn’t follow any current game mechanics.

SoS is set within my world of Alteniera, but I’m not sure when on the timeline. It will likely be based in the future, hundreds, maybe thousands of years after the events of Collision and Immersion. It may even be set after some of the stories set in Somniera, hence the name. However, that is something for future me to figure out. I seem to like making things difficult for myself, but at least it’s fun!

As for the story itself, it follows a college-aged girl named Roseglass (name subject to change). Instead of her getting trapped in a video game, I liked the YouTube video’s idea: “What if the video game is breaking into the real world?” It doesn’t help that Roseglass has trouble enough distinguishing what is real, especially with her nightmares.

Adjustments

After struggling to complete a rough draft for Immersion, I realized that I had written myself into a corner. The areas I was attempting to write were too large for my best writing. This means that both Collision and Immersion will both get major rewrites and edits, maybe to the point that they should no longer hold those titles. Collision will only encompass Sandara and Inacera, two neighboring kingdoms. Immersion may only encompass Casolia and Lyndolyn (possibly a part of the elf territory). Depending on the rewriting process, this may mean Eruption may become an entirely different story.

Elise will still remain the main character in Collision, but all characters going forward will be from Alteniera. I don’t enjoy writing stories inside “normal Earth,” so it will be completely done away with. It doesn’t add to the story and I find it boring to write those sections.

Another thing that changed is the magic system. Every being is born with water magic, usually low levels, only enough to heat or cool water enough for personal use. However, the stronger the bloodline they have connected to the Fae, Syreni, or Pyske, the more likely they are to have other types of magic. Some are simply more genetically rare, such as the ability to use lightning.

TikTok and Housekeeping

I’m still gaining my sea legs when it comes to TikTok, but feel free to follow me on there! So far, I’ve been sharing some pet peeves about bad editing and books that I love. I plan to also post once a week on both Instagram and TikTok, but you don’t need to follow both places since I cross-post my TikTok videos to Instagram. I’ve also added links to TikTok on my contact page, the header, and the footer for my site!

Last but not least, I changed when I will do my blog posts, again. I will attempt to post the first Sunday of each month, detailing what happened the previous month. I have also set up a mailing list (The sign up is on the floating menu on any page of my website!) so that you can get exciting publishing and release date information. However, I won’t be sending out emails until Collision (or whatever I decide to call it) is much closer to publishing.

Until the Stars Fall,

Vivian Hale

Current Song: They’re Just Ghosts by Motion Blur, Peter Jessy