Hello and Welcome to Niera!
I finally accomplished my goal for October: create my author website. So hello! Take a look at my About or Books pages if you haven’t checked them out yet. These have the most important information for now. New tabs and pages will come eventually as needed, but for now, the important bits are here. Keep an eye on the blog, I plan to update weekly on either Friday or Sunday.
I am so excited to share the world I have been building for, well, about ten years. Niera (this name has changed so many times over the years) is a high fantasy world packed with castles, elves, and flying ships (and more). But I won’t drown you in all of them at once. I hope to slowly give the world to you piece by piece, so that it all connects in a (hopefully) flawless puzzle.
At this point in time, I have finished the 7th(?) rough draft of Collision, the first of three books that will introduce you to the Kingdoms: Inacera, Sandara, Descan, Casolia, and Lyndolyn. (Should I add a glossary and pronunciation guide? I probably will eventually. However, no matter how the reader says it in their mind, it could be how someone says it, even if it’s not the main characters.) The rough draft sits at around 80,000 words, which includes notes to myself, songs I listened to while writing, and scenes with characters that will not exist in the final draft.
I think the hardest part for me is making sure every character is important to the story. I have a spreadsheet of characters that I have been creating since high school, which includes ones from when I was in middle school. (Anyone else keep notebooks full of character descriptions and short stories? Yes? You’re probably a fellow writer.) In any case, you may see some of the characters that I delete from Collision in other books, but we’ll see.
Did you know that the main character of Collision has changed three times? Elise was a side character for a long time, playing second fiddle to Gwen–even though Gwen had originally been the secondary character. Characters certainly have a mind of their own!
Starting in November, I plan to continue writing Immersion. I am writing all three books in a row before editing so that they all flow well together; wish me luck! I still don’t know if Summer will remain the point of view character, not to mention who will remain in the story to the end… we’ll see who takes center stage!
If you have any questions about characters, stories, the world itself–leave a comment or use the contact page! I will answer anything that doesn’t have major spoilers. It will also help me build a Frequently Asked Questions page.
Until the Stars Fall,
Vivian Hale
Current song: Keep Your Head Up Princess – Anson Seabra
You say you’re starting Immersion in November- are you using NaNoWriMo? My friends and I sometimes did that as a way to force ourselves to actually get writing done, so in the category of writing, November always means ‘NaNoWriMo.’
I completely forgot that NaNo existed for a hot minute there, but yes! I will likely be using NaNo. It’s been a year or so since I did it, and that was the 1st(?) draft of Collision. Thank you for reminding me! ;D