Hello! This evening’s post is going to be a little different because we’re going to talk about Author Mentor Match! Usually I only talk about my writing during my monthly wrap-ups where I give you a paragraph about what I’ve been doing, but today I’m talking about my AMM entry, The Brightness of Shadow!
Lila is an elf (her hair is covering her ears right now). When the story begins, her parents are the Duke and Duchess of Garia, an important duchy in the kingdom of Erenya. She’s supposed to marry Prince (later King) Alexei, but although they were friendly as kids, she doesn’t love him and certainly doesn’t want to marry him. She prefers training with swords at her castle than wearing pretty (but uncomfortable) dresses and acting like she’s helpless. As our story begins, King Palenda II is supposed to announce their betrothal. That doesn’t happen, because the party happens to get interrupted by a supernatural event. She’s pretty happy about that. She’s @DuchessLilaP on Twitter.
King Palenda II (and his son, Alexei) tried to kill Dorlath when he was 11 years old, but he escaped. Since then, he’s been living out in the forest trying to survive. When Dorlath finds out that King Palenda II died, he’s optimistically hopeful that the new king, Alexei, might be a better king, so when he discovers somebody trying to kill him, he stops the murder (he’s very good with the bow and arrow). And ends up in Lila’s dungeon. The guy who tried to kill Alexei? Just happens to be Lila’s uncle. Lila (she’s the duchess now, her parents died) has to figure out what to do with him. They just got hit with the plague and she needs some new guards. Obviously he can shoot, and he did save her intended from certain death. He’s @DorlathHwyl on Twitter.
This is the new king, Alexei, the boy Lila doesn’t want to marry and the boy Dorlath saved. He thinks he’s an okay guy, although he does think that elves are superior to humans (most elves think that though). He’s in love with Lila but he’s also extremely possessive. He’s happy Dorlath saved Lila’s life at one point in the story, but he wouldn’t really be happy if he discovered that Lila’s falling in love with Dorlath. Lila’s making some changes to her duchy and he doesn’t like that either. Lila and Dorlath asked me to not allow him to have a Twitter account, because they don’t want him to know about their relationship.
About Me
And I’m Brooke! I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I wrote a couple novellas in high school, then didn’t write any fiction for a a long time, although I had a blog, wrote as a content producer for Associated Content, Yahoo! Voices, Empirical Marketing, and a few other places. In 2014 I read Divergent and was so upset at the ending that I got into fanfiction. I’ve written several fanfiction short stories, novellas, and novels since (I’m Lorren over at AO3). I recently posted the first chapter of Saving Adelinetta over there if you’re interested. The story isn’t finished yet, but chapter 1 stands on its own (it’s a Young Elites fanfic from Magiano’s POV, and chapter 1 tells of his escape from the Temple of Mensah shortly before his 12th birthday).
I failed NaNoWriMo a couple of times trying to write original fiction, but on April 22, 2018, I had a dream. It didn’t make sense, but I managed to tease out of it a short story about a duchess and the Captain of the Guard she was in love with. That August, I was half-awake and the idea of turning this into a novel with elves came to me. That year, I was originally going to write about an evil queen (and her daughter) that I eventually discovered were Alexei’s ancestors in Soyuza, but that story is waiting for now, because I’m in the final stages of editing this one.
I hope to become an Author Mentor Match mentee this year, but if not, I’ll keep trying! I want to make this story as good as I can, and AMM could help.