CategoryAlbion

Lords & Ladies: A guide to the land magic

In Albion, Novellas, Questions and answers
September 30, 2022
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Are you curious about the land magic? Carillon’s background? What it means to be a Lord in Albion?

Did you know there’s a new novella out? It’s my treat if you sign up for my newsletter. (Feel free to unsubscribe when you need to, of course. But I hope you’ll stick around, at least for an email or two that will let you get all the other treats I share with my newsletter subscribers.) 

A copy of Ancient Trust displayed on a tablet, surrounded by drinks on a drinking cabinet. A man holding a book and glass wearing a grey suit stands at the right of the image.

Ancient Trust is all about what happens when Geoffrey Carillon inherits the title on his brother’s death. It has quite a lot about the land magic customs at Ytene. It also led to some interesting questions from a reader. 

(I love reader questions. Sometimes I haven’t settled on my final answer about something. But I’ll let you know if you ask something I can’t answer yet. Or if you ask something that’s too much of a spoiler for something that’s coming out in the future.) 

The questions: 

It got me thinking, how do the Lords of Albion engage with the House of Lords? Is attending Westminster an additional responsibility for Carillion? Do Albion peerages result in having the right to sit in the House? And what about the women? How does the Land Magic recognise women?

These are great questions – and also some that I haven’t quite found the right place to get into text. Let’s take this one by one in an order that should help.

(more…)
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People together (groups and organisations)

In Albion
July 7, 2022
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Welcome to the next stop on the tour of the authorial wiki. Last time we talked about characters, so now it’s time to take a look at groups and organisations.

Groups

There are a number of common group connections in Albion – notably related to the Five Schools, but also secret societies and professions. Read more about the professional and social organisations in general over here.

Copy of Point by Point against a cream brocade wallpaper with a key and aquamarine brooch.
Point By Point shows what a group can do together.
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Character Connections

In Albion
June 23, 2022
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We’ve talked about extras, maps, and timelines in our tour of my authorial wiki. Now it’s time to talk about characters. Every point of view character has a page. (That means everyone who’s been the point of view in a novel, novella, or extra…)

Cover of Eclipse displayed on a tablet, resting on a pine bough, surrounded by wood five-pointed stars.
(Eclipse has my largest character list by far…)
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Timelines: Who, what and above all, when!

In Albion
June 9, 2022
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Welcome to the next stop on our tour of my authorial wiki (public version). Today, I want to talk about timelines and finding out when particular events happened.

Cover of Eclipse displayed on a tablet, resting on a pine bough, surrounded by wood five-pointed stars.
Eclipse is, of course, my book which is particularly anchored to a specific time and region.

One of the reasons I like WorldAnvil (the software I use for the public wiki) is the chance to create maps and timelines. With books ranging across the 1920s, a few Edwardian titles, and a couple during or just after the Great War, being able to put the books in order is key. I’ve currently got five different ways to get timeline information, read on to learn more about them!

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Extras, get your extras!

In Albion, Writing and publishing
June 2, 2022
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A copy of The Fossil Door with its burgundy and orange cover lies on a brown leather sofa with a matching orange pillow.

What’s an extra?

Now and again, I write something extra. It can be a few thousand words, or thirty thousand.

It can be a bit of backstory I need to write out to keep going in the book. Or something that happens after the book ends that affects future events.

Sometimes, I just want to spend a little more time with those characters.

Other times, it’s a chance to get a bit of a story from someone else’s perspective.

I share these extras with my newsletter subscribers. And now I’ve got an easy way to let you know what extras there are (and what they cover).

Check out the Extras page on my authorial wiki for a short summary of each available extra. Click through on the title for each one to learn more about it. Scenes from the extras are also on my books and extras timeline.

Getting copies for yourself

If you’re already getting my newsletter, starting on June 3rd, 2022, there’s a link at the top of every newsletter that will let you download whichever extras you like without putting in an email address.

If you’re not already on my newsletter list, you can get all the extras here. You’ll need to enter your email address for each one (or sign up for one, get the first newsletter email, and then use the link there to get the rest. Up to you!)

I hope you’ll stay around on my newsletter for news about what’s coming soon, more extras, and a few links and snippets of information from my writing that week. I send an email most Fridays. But if that’s not for you, it’s fine to subscribe and unsubscribe as you see fit.

Read on

Threading characters through books

In Albion, Mysterious Charm
August 5, 2020
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One of the things I love most about writing about Albion is being able to weave people through different books.

Sometimes this is in a big way. All the books in the Mysterious Charm series deal with people who are friends or allies or co-conspirators (as the case may be) with Lord Geoffrey Carillon.

But sometimes it’s more subtle.

Take Farran Michaels, for example. He first appears (if you read the series by number, which isn’t chronologically in time) in the first chapter of Goblin Fruit as one of the young men apprenticed to the auction house. He turns up later in Magician’s Hoard as a representative of the auction house (he’s now a more senior apprentice).

But how did he get there? And what’s with his particular gift for materia and objects? That’s where Seven Sisters comes in. While it’s his uncle who’s the hero of that book, Farran’s present for much of the action.

I love being able to tuck those little touches in. Albion is a sizeable community, but it’s not huge. With only a few more academically focused magical schools, people who went to those schools tend to know each other. Others interact in significant but small professional communities.

And, as an author, it’s a lot more fun to do a passing mention of a character I’ve already gotten to know in passing, rather than Random Standin#42.

Readers new to the series with that book should be able to follow everything, but people who’ve read and remember other books in the series should get a little bit of extra amusement, seeing a story from a different side.

It’s also a fun way for me to introduce characters who will be relevant in later books I’m already planning to write. You’ll be seeing more of a couple of guests from Carillon’s dinner party in On The Bias down the road, for example.

There is of course, one place right now where that’s a little trickier: Goblin Fruit and On The Bias. It’s very hard to disentangle Carillon (Lord, investigator, and Pavo breeder) from Benton, his valet. However, I also enjoyed the chance to see a bit more of Benton’s very real skills and talent, and to learn more about why Benton has chosen that role and service for some very good reasons.

Read on

Magical creatures

In Albion, Mysterious Charm
August 3, 2020
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As you’ve noticed if you’ve read Outcrossing, there are magical creatures in my books, as well as the ones we all know about. There are, broadly speaking, three categories.

Animals we know and love

These include your average ordinary wildlife – badgers, hedgehogs, ponies (Well, most of them. There are some magical ones, too.) Birds, snakes, lizards, all sorts of other beasties.

A European badger, looking out at the camera from across a tree log.
Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

A magical variant

Sometimes there are magical variants of a given type. For example, the nightjar is an actual bird (with a very unusual sort of sound – you can hear an American cousin clearly starting at about 1:10 on this recording.)

This piece in the Guardian about nightjars (and other fauna of the New Forest) delighted me, and describes them as “somewhere between a kestrel and a crocodile in appearance”.

Twilight nightjars, however, are magical.

They sound like the non-magical variety, and have the same shape. And nightjars do live in the New Forest. But where the non-magical species are usually brown or buff, the Twilight Nightjar is more like the darker varieties of a Victoria Crowned Pigeon, with a good splash of iridescence. Their feathers and eggs are used in various magical potions and workings.

Entirely magical

And of course, we have varieties of magical creatures who either live in Silence-warded spaces (so, fully magical), or like many creatures in our own world are not often seen.

These include wandermists (a cat-sized winged dragon that appears to be largely made out of mist), or the ginsies, which are poisonous to about half the people with magic (via an extreme allergic reaction, not that Carillon and Rufus would put it that way.)

Perhaps my favourite are the mirabiles, who live in the deepest parts of the forest, and are rarely seen, but look like dancing lights that sway and twist together. They’re decidedly animals, not Fatae, but they must be where some tales of faeries in the woods come from.

(One of these days, I would love to have illustrations of these. If you’re an artist this intrigues, glad to talk commissions with you and see if we can come to a mutually cheerful agreement.)

Read on

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12 Seconds in 1927 Ancient Trust Authorial Wiki Best Foot Forward Bound for Perdition Carry On Casting Nasturtiums Chasing Legends Complementary Eclipse Elemental Truth Enchanted Net Facets of the Bench Fool's Gold Forged in Combat Four Walls and a Heart Friend? Friend. Goblin Fruit Grown Wise Harmonic Pleasure Illusion of a Boar In The Cards Magician's Hoard Mistress Of Birds Nocturnal Quarry Old As The Hills On The Bias Outcrossing Pastiche Perfect Accord Point By Point Sailor's Jewel Schola Tales Seven Sisters Shoemaker's Wife Silent Circuit The Fossil Door The Hare And The Oak The Magic of Four Three Graces Treats And Extras Upon A Summer's Day Wards of the Roses Weaving Hope Winter's Charms

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