Once again, I’ve just posted the last installment of my most recent SSCS, and now it’s time to chat a bit about the story.  If you’ve been unsure about this one and waiting to read it (you can start with the first installment here), maybe this post will pique your curiosity enough to give it a try.  Or, if you read along and have thoughts about what you just read, maybe this will stir them around a little.  Either way, here’re my thoughts on the When, How, Where, Who, Why, and What for this latest story.

Author Interrogations: SSCS-04 – The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress

Story Query no.1: When did it all start?

This story started with a theft.  Not the theft that my raggedy band of protagonists is trying to solve and undo, but the theft of a great idea.  Years ago, when I was trying to figure out how one actually goes about writing stories, I read an excellent article on author Holly Lisle’s website about how stealing a great idea isn’t plagiarism as long as you pick the idea apart for what you really love about it, and then build your own idea around that.  Then, much more recently, I watched The Old Guard, and fell in love with the idea of an intrepid group of immortals.  I’ve always been interested in characters who have an outside perspective from those around them.  And I really liked the framing of a close-knit group of friends, partly because group dynamics are still tricky for me as a writer, and partly because it’s one of those classic comfort elements in a lot of great storytelling.

But then I changed the setting: Straight-up fantasy, please and thank-you; something I can play with and paint elaborate, pretty pictures around when I feel like it.  And I changed the mechanism of immortality: Let’s let the bodies age and die (and be vulnerable to being killed!), just let the minds and power-through-knowledge persist; that allows them to be both immortal and changeable at the same time.  And, of course, new characters of my own, with their own histories and motivations I could start to uncover:  Why would a group of powerful immortals bother investigating a theft (the one the story’s based around, that is), even a very unusual theft?  And why do they wander from place to place so that now they’re strangers in town?  Why haven’t they put down roots, even temporarily?  What are they really seeking?

Story Query no.2: How did it go?

Well, it’s a good thing I give myself permission to experiment and flail around a bit when I’m writing these SSCS’s, because having five primary characters who may each be involved in any given scene and need to be their own individual selves definitely turned out to be a challenge.  (And yes, I did some (mostly) light revisions after the fact in order to clarify certain elements, etc.  That wrap-up work is what prompted my blog post from last year about writing beginnings and endings, because I sure was not clear where the story was going to go when I originally started writing it.)

Having five main characters made it difficult to get a feel, as I went, for what the story was really about (aside from the theft of a still-beating heart), because I was using up all of my writing focus on just tracking and/or showing-off all those darned characters.  And when you don’t know what the story you’re writing is about…you can end up writing yourself into quite the quagmire.  Also, you might end up with a novella that (maybe, possibly) benefits from having a Character List posted up front, so that’s a little excessive (though at least very on-brand for the selected, Fantasy genre).

Story Query no.3: Where will it take you?

Well, at the top I said that this story started out with wanting to steal a story idea that I love, and that’s true.  But the other place it started was with the setting.  I’m a little bit obsessed with Settings (capitalized, yes, because they are that important!).  My settings are also kind of stubborn and can get away from me a little bit.  I’ll have conjured this very elaborate or romantic idea for myself of what the setting is going to be like, and then when I get writing, certain details will insist on showing up that don’t really fit with that first, romantic idea, but definitely are a part of where this story is taking place.

So, when I envisioned the setting for this story, there were several elements mixing around in my brain.  It started around the time I took a trip with my family to Ireland, and we took the ferry out to see the Cliffs of Moher, which are very cool and dramatic, and with the sea birds flying around them you get a sense of how immense they are.  And about that time, I was reading the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy by Martha Wells, which includes a visit to a city built on The Wall, a cliff-like mountain range rearing up out of the sea.  I didn’t actually try to set this story in a sea-cliff city, but I did immediately reach for something watery and isolated and dramatic, possibly with some flavorings sprinkled in from The NeverEnding Story’s Silver City (that book, fyi, has a lot more world-building than the 1980’s movie).  (See, I stole lots for this story, or tried to.)

But the City of Bridges turned out to be…darker than that, mistier and more close-up.  The water isn’t there in the distance as a dramatic back-drop, but is rather the place where the bodies are buried, or where monsters are hiding.  The silver elegance is there, but often set behind guarded walls or across labyrinths, and even those who walk the halls of power partake of such elements only sparingly.  The City of Bridges has strange-smelling flowers that bloom at night, and thieves of many sorts hiding in the shadows.

Story Query no.4: Who is revealed?

So, I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to tell you that my group of five, the Breathbound Lazarine, are necromancers.  Maybe not currently practicing necromancers, but the line on ‘currently practicing’ is pretty vague when an end result of whatever it was they got up to in the past is: And now they’re immortal.

I find myself drawn sometimes to morally ambiguous characters, which is weird, because anti-heroes are not at all my thing.  Maybe it’s more that I’m drawn to moral ambiguity, and to trying to explore how to chart a path that is good through a situation that is definitely tarnished no matter what.  The Lazzarine are our good guys, right?  But as the story progresses, it becomes clear that at some point in the past you definitely wouldn’t have wanted to cross paths with them.  And, you have to wonder, at least a little bit, whether crossing their paths now is even a good idea, not because they do terrible things, but because they definitely can.

But, they are not a monolith, despite a very unusual, shared history, they are each their own person, with different skills and powers, hopes and motivations.  Perhaps you will find that, depending on the character, you will judge them each differently.

Story Query no.5: Why is this story alive?

Beyond, or perhaps besides, moral ambiguity, I really like to play with seeming contradictions, and in this story especially it would seem.  The oldest, most powerful Lazarrine is currently in the body of a young girl, very much the youngest in their group.  Body parts are being separated from their owners, but without any evidence of wounds.  And the Queens who rule the city are willing to talk more to a group of strangers than to each other.  And, of course, there is the loaded question: Is there really such a thing as a reformed necromancer?

Stories have always been an essential tool for making sense of the world, for drawing clean boundaries between good and bad, and right and wrong.  At the same time, stories are useful for pointing out just how difficult and messy that can be.  That sometimes the line isn’t as simple as between good and bad, but instead runs between the monstrousness of our thoughts and ourselves, and the accumulated, slow-chipping good of our actions; between truth, and truth.

This story is alive, because it doesn’t ignore the things that may lie on the inside.

Story Query no.6 and last: So, what’s it about?

In the end, The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress is about a group of immortals who bind themselves to mortality in an attempt to seek out their own humanity, not because they expect to find it, but because it’s the sort of thing that has to be actively sought, always.

Or, the actual blurb for this 28,000-word novella goes like this:

In Kolssidir, the City of Bridges, a magical crime has been committed, and five strangers have been hired to find and return the stolen property.  In pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into layers within layers of conspiracy, with the scent of death lurking at the heart of everything.

The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress is published in installments on this blog, and you can start reading it here.