As I wrote recently. I have finished my first draft of my novel Renaissance of Self. In keeping with the advice of many established authors, I am letting that book rest. It will rest until July 1st when Camp NaNoWriMo begins and then I will spend the whole month dedicated to editing it.

In the meantime, my creativity would not stop flowing! (Really who would want it to stop?) What came to me is a wholly new story set in my main creative playground, the realm of Baimiya. I have links to the Universe of Aiyon project, my massive twelve realm story universe so I won’t describe it fully here but I have been trying to put this world to paper for quite some time (Half my life plus 1 year in fact). I am thrilled because this new story will give readers as place to step into the world and have many of it’s basics explained while still being a glorious adventure along the way.

When cooking up an idea, it typically comes in stages. First, the spark: whatever emotion, image, game, dream, etc. actually planted the idea in my brain and watered it until there is actually something growing. Second, inspiration: once there is an idea, I need to find things that help me see it more clearly. This is typically an image crawl. Sometimes it is one Pinterest and other times it is through my ART folder of images saved from the internet in the 2010s. It has also been both though that is actually rarer. This time it was the ART folder. I found at least one image of each of the core cast of characters and several for my leads. The crawl in particular helps me identify what is and is not an attribute of the character I’m exploring.

For example, my new lead character is Redd. She was rather uncreatively named by her parents for her red hair. (Her siblings all suffer the same curse: Frek – freckles, Brunetta – brunette, Robin – red hair again, this time male and with a cowlick that made them think of a robin’s tail feathers, and Brass – red-blonde hair). I have lots of pictures of red heads among the thousands in this file. Red heads are a favorite of mine. (It’s where my narcissism/ vanity show most obviously as I am a red head myself). But as I looked, I passed many of them by as they weren’t anything like Redd. Then I found a run of three images that could have been the same character and they were very much Redd. I discovered that while Redd will be a warrior, she is actually much softer and more feminine than I originally thought.

Another character Lussul had two distinct options when I finished finding ones I liked. Three images were boyish and full of wonder. Three others were more mature and judgmental about the world. Both would work but would change at what point in her journey Redd would encounter this person. I opted for the more naïve version so as to bring him into Redd’s story sooner and let them explore the world together.

Caedmus or Cae had a very clear personality to me and I added pictures left and right. But then I found another image that while it didn’t have Cae’s look, it had his personality in it perfectly. I added it to the folder and when I reviewed it, I almost deleted it again. It was such an oddball out compared to their otherwise complete packet of who Cae was. And yet… without that image, the entire contents of the folder felt flat. I had a person I could describe visually but nothing for his personality. I left it in and it shaped part of the next step drastically.

Lastly in part 2, I came across three pictures that could easily all be of the same person and they felt like they belonged to this story but I didn’t have a name for this person yet. I wasn’t even planning to explore them at this point but the images made this person come to life. It made me realize this vague character concept would play a pretty vital role in the political pieces of Redd’s story.

Thirdly, I refine the whole and create at least a full story synopsis. I was so inspired for this story, I got through two chapters without a synopsis because Redd and why she is going on this journey was in my mind. But then. while I wanted to still write, I couldn’t. I started to struggle with every sentence of two because I hadn’t figured out all the important ‘what’s that might be relevant even this early on. My refining process involves my love, my Wizard Lionheart, every time. He knows Baimiya as well as I do and by being detached from individual characters, he is able to help me place things in context of the current time and place and magical affairs of the realm. I mentioned Cae’s dual pictures and the struggles I was having with that and he reminded me of a character archetype we have of someone taking possession of another’s person’s body, where either the two switched places completely or, more commonly, the person who the body belongs to was passing on and the other person was drawn in to fill their place. It was perfect. The personality image: that is who Cae was before he was turned into this other person. He will have to deal with the consequences of this other person having their own life and history prior to him being there.

In the refinement process I also like to to bring in emotions inspired by the images I picked and try to find a spot in the story for those to sit. For this story there is a moment of mourning and a moment of awkward intimacy, not sexual intimacy but relational intimacy, the transition from one kind of connection to another. It thrills me to fit these in like puzzles pieces and feel that the goal is in sight.

Lastly, I play. This one is newer but it helps, more than I can really put words to. Using the fantastically modern tools of AI art generation, I take at least one image if not one per character into my favorite site. (Currently my favorite site is Night Cafe as it integrates all the various types of generation into one interface). For this story, I took one image of Redd; an image that felt like it would belong to either the act 2 or act 3 climax. I gave the prompt a description of the character and what I wanted to be there in the scene with her. And then I deviate. I change the prompt, download favorite images, use some of those images to generate some more until I think I have enough to work with to actually achieve my vision.

Today the vision was creating a good working cover to keep inspiring me as I write. Using pieces of eight AI pieces and then erasing, layers, drawing, and skewing; I got what I wanted. Something inspiring. Inspiring enough to make me blog about it just to be able to share it. Here is my working cover for Redd – Scion of Rhayander:

I can’t wait to see this project come together! After all, I’m still drafting it but it feels alive inside my the way Renaissance of Self did. It needs to come out and will keep drawing my back in until I finish. I hope my long percolating project will eventually pull at me like this but something in soul says I still have more to learn before I can tackle that one properly.

Anyways, If you read this; THANKS and leave a note with your thoughts on my process or the cover.