Hello, Faora here!

Well, another darn furry site to upload my stuff to. sigh So busy. So, so busy. Much like FA, this here ill serve as an archive for most of my work. Unlike FA, I'm leaving the older stuff behind entirely. Everything here will be 2014 work onward! If you wanna catch all my older stuff, you'll want my SoFurry page! Link should be nearby somewhere, or here: http://faora.sofurry.com/

I hope you enjoy the work that comes to this page!

Hey there!

I figured that now would be a good time, a bit more than a quarter of a year removed from the end of Interwoven (and too late to have it suggested for any furry awards so no one can accuse me of pushing my work; ha!), to finally sit down and do a sort of post-mortem on the whole project. Talk a little about it to those who might be interested, suggest some of the things that I don’t think worked well, discuss with any fans of the series their thoughts (if you want to share them), and just reflect on what Interwoven is to me and how I’m moving forward after it as a writer.

And if you’re not interested in the Interwoven stuff but want the low-down on my visual novel project, Void Dreaming, there’ll be a TL;DR at the bottom of this journal entry. You can skip to the juicy new stuff there, if you like. For everyone else though, read on!

Bear in mind that the following will absolutely contain Interwoven spoilers. Don’t read on until you’ve finished the series if you don’t want anything spoiled for you!

To start at the beginning, Interwoven was conceived late in 2022. I wasn’t doing very well mentally and emotionally; I was struggling, among other things, with my sense of self as a writer. Ask any writer who’s been in the furry community for long enough and they’ll be able to tell you how engagement has really dropped off. It used to be that comments were everywhere, and encouragement was rife. Part of this was volume of content, I believe. There weren’t as many writers putting out good work twenty years ago (and no, I didn’t qualify back then either!) so you’d get more people actually expressing their appreciation for what they saw.

I had written a YA fantasy story early in the year, and I was viewing it as my last gasp; my last great effort for mainstream publication. I’d spring for a professional editor, I’d go all out, shop it around globally to avoid the anti-spec-fic bias in Australian agencies, and if it failed? So be it. I’d write for myself, since stopping wasn’t an option. The delays in beta readers getting back to me so I could polish it before sending it to said editor only compounded my frustrations, and I had the writing itch again. I developed a story that I’d write just for me, as a personal challenge: could I do a story upload every week for a whole year, with the same contiguous story and characters? And what would that even look like?

Back then the idea didn’t really have a name. Even in Scrivener now, the project is still titled “Servant Boy.scriv” because at the start I didn’t have a name for William, or Tobias, or any of it. I envisioned a sort of tragic meeting of fate at first; two people who could be together and could be happy, if not for things always getting in their way. At how fate kept throwing them together, only for themselves and the events around them to throw them apart again. A servant boy and the young prince he’d befriended turned into William and Tobias. Fun fact: the working title for the project was developed after I finished Innocence. I began calling it Fates Interwoven, until I wound up dropping the Fates part somewhere around writing the Reflection arc.

On the sliding scale of planning to pantsing, I’m a pretty robust planner (who’s happy to pants it if new ideas during the writing process make sense). I hammered out a very solid, fifty-three part outline that told their story in broad strokes, alternating in each chapter to ensure that neither William nor Tobias would end up hogging the spotlight. They would each have their own lives, their own trials, their own small victories and painful losses, but they would always be drawn back together again by hands not their own.

A quick aside: fate has always been a notion equally terrifying and romantic to me. The idea of a predestined path, or talent, or lover… it’s an enticing one indeed. Equally though, the prospect of choice being an illusion and all of your behaviour being pre-programmed by destiny is a horrifying subject to consider. I like, in much of my fantasy fiction, to present the idea that all people have a great and wonderful destiny to achieve, but to achieve it requires time, effort, and patience. That great figures are forged by their willingness to seize destiny, and that the paths below them are littered with broken dreams, bitter hearts, and forlorn souls. It makes destiny a choice, which I think is far more compelling.

In broad strokes, I actually kept to the outline pretty well for once with Interwoven. Some characters dropped off, others stepped in. Juni’s son (back when she was called Juli before I changed it for some reason) was going to be a recurring character, eventually killed by Fredrick in a bitter rage to get back at Tobias for one-upping him. Captain Samael of the city watch was actually originally one of the rebels, before I decided it would be both funny and ironic that a Carisi captain in the Sanwell city watch would be fiercely against them. Sarina originally played an outsized role in the story, but after a retooled Fredrick’s plans to consolidate power and magic her role shifted instead to new character Soren in what felt like a very natural progression. Lyle was meant to be far more recurring than he was, advancing through the ranks just a little slower than William. In fact, Lyle was meant to serve under William during the Herovir campaign and be the voice of dissent against the Carisi that the one-off character Robert wound up being, strictly because I really just… I didn’t like Lyle. At all. I think that’s why I gave him the name I did (apologies to any Lyles in my audience!). But hey, at least he comes back for a last hurrah in one of the endings!

But for all the changes to characters, the plot as a whole really didn’t end up changing all that much from the outline. There were always the seven arcs of the story, beginning with Innocence and ending with Flames (originally, Flames was titled Reckoning, but I felt it a bit on the nose and far too melodramatic… not that Flames is any less on the nose!). Likewise, the plots of the different arcs never really found themselves revised. I think I settled into the plot of Interwoven as a whole very early, and while it was still just in raw, broad-strokes conception, locked it in in my mind. Normally I do a lot of tinkering with my stories as they develop during the writing process, but not nearly as much of it happened with Interwoven. I did still make changes, but most of them had to do with specific characters like I noted above.

But that’s not to say that there weren’t aspects of the story that I was really worried about. One of the more fun ones was actually the tags for the first few stories. Interwoven’s first two arcs take place while William and Tobias are both pretty young, but tagging your work as containing cubs is opening a can of worms, especially when you’re tagging your content mature (at least) due to violent content. I think I managed to work the tagging out for those early stories well enough in the end, even if tagging in general isn’t something that I’m particularly good at.

In the same vein, I was worried about whether or not I was going to be able to convincingly write a child’s narrative for a mature audience. Writing for children isn’t difficult, of course; simplicity of words, clarity of visual, and breaking things down to their most basic (without patronizing them) is really the order of the day. But nailing the mindset of a young William and a young Tobias was something I, right up until the first comments came in, was terrified that I’d fucked up. I wanted them to be endearingly innocent, only for their ages to creep in along with all the complexity of thought and feeling that comes with it. To really chart their maturity. I still don’t know if I got it right, but I know that I absolutely adored writing their younger selves.

One thing I really struggled with was divesting the time between both William and Tobias. I knew from the outset that I wanted the two to be sharing the main character duties, but that also meant that both parties need to have something to do to justify the time spent on them for the split storytelling. This goes back even to the original outlines, where I wasn’t sure if William was just becoming the protagonist, and leaving Tobias behind. I tried to solve this with different arcs being more heavily focused on one than the other, but even so, much of the intrigue of the story revolves around William and his growth, or his learning about the rebels, or learning about his heritage.

Tobias’ part of the tale is just tragedy from start to finish; nothing goes right for the poor prince, no matter what he does (and his chronic foot-in-mouth condition doesn’t help). And therein lies the trouble that I don’t think I fully got away from. Tobias’ places in the various arcs never ends well for him. William gets to have his victories here and there, but Tobias perpetually loses. Even in the “best” ending of Interwoven, Tobias is left holding the bag (see: a kingdom he doesn’t want to rule) alone, while William rides off into the sunset with Daniel. The best he really gets is solace from Juni, then Sarina, and later Soren. As much as this was a deliberate choice on my part, I do still wonder if it was the right one. That said, Tobias being the one to kill Fredrick was absolutely the right call and I defy anyone to tell me different.

On a more mechanical level, I still shudder to think how people might critically consider the pacing of Interwoven now that it’s all finished. As a serial, distributed with one new story every week, the goal was to string people along and keep people guessing and excited for what happened next every week. To create a little excitement while waiting for what would befall William and Tobias in the next edition. Being able to read it all now, from start to finish without any breaks? I’m concerned that the split perspectives might contribute to the pacing feeling less than stellar.

Necessity is a good example of that, I feel. Of all the arcs it feels among the most contained and tight. It’s a specific story (William-focused but with strong Tobias elements) with a strong emotional core driven by Daniel and Zane, and with consequences that catalyze the events of the concluding arc, Flames. But if I step back for a second and look at the arc as a whole, I worry. I worry that Zane’s death feels cheep. I worry that the battle wasn’t foreshadowed the right amount. I worry that Daniel and William’s fight and reconciliation doesn’t hit right. I worry that despite my efforts, even the tightest arc of the story might seem sloppy. Pacing a story this long is always going to be fraught, and I can only hope that people looking back on it after the fact won’t see it as negatively as I almost do.

But enough grouching! There were a lot of things - and I mean a LOT of things - that I love about Interwoven, so permit me a moment’s pleasure as I gush over some of the things that I absolutely adored about the story.

Finding and being true to yourself are core themes I wanted to weave into it, and I feel like that’s something that I nailed. William is true to himself the whole story through and struggles to maintain it. Tobias struggles with figuring out who he is and who he needs to be and reconciling the two. Daniel’s got himself on lock. Zane’s torn between his love for his son and his duty to a corrupt crown. Hell, even Fredrick is absolutely true to himself from start to finish.

Fredrick, too, I absolutely love as a villain… by which I mean I loathe him with all of my being. I usually write more calculating villains, but creating someone who’s all blunt wrath was a true delight. I don’t know if I liked writing Fredrick or Oswell better in my stable of villains, but the fact that it’s close is a testament to how much fun it was writing such an utter fucking bastard.

And on the other side, Zane. Zane was amazing to write. A common thread in my stories seems to be absent and abusive father figures (and I got to have my cake and eat it too with William Snr.) and being able to write a genuinely loving, caring father (who is despised utterly by the mother of his son) who doesn’t care that they don’t come from the same blood? It was delightful. Zane is what every father should be, so far as I’m concerned. Hell, if every man aspired to being Zane, I think the world would be a much better place. Having him so full of love and pride in William, so unconditionally, was what made me also love (in a twisted way) his death. Character deaths, after all, should mean something. Zane’s end comes as a pure act of love, and I wanted it to carry the gravity and impact for you all as it did for me. I hope it did!

I also love the magic I built up for this world. Fun fact: the setting itself has been used before, but most readers probably haven’t seen it. The city of Kadara from my story Unraveled in FANG #11 is located on a continent to the north-west of Ratholarin, well past Skir and Yaroven territory. I actually have a new story that I want to set in Kadara, dealing with the magus-run Conclave and the order of Hunters tasked with protecting the common folk from the threat of magic. We’ll see when I get to write that, though; it’s going to be a while. More on that below!

And really, finally, I’m just proud of ME. Of being able to sit down, hammer out these words, and just throw them all up for everyone to enjoy. I was so sure I was done, and that I had no new good stories to offer. That I was bereft of literary purpose, and that despite all my ideas and my will to write, that people just didn’t care about what I had to say. And honestly? I’m still not convinced that people care about my work. That’s okay, though, because I do. More than ever.

Those of you who do take the time to comment or message me and let me know, thank you. Always, thank you. You’re the reason I do actually keep going. Why I can. Why I know I’m not just screaming into the void, offering up pieces of my soul in literary form. On the days I can’t motivate myself, it’s your comments and messages that I read to remind me that I can do this. That as much as I love to entertain people, I DO entertain them. That you value what I do as much as I do. It means everything to me.

And to those of you who don’t leave a mark, know that I appreciate you as well. I don’t ask you to say anything if you don’t want to. Go through as a ghost; take in my work and leave. I hope that it stays with you, and you take some of it with you. I hope that William and Tobias and their messy journey is a part of you now, and I hope that you have appreciated what I’ve created here. At the very least, I hope I was able to make you smile. Frown. Cry. Scream.

And yes, turn you on a little. The story did get pretty saucy.

So what now? What’s next?

Void Dreaming is next.

As mentioned in my previous journal, I’m working on a visual novel. I’m writing and programming it (both are equally challenging in different ways and I HATE the latter), commissioning art for it, and I currently have a small team of alpha testers who are pretty enthusiastic about helping me make it pretty good. It’s going to be a while before it sees the light of day, but I’m working on it hard. Too hard, honestly; I’m going to burn out at the pace I’m going, but this project demands it. If Interwoven didn’t kill me, this one might!

But that’s the price I pay. I don’t want to do small things. I don’t want to do easy things. I want to challenge myself, and Void Dreaming is a challenge unlike anything I’ve ever undertaken before. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I start going into details about it; I really want to put up regular blog post-style journal entries in all my usual writing places to give a bit of an idea of how things are coming along and what the visual novel’s all about, but I don’t want to start doing that until public releases are approaching.

And unfortunately, that’s not soon. And yet sooner than you might think.

A project this size requires me to consider more than just my writing, unfortunately. Getting the art together has proven a pain, even as I get more and more writing done. The artist for the spritework is lined up and just awaiting my throwing money at him to get started. I’m still, as of this moment, looking for artists to do the background images and for anyone who can help me with the UI. They’re just too far outside my skillset to deal with, but it’s actually worked out nicely for me to delay things.

I’ve been holding off on the sprite assets that I could get right now not because of a lack of funds. I’ve actually saved quite a war chest (that’s simultaneously sizable and yet somehow not close to enough) to spend on assets for Void Dreaming, to help make its eventual initial release as positive as possible. However, given the expense and the time of year, I figured that if I wanted to maybe be able to make back some of the money that I’m spending on this project, I need to make sure it gets an initial release after the middle of the year. With a new financial year starting, I can write off the expenses I incur on the project against any income that I generate from it via Patreon or whatever system I wind up using. It minimizes fiscal pain for me, and gives me a better chance to keep more of the project rolling along faster down the line.

That does mean that I can’t even pay artists until after June, so I can’t get those sprites done until then. Hopefully by then I’ll also have a background artist and some help with the UI, so that Void Dreaming can have an initial release that actually makes it look like the visual novel I want it to. And I need all the help I can get, because as excited as I am about this project, I can only hope that people are as enthusiastic about Rael’s story as I am. I won’t know until it’s in more people’s grubby little paws.

So then, what does that all actually mean for Void Dreaming? It means, quite simply, that the initial release of the visual novel won’t be until the latter half of the year, and definitely not before August. At present, this is what my plan is, assuming everything goes moderately well:

• Art assets secured, beginning July and probably in place by late August.
• Initial launch of the public build (prologue) and the private build on Patreon (Day 1) in September/October.
• Public Day 1 build and private Day 2 build in October/November.
• Public Day 2 build and private Day 3 build in December.

Hopefully, with that in place, I’ll be able to do some nice early updates and ensure a good bit of story to hook everyone in. The integration of Patreon (or whatever else I go with) lets me recover some of the cost of making this, while also funding further development on an ongoing basis. It will, however, ultimately be available to all, like almost all of my work, absolutely free. I’d love being able to support myself on my work, but that would require a level of support that I don’t know I’ll ever have. I’ll settle for the project paying for itself, if possible!

As an alternate plan, if I’ve got the writing in place that I’d like to by then, I might instead do the initial launch with a public prologue and Day 1 build, with Day 2 on the Patreon. And if I’m REALLY ahead, I might even lose my mind and do everything up to Day 2 publicly and Day 3 on the Patreon. It’ll depend on how confident I am on the cadence moving forward, but that would absolutely be preferable because of the sheer volume of story content that comes through Day 2.

I’d like to move eventually into a two-month cycle on public releases (it takes a lot of writing with all these variables!), with the private, Patreon build updates happening probably monthly. The days of the story are a wonderful metric for breaking builds up the way I’ve currently got them, but giving the people supporting me and the project the chance to get their updates a little quicker, even in shorter bursts of content, feels nice to me.

And that’s it, basically. Bi-monthly public release cadence, Patreon support so I can keep doing this (seriously, VNs are expensive if you want to put effort into making one!), and an initial release hopefully around the September/October mark. If I can pull that off, I’ll be a pretty happy little dragon. If I can’t, it’ll go up when it’s up. I just hope people like what I’ve done when it gets in their hands. Fingers crossed!

So! Here’s that promised Void Dreaming TL;DR I mentioned at the top:

• Alpha testing/reading is positive so far!
• More details will come closer to initial release with (hopefully) informative blog posts
• Writing is currently well ahead of art assets
• Hopeful initial release is September/October
• Public releases will be free, with advance versions available through Patreon or something.
• Public releases to be every two months, with private releases monthly

It’s not much of an update on Void Dreaming, but it’s already more of a dump on the subject than I intended to do on what’s essentially meant to be my thoughts on Interwoven. Still, can’t go into the end of one project without looking forward to the next, right?

Thanks again for everyone who read through this all, and for those who read and enjoyed Interwoven. I hope that you can look forward with me to Void Dreaming, and that it’s worth your wait and my effort.

Until then, stars guide you,

• Faora