A third post this week?! Astonishing. I guess I’m feeling inspired by reaching 90 straight days of adding to my big project. So, I want to actually explain what I’m working on.
.
Here’s the pitch so far:
.
“Deep underground in the city of Dendograath, the social-climbing Telena family finds that they have lost the favor of the ruling goddess. In the vicious society of dark elves, this is a death sentence for all of them if they cannot determine the source of her displeasure and snuff it out at once. Taezrad Telena, the youngest child of the house and nearly of age to train as a priestess, knows exactly what the problem is: by recognizing his identity as a transgender man, he has transgressed the strict boundaries of gender that uphold Dendograath’s matriarchy. Forced to flee, he finds himself cornered by a mercenary band that unexpectedly offers him a way out — if he can pay more for his freedom than his family can pay for his capture, they will gladly abandon the hunt. With a limited timeframe and a price on his head as high as the unknown world on the surface above, he conspires to steal the only thing within his reach worth more to the mercenaries than mere gold: an artifact sealed within the Telena family vault.”
SO! It’s a fantasy heist with drow gender shenanigans.
.
This whole concept started as a discord conversation about how would a society similar to that of the Forgotten Realms drow would respond to the existence of transgender people. In my estimation, they really would not take it well. The character developed naturally from there.
.
As you can see, Taezrad’s knack for digging himself deeper by thinking that he’s clever has been there since before he had a name. As I developed him more, I had a cheeky whim to make him the anti-Drizzt. He totally lacks that spark of innate goodness that made that character heroic. Much in the vein of “Artemis Fowl,” my boy starts out the series as an entertainingly villainous character, and is going to be gradually dragged toward decency quite against his better judgment.
.
The broadest gist of the plot has remained about the same, but the relationships between the characters have changed quite a bit, as has a vast amount of the setting. I have been worldbuilding vigorously for this one.
.
I guess I’m trying to modernize the drow. Those of us with a great nostalgia for “The Dark Elf Trilogy” of the early ’90s will find Dendograath hauntingly familiar, but inhabited by a very different society. The pop culture of drow has all kinds of fascinating stuff in it that never really gets explored in depth. The social and religious structures of the culture as it’s presented sometimes don’t make a lot of sense. Part of that is because it was the 80s to early 90s, and we thought about this stuff differently. But, even in newer material that features them, I feel like the implications of the lore are underutilized. By God, I will use my sociology degree for something, even if it’s exclusively pop fantasy.
.
I was hoping to have a first draft by September. The original goal was 100,000 words in one year. So far I’m on track to at least make word count, but it’s already turning out longer than anticipated, which might add some time to the total. At 25,000 words I should have been at about ¼ through the book. That’s uh. That’s not the case. Woof. This is shaping up to be a doorstopper. I think the word count of the final copy will be less than the first draft as I figure out the most efficient way to get certain points across.
.
So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last 90 days! And what I will be up to for the next 9-12 months.
.
I sure hope I get to read it one day.
Dramatic Pause 