Charlotte Kersten

Since I finished The Economy of Blessings trilogy in November, I’ve outlined 3 new books, sat staring blankly at the screen when it came time to actually start writing, and then decided that the ideas were actually garbage. Well, I don’t know what happened, but something clicked in my brain recently and now I have a massive, complex world developed and a new outline that I’m incredibly excited about. A few tidbits for anyone who’s interested:

1. I think a general description could be “Juliet Marillier meets Planescape: Torment,” and if that’s a concept that sounds appealing to me and me alone, so be it!
2. The world is very much a love letter to all of my favorite fantasy RPGs. I used the Dungeons & Dragons Systems Reference Document (basically, everything that you can legally copy/adapt from D&D lol) as a starting off point and made the world my own from there. I spent time revisiting the worlds of D&D, Pathfinder, Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls and Pillars of Eternity to do so (mostly to see how many countries and gods in a pantheon are acceptable and to make sure I’m not accidentally stealing anything).
3. Just as the world is a love letter to RPGs, the story is too. To be clear, it isn’t GameLit or LitRPG. Rather, my goal is to create a book that almost replicates the experience of playing a narrative-rich RPG; a character making their way through adventures to an ultimate goal while exploring and learning about the world, having interesting conversations with characters, getting distracted by side-stories, and deepening their relationships with companions along the way.
4. Obviously I mentioned Juliet Marillier and “deepening relationships,” so romance is central. Continuing along with the narrative-rich RPG theme, the romance is going to develop when the one character buys the other 3 presents, solves a personal problem for them and says one flirtatious line of dialogue. Then next thing you know, their faces are gonna be clipping into each other while they wear underwear that looks like diapers and awkwardly paw at each other!
5. Just kidding. BUT I will say that I have been tearfully listening to the Fenris Theme from Dragon Age II a lot recently…to everyone who knew me during my Dragon Age phase, that information probably just sent chills down your spine, didn’t it?