Bespoken: Where Are You?

So far for the month of November, I've been prepping to write the third book of the Valespain Pact, Bespoken. Writing Sumeria's Sons taught me a lot of what to do and not to do when writing a series. I took those lessons and applied them to the rest of the Valespian Pact series. 

For those who haven't heard, this is now the series line:

1) Alpha Trine - Zeus, Dargon, and Alpha
2) Striker - Zeus, Dargon, and Alpha
3) Bespoken - Prometheus, Vipre, and Malek
4) Chosen - Axis and the Chimera triplets, Cilix, Phoenix, and Cadmus
5) Boundless - Madux and Star Eater
6) Legends - back to Prometheus, Vipre, and Malek, but there will be returning POVs from the previous books.

Now I know there are a few who werelooking forward to Canry's story and honestly, I couldn't fit in a side plot that was attacked to the overall plot of the series. What I have in mind for him will happen outside the issue of the grid. The same goes for Mestor's romance but you will see hints of those two emerging love stories throughout the Valespian Pact. *evil grins*

Other than outlining what I could of Bespoken, Chosen, and Boundless, placing anchors so that I had plot/character goals to write towards while still allowing for flexibility if something didn't work, I've expanded the showing to other POVs of key players in the series. I strove to answer the questions of how Zeus came to be in Atlainticia space, which is as far as one can get from the approved travel route for the humans. What happened to separate Prometheus and Zeus? There are reveals and twists and sacrifices. The Ancients play a larger part going forward, which I think Striker laid the ground work for. 

This series will also include a broad range of LGBTIAQ characters. Prometheus is intersex, which shouldn't come as a surprise since all Fal Amorics are intersex. Athena will enter a bisexual poly relationship (which again shouldn't be a surprise since the Fal Amorics need two sperm donors in order to conceive), and depending how things turn out, she might have more. There will be genderfluid Ancients (The children of the Alphazetamite). Axis is asexual and there is another character yet to be revealed who is aromantic.

I've worked hard to flesh out all the pertinent characters for the Valespian Pact, a mistake I made with Sumeria's Sons. When I sat down to write Releasing Chaos I had to take a couple steps back and fix that before I could go anywhere with the final story of the series. I didn't want to make the same mistake in the Valespian Pact, especially after I had to figure out what made Prometheus a better Bespoken than Zeus or even why Athena couldn't stand in for the Bespoken. That took me a long time to answer and make sure that it could be interwoven into the plot.

Another thing I did was play with Ancient Greek settings and stories. Sometimes names mean something and sometimes they don't. I re-imagined all kinds of things like, Knossos and the roll of the Minotaur, the river Styx and it's gatekeeper... and just a ton of stuff that I hope will entice and thrill the reader. I know I'm excited. There might even be a redemption story in there somewhere for Rathmar.

Anyway, this whole blog post is just the long way of saying that I've started writing Bespoken and it's going to be awesome. :)

Thank you for stopping by and reading!!