Launching... Sylvpod!

Without further preamble, because I suck at it, it is my great pleasure to announce...

[Image ID: a square icon in the same style as the Sylvestus novel covers, with the same brown parchment background, the tiger skull sketch from the Vol I cover, and bloodspatters. Text reads Sylvestus the Podcast. End ID]

... Sylvestus: The Podcast!

Hosted by Acast, Sylvpod will launch in January 2023 and episodes will drop, one chapter at a time, fortnightly. You can find the feed directly here or at bit.ly/sylvpod, as well as subscribing on your podcast app of choice, including Podbean, Spotify, and... uh... other places.

And what's this!? You can listen to the Vol I trailer right here...

Playlists for the Public

We're still a long way from City being anywhere near to published, or even publicised at this point, but it is the point of considering what that publicity will look like. I mean heck, the darn thing needs a title first, but my brain's primary fixation recently has been on the playlist.

I always have a writing playlist for each story which is around four hours long. It typically starts as a few full albums which have very different vibes from each other but cover everything I feel for the story at the time, which very quickly is trimmed of the songs I don't enjoy as much, and then has more specific songs added, one or two at a time, over the entire time I'm writing for it. The end result is something that can fade into the background while I write but which keeps me in the headspace of the story or characters.

This is different to the official playlist for the novel, which are the ones I post on here, such as in the Sylvestus playlist deep dive I wrote; those are curated to around 1.5 hours from the larger ones, and tend to be more specific to the story and characters.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I've mentioned - it's challenging going from one PoV character to five. It changes the pace, but it also changes the tone of the story, how they see the world. This is reflected for sure in the playlist; I wouldn't say that it has the most diverse genres of any of my writing playlists, but there are definitely some songs which have a vibe or theme very specific to one character, or several, or all except one, or were intended for one but now fit another, while others remain more neutral to the setting or the tone of the story itself. I've already decided that it's going to be one "official" playlist for the novel, rather than one per character - easier to promote, and also leaves some mystery and room for interpretation. And, although it's still a long way away, I'm already planning every time I listen which ones are going to make it.

Oh, there'll be edit upon edit and late additions and sudden cuts, but it's an exciting process, to highlight what absolutely must be used to represent this character, or recognise how key a tone-setter a particular artist was early on.

There's a need to justify, to exhibit, when it's the official playlist. I never claim to have good taste in music (I now disclaim to anyone I'm giving a lift to that as the driver, I get to choose the music, and I make no apology for what crap may come) but the official playlist is saying: this is the headspace I was in when writing. This is what I want you to feel when you read. This is what this story is, who these characters are. In many ways, it's more insightful than a blurb.

 

In contrast, I was listening to my Sylv writing playlist the other day. It largely consists of Halsey, Sia, and Fall Out Boy - in contrast, the official playlist has one Halsey song, no Sia, and no FOB. Almost every Florence + the Machine and Rag'n'Bone Man and Cage the Elephant song on the writing playlist made it onto the official one, because they were specific and key to the writing - but it was Halsey, Sia, and FOB which made the majority of my background listening while writing, which set the tone of the early days.

Right now, the City writing playlist is six and a half hours long, made about 50% up of Lorde, Melanie Martinez, Halsey again, and Twenty-One Pilots. How many of those will make it onto the official playlist? I imagine at least one or two of each, but I doubt much more.

There was, to be fair, a conundrum I faced when finalising the official Sylvestus playlist around the publication of Vol II.

Sia, as I mentioned, makes up a large chunk of the writing playlist, and her music was very important from the start for the headspace of Sylv. She writes a lot about sexual trauma and family and lashing out from it, and those are very Sylv things. There isn't exactly the same market right now of male songs about those subjects. And right before the publication of Sylv Vol II, she came out saying some pretty shitty things about autistic people.

Problematic and cancelled and performative activism are so ugh right now, and have been for a few years, which is why I didn't even touch it at the time. I kept Sia songs on the playlist until the last possible minute, because they were so important for Sylv to me, and then I took them off shortly before the Deep Dive post because at the time I worked in support for children with learning disabilities, and I have many autistic friends, and it felt like directly shitting on them to be like "lol nah f*ck u tho, still gonna promote her music cos i like it xox". Similarly, if someone shamelessly pulls out Harry Potter stuff and shoves it at me, I immediately am on edge and do not trust that person. I, a trans person of Jewish heritage, do not personally believe that you should burn all of your old HP merch and never re-watch the movies or read the books if you enjoy them, but I also do not trust someone who proudly declares that they support and adore an antisemitic, anti-abortion, racist transphobe and her works.

But as soon as I decide, Okay, someone's music can be excluded from this playlist because of a shitty thing they said - well, now we're in a whole new territory.

Twenty-One Pilots haven't (to my knowledge) ever been explicitly homophobic, but they refuse to disavow the homophobia of the church they were raised in. Melanie Martinez and Halsey have both been accused of sexual assault. Kesha wrote a transphobic song many years ago. Brendan Urie of Panic! at the Disco is a bit of a dick. Frank Iero from My Chemical Romance frequently said fetishistic things about Asian women on their 2007 tour. P!nk did a collab with Eminem even though he's been accused of domestic violence. And all of those still feature on my writing or official playlists and I still enjoy listening to all of their music. And I'm not exactly out here running background checks of every single artist I've ever listened to!

So, where's the line? Maybe it's short-sighted, but for me it's in direct hurt.

Me listening to Sia, as a few tracks on a five hour playlist, by myself while driving or writing, makes her about 0.000001p per stream and provides a negative impact for precisely no-one. Me putting her on a playlist a few weeks after she says horrible things about autistic people and then shoving it in the faces of my autistic friends who have expressed hurt over what she said? That's hurtful. It's not me hiding things or giving into peer pressure; it's me saying, I care about you, so I am not going to subject you to this right now.

A friend watching a DVD of their favourite Harry Potter movie to comfort themselves after a bad day? That's... not doing any harm. People happily and without critical thought paying obscene amounts of money for a new Harry Potter game which explicitly promotes antisemitism and provides a platform for someone who openly uses that money to campaign against trans rights in the UK? That is directly harming me.

 

I don't know where the line is. I doubt there is one. It's a river, shifting back and forth with the seasons, changing over time and sometimes making a weird little Oxbow lake.

Everything is problematic. Everything has an effect on the world. Both are true. Make your impact something good, eh?

Identity in Sylvestus

CW: sexual assault, abuse, trauma.

This post contains unmarked spoilers for both volumes of Sylvestus. 

 

This is a post I've thought about for a long time, including many drafts and plans done on bus journeys and sleepless nights. I never wrote anything down, though; as I've explained before, how I want to say things evolves so continually that it would have been pointless and left me frustrated, and I knew I couldn't publish any thoughts on it until Sylv Vol II had both been published, and had been out long enough that I had a small chance of getting two or three readers who had already finished it and wouldn't find the contents spoiled. However, in the few months since that deadline actually passed... I find that my desire and inspiration to actually talk about it is nowhere near what it was. Maybe the pertinence has passed; maybe the brain-space I'm in is so removed from when it's at the top of my mind that I can no longer summon the words; maybe the theory of something I knew wouldn't see the light of day was a lot less intimidating than the practice of writing something that definitely will.

It's not the only reason this blog has been quiet for the past few months, but it's one of them, for sure. So, this post is about identity in Sylvestus, obviously, and... other stuff.

Here goes.

Superficially, I've talked about gender identity in Sylvestus before. That was just over a year ago now, and it's worth noting that at the time, I was out as a non-binary queer person. A few months later, I accepted myself as a gay trans man, though it took until recently to fully come out as such and begin transitioning.

I described in the above-linked post the view on gender in ancient Rome that based identity upon sexual acts. Now, we have gender identity (what the person feels), gender presentation (what the person shows to the world), gender role (what societal expectation the person fulfills), and all of those separate to sexual identity, romantic identity, sexual preference, and now the internet is getting very big on the politics of position and kink intertwined with all of those...

But back then, it was both simpler and, to us, more obtuse: men penetrated, women received. They may not have had acceptance for and understanding around "trans" people insofar as we would recognise it today, but that isn't to say that trans identities didn't exist in some form.

This isn't another essay about Sylv's gender identity, though. I think I talked around that as much as I can in that previous post. But what I couldn't expand upon then because of the whole spoileroonies thing was the whole "Sylv's gender and sexuality are both intertwined and linked to his trauma" part - specifically, the nature of the trauma.

 

I said to my friend after she beta-read the first draft of Vol II that I was amazed no-one had ever asked me, after reading Vol I, why Sylv was The Way He Was around sex, and what the trauma flashbacks and night terrors were about. I wish we had been talking face-to-face, because I want to say "she looked at me perplexed", but unfortunately this was a text-based conversation happening in the middle of a pandemic, so I can only say what her written reply was, and not the tone with which it was intended.

She replied: "It was always clear what was happening to me, so I didn't want to ask more questions".

Just like that, I was fully knocked down. It's so hard to gauge whether things are too explicit or too unclear or the perfect amount of subtle, and all this time I had bemoaned the fact that I wasn't sure which it was but didn't want to ask anyone who'd read Vol I about it in case it drew their attention to something they had previously disregarded and spoiled the Vol II twist. But, to be fair... it was never about a twist. It's not even really a reveal - more of a confirmation. The only thing that she was surprised about who was who was committing the abuse.

Yeah, it feels good to finally be able to talk about it explicitly.

Throughout Vol I, Sylv has night terrors that involve having something shoved down his throat, being pushed to the floor, being struck and pressed down upon. They are no more explicit than that, made of shadows and metaphor, a bear that turns into a faceless man and a wine bottle that turns into a "hot choking weight" before he wakes with a scream. He is guarded because he does not trust anyone, including both himself and the reader, similar to how we get no real insight into his inner workings.

In Vol II, Sylv is much more open. He reveals a lot more about how he thinks and why he does things; the only time he hides his plans is when he is again doing something he is ashamed of or troubled by, like Pulex's trial. And even then he later looks back on it and reveals all in a demonstration of introspection that did not exist a few months prior. This is a good narrative tool, but also an intentional shift in tone for the reader and their closeness to Sylv. And, consequently, his night terrors become more explicit as well. He reveals actual truths to Pulex and Lavi after lying throughout Vol I even to the reader - and as we know him, so do other characters; Velleius and Scaurus deduce some aspect of his personal history after the trial even when he thought he was being as impenetrable and clever as ever. He is opening up as, for the first time in his life, he both comes to trust people, and is made vulnerable by his connection to Nahvo'que.

And for a lot of stories, that slight opening up would be enough. But for Sylv, it wasn't.

It had to be explicit, and the scene - the flashback in the temple of Nahvo'que where he takes Lavi into his past and vice versa - gave me more trouble than any other scene in either novel, even more so than Lavi's death.

Ever since I first started writing Sylvestus, I knew there had to be that kind of reveal, that kind of openness. Everything was obscure and shadowy because Sylv had not accepted what had happened, and he needed to.

Those early drafts - written maybe five years ago now - were brutal and explicit. I was bound by the age-old adage of "show don't tell"; for Sylv to accept what had happened, the reader had to be as uncomfortable as him, we had to see and hear and smell every detail, taste what he tasted, feel what he felt, it had to be awful and sickening.

And it was triggering as f*ck, and it sucked.

I've said before that Sylv shaped who I was in the six years that I wrote him, and that what I went through shaped his story. That first draft of one long novel that I later broke into two and re-wrote, I was a late teen recovering from some impressive childhood trauma... and going through some more. I was brutal inside, trying to write a story about accepting what had happened to you while I was still going through things I wouldn't accept for years more.

And about a year after I wrote that first version, while I was crawling my way through the first proper draft of Vol I, I was raped.

I had already "lost" Sylv, and this pulled me further from him. It had happened in a way I thought he would not approve of. I imagined him mocking me, cold and ruthless, for what I had let happen. He was the voice of my own shame, an echo of things my rapist's friends, my housemates, my family, had said to me.

I went through a lot of sh*t in that year I don't want to talk about here. Parts of it I think I'm still not allowed to talk about. I keep typing sentences to try and summarise it in a way that both demonstrates the horror and doesn't get me sued for libel and then backspacing them and staring off into the distance for a while.

The story of that year, I guess, is Pulex's, not Sylv's. Sylv says the things to him that I wish someone had said to me. That I had to say to myself.

There were small victories, but mostly, like Sylv, I did not get justice. Like Sylv, I walked away from a battle it was impossible for me to win. It felt like it must have for Sylv, running, shaking, into the night, concealed under a cover of darkness, the coward's way out, wishing I had the courage to do a Pulex and stand up there in court and declare it - but in truth, I know now and knew then that it would not lead to a miracle of justice, a happy ending. There was no Sylv to convince the judge, no Velleius to sway the public opinion, no Scaurus to make the arrest against his better judgement.

But I did not need to, because I had already done my Pulex. And I had had my Sylv.

I had stood up on stage and, to an audience of friends and strangers, performed a piece of prose about it I had written called Hell Hath No Fury. There is a recording of it, but I am not ready to show it to the world. I don't think I ever will be. I'm not even sure, again, that I'm allowed.

Sylv told Pulex that he had to stand with his own feet, breathe with his own lungs, speak with his own voice, and that was what I did. But it was not just that moment. It was the campaigning before to be allowed to even perform, the viciously polite emails exchanged with people who had once upon a time promised to fight for me now covering their own asses as we bickered about drafts of the piece and details I could and couldn't say, the friends I sobbed onto or watched movies and ate pizza with afterwards to gather the strength to go on with it. It was the ones who did fight for me, who argued behind closed doors without ever expecting me to find out they had done so, who wrote emails, who cut off contact with people who had spoken against me for no other reason than knowing it was right, who told me things I would later tell the audience in a second piece, performed with two other survivors, called The Things They Said to Me.

And it was worth it, because my counsellor told me, a week later, something she shouldn't have. She told me that another survivor had come forward since attending that performance to make their own testimony, claiming that my performance had inspired them. Further, the entire performance, and all of the amazing powerful people who told their stories that night, raised money for Swansea Women's Aid.

And if nothing else did, that alone made every inch of the battle worthwhile.

I found Sylv on that stage, and in the lead-up to it. And I've kept him with me since. It was the self-acceptance after that made me realise that he would never have hated, judged, or mocked me for what I went through.

The original Sylv did not care for Pulex at all. It was ambiguous, but it was implied that he only used Pulex for his plans, and did allow him - even drive him - to commit suicide afterwards. But in this version, I knew that was not right. Sylv cherished this child he saw himself in. He did not disapprove because he had been drunk, or because he had been attracted to his rapist, or because he considered Pulex's trauma lesser than his own. Sylv still manipulates Pulex and his life in canon, because he is not a good person, but he does care for him, more than he admits or anticipates. This is the way I have hinted at, so many times before, that Sylv shaped me and yet what I went through shaped Sylv.

I have a jaguar skull tattooed on my hip from around that time. It is not meant to be the Vol I cover, despite the inevitable visual comparison, but it is, without a doubt, a little bit of Lavi, a little bit of Sylv. Its meaning is refusal to be polite, a jagged-toothed agreement to never hesitate to rock the boat, to capsize it when necessary, to be teeth and claws when needed. I have another tattoo from a year after that reminding me to put away the fangs and be vulnerable sometimes.

But there's one last way - okay, so very many, but the last one of this post - that Sylv and I's influence on each other affected the novels you have today.

Let's go back to that scene. I'm not going to copy-paste a section into this post; if you want to read it again to remind yourself, it's chapter 40 (XL in Roman numerals) of Vol II. Like I said, the original was brutal and harsh and explicit because at the time, both as a person and a writer, that was the only way I could think to be shocking in a reveal of something that had already been shown more obliquely several times before.

But I knew going into it this time around that I had been looking at it completely wrong.

Sylv trusts the reader and he trusts Lavi and he needs to acknowledge what happened. So that doesn't mean that any of them need to be shown what happened.

Quite simply, for the first time in his life, Sylv needed to tell someone what happened. "Show don't tell" isn't an all-encompassing rule. For this, it was simple: Sylv needed to tell.

I had written and re-written and memorised and practised that performance of Hell Hath No Fury, I had carefully placed pauses, choreographed clenching fists and a furrowing brow, because I know how to perform, I know how to take words on a page and make them into something powerful. But the actual performance was so much more raw and hurried than I could have anticipated. Watching the video, I don't even remember it.

Except for the moment I actually said... it.

The layout of the piece was this: I described experiences from growing up, I described how society and teachers and peers and doctors reacted to them, and throughout it I built to how that informed how I had reacted...

"When I was r-"

And I hit a wall.

I can see it again, watching the video, feel that jolt in my chest. I had been powering my way through, barely holding it together, racing along the line between "too much of a practised performance with not enough raw emotion" and "too much hysterical emotion with not enough rational calm behind it", and then I hit that word, and I crashed to a halt.

Because I couldn't say it.

I had mumbled what had happened to people while I was drunk, implied my way around it with family members, called it "sexual assault" and "the incident last year" sitting stiff-backed in front of university staff, metaphored around it in poems... but I had scarcely said the word before. And now, in front of a faceless audience filled with just too many faces I did recognise...

"When I was-" I tried again. I choked softly, physically jolting forward as I hit the wall a second time. The darkness began to swarm, a crescendo in my ears, like buzzing insects and an orchestra of out-of-tune string instruments all swelling and pressing in around me. I could see my friends in the wings off the stage, reaching out, gesturing to me to come back, to give up, to walk off and look after myself first.

"When I was- when I was ra-" I gasped for air, feeling the hand over my mouth like moths filling my throat, the soft "sshhh" like the shushing of wings, the weight on my hips like a tiger pressing against me.

"When I was raped-"

And I was through. In reality, I rushed through again, found my stride, continued with a shake in my voice and a clenching fist that had not been choreographed. But inside, I was gasping for air, and it was light and still and quiet.

I don't need to explain how directly that translates into what appears in that chapter, and much of Sylvestus before and after.

When he says it for the first time, when he finally acknowledges it, when he tells someone, when he admits it to himself, all of it goes quiet. And it doesn't mean that the happy ending starts now, it doesn't mean he's magically cured of his trauma, it doesn't right the wrongs of all the years, but it's the first step.

I remain proud of that piece of writing like no other.

People can get so accusatory around representation in media at the moment. Yeah, Disney does need to try a lot harder, but that doesn't mean that every indie book needs to be filled with every single identity of queer and PoC and disabled - but yes, I still get insecure about Sylv as the main character of my novel. He is so intentionally a subversion of "masculine soldier protagonist in historical fantasy" - ace, traumatised, chubby, short, autistic - but it's like every time I describe the book to someone in the creative communities I'm on the fringe of, I have to start with those things, rather than letting them be a natural part of the story as they read it. No-one wants to read Yet Another Story About a Straight White Man, but maybe, just maybe, a story isn't automatically sh*t just because it doesn't feature enough of whatever identity is the buzzword of Twitter this week.

Sylv's identity is complicated because mine is complicated. I am not trans because I was raped, but my discomfort and dysphoria around gender and sex cannot be untangled from what I experienced, because every source of strength and comfort I could seek in media about my experiences - music, movies, art, poems - is about women being abused by men. I was driven away from male recovery spaces by cisgender survivors because they did not consider me valid, verbally abused for daring to have a vagina when I was raped, and yet equally, constantly misgendered in and driven away from female recovery spaces. There are a lot of songs on Sylv's playlist by women about their trauma and how they reclaimed their identity and bodies, because there aren't many at all by or about men - and those songs and how I wrote and formed him as I listened had a huge influence on how I perceive him and his story. In Sylv's world, his understanding of his gender and sexuality cannot be untangled from that core Roman tenet of men penetrate, women receive.

Sylv's story and Sylv's identity is about being trans and being male and being sexually assaulted and dealing with all of that while you have a whole lot else going on in your life. I don't need to justify why he isn't a woman or pansexual or "more explicitly" non-binary.

It wasn't the story I set out to write. It wasn't the plan all those years ago. It's not the secret message behind the book. But it is true. Sylv will always be there, a part of me. A part of my identity.

I guess that's all I had to get off my chest about it.

Just Write, Dude

This post contains reference to spoilers for Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise. Spoilers will be clearly marked above and below in bolded text so the rest of the post should be safe to read.

 

People don't tend to ask me for "writing tips", as such, but they do ask me how I managed to finish a novel, let alone five of them, and how I stuck with one story for so long and got through all of the writers block and plot canyons, and to be honest I think that any "tip" that deals with any part of writing other than Just Doing It is rubbish, because everyone's process is going to be different. You can learn grammar and the theory of story structure and good practice for character development, but at the end of the day, that stuff can be edited and adjusted. Experiment and try stuff out - you might find that plot diagrams and timelines and character profiles help you, but they hinder me personally - but don't feel like you're failing because you don't follow the advice of Neil Gaiman or Stephen King. Just look at how different every major writer's advice is from the others.

But actually writing that first draft? That's the most important thing. And as mind-numbing as proof-reading and formatting and editing can be, I think writers united can agree that it's that first draft that juuust knocks you down most of the time.

That's where my only bit of writing advice comes in. It's not the only trick I have, but it's the only one I'd even pretend is helpful to anyone else. And I'm not promising it's universal, but whenever someone protests it, I do kinda wanna just be like... yeah. I know. I have been exactly where you are. And only sticking to my core tenet got me through it.

You probably guessed from the title of this post what it's going to be, and to be honest, it does kind of make me wince to look at it, because... condescending, much? It kind of feels like when you're sat at a desk surrounded by study materials staring off into space for three hours and then when they see your grades someone is like, "just study more", or when the executive dysfunction and depression kick in and you're laying in bed half an hour after your alarm staring at the clock watching the time until you're late tick steadily closer and chanting in your head "just get up, just get up, just get up", and you want to get up and you need to get up and it's not even like you're tired or don't want to go to work, every part of your brain is screaming to just do it, but your body won't f*cking move-

And yet, here I am, bein' all "just write dude idk", so like... yeah, it isn't as simple as that. I know. I don't mean that you should or will be able to just sit down at any time and pound out 5000 words. That's not what I mean.

More... change your expectations about what "writing" means.

We all know how it goes. You have a great idea, you get very excited, you pound out the first three chapters in the space of two days, you infodump to all your friends about the super great plot points that are going to happen right at the end, you make character playlists and consider commissioning character portraits from your cool artist friends, and then... it's gone. You try to write chapter four, and you just have no idea where this story is going or how to get from this boring-ass introduction into the real stuff, and then you've lost the momentum and you tell yourself you'll come back to it in a few weeks and maybe you get excited again sometimes and re-write those first three chapters, but four years later it's buried under a pile of other, equally-abandoned WIPs.

So you want to turn that into a novel? You want to stick with this one, because you know it's going to be the winner?

Just. Write. Something.

Write one sentence today. Even if it doesn't make sense and it's boring as hell. Write two sentences tomorrow. Write one sentence the day after. And in two weeks, you're suddenly at that exciting bit again, and with the boring stuff written and the renewed excitement for it, the words will flow out of you. And in a few days, you'll finish that exciting bit and they'll be gone again.

So write one paragraph. Write one sentence.

Here's the priority, the secret, the thing they don't tell ya in Year Eight English: it doesn't have to be good, bro.

I felt this in Sylvestus more than anything I've written before. Huge chunks of both of those books, the first draft was just... not very good at all. The sentence structure was repetitive, the language was boring, the plot was absent and full of holes, the characters had inconsistencies in name spelling and eye colour, and reading over it again would make me miserable because it would be like, man if I find this boring how the hell am I supposed to sell it to a reader in good faith?

But uh... no-one's gonna read that version, bro. It's okay.

 

Your characters are stuck in the cave and there's a deep emotional conversation you're excited to write to have outside the cave but f*ck the words just won't come today y'know? And suddenly you've lost all the momentum and you don't touch it for months because you just got stuck on how they leave the damn cave.

So today, write:

"They left the cave."

And tomorrow, write the scene outside you're excited about. And maybe when you come back in a few months or years, you'll have the experience and energy to turn that into a whole 'nother exciting chapter about the adventure as they left the cave. Or maybe you'll still not want to do it, and you can turn it into:

"It took some scrapes and a little effort, but in a few hours, they had escaped the cave. "I hate bats," Character shuddered."

They're out of the cave, the reader still gets a little insight into that something happened in the cave, and you probably didn't need those extra eight pages anyway.

Or maybe the whole plot is going to change, and they never got into the cave in the first place, and aren't you glad you didn't waste six months of your life frustrated about that one chapter that you ended up cutting?

The transition from A to B can be frustrating and disheartening and uninspiring, but as long as it happens, it doesn't have to be great first time. It just has to happen. So often we get bogged down and lost over one line of dialogue or detail or sentence, and it's so freeing to just be able to take the pressure off, lower your expectations, and write.

 

Major spoiler for Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise in the following paragraph.

 

It's not just those transitional boring bits that can bog us down. Sometimes we have such high expectations for a chapter - the conversation, the kiss, the betrayal, the battle, the death - that it's that part we struggle on. And that can be heartbreaking because this was the bit we were so excited about from the beginning and was motivating us to do all the boring bits and now it's sh*t and it's all ruined.

Yeahh you know what I'm going to say. Just do your best. No matter how good it seems, what you write now won't be the final draft of a part so important - which takes the pressure off to make it that good this time!

Lavi's death in Vol II was a huuuge example of this for me. Technically, it was very difficult to write (the fast action versus making it clear what's happening versus Sylv's disassociation versus all of the emotions versus reality conflicting with delusion), and it also has the huge pressure of being a controversial and upsetting plot-point. So, it went through more re-writes than any part of any book I've written so far. I have entire documents on my old Sta.sh of drafts of it, when normally for me a re-write means literally writing over the original in a No Going Back determination. I originally wrote it in 2016 or so, and it annoyed me a lot because it just wasn't right. Each re-write I did approached it from a different angle - focusing on the fast action or the clarity or the disassociation or the emotions or the reality or the delusion - and none of them were good enough. This amazing character and the very serious and traumatic nature of her story deserved more than I could give.

Because I just wasn't a skilled enough writer then. It bogged me down and annoyed me and made me feel like I could never do her justice.

And maybe I'll look back in a few years and realise that I didn't anyway - in fact, I hope I do, because it means I'm still getting better - but I definitely learned and grew and became a lot more skilled of a writer the second (or uh, eighteenth) time around. In the new first draft of Vol II, I just wrote it one clumsy bold go, rather than getting caught up and delayed in expectation and hesitation. I got over myself and wrote something that wasn't very good, and then I finished the novel, and then I left it alone in a proverbial drawer for a few months, and then I went back and re-wrote and re-wrote and edited and edited and crafted and crafted until I had something that I could truly and confidently say lived up to the standard Lavi - and the story and the reader - deserved.

The same could be said of the reveal of Sylv's history to Lavi in the silver pool a few chapters before that, but that's a conversation for another post.

End of spoilers.

 

There's other stuff alongside that.

You really, genuinely cannot figure out what happens next? Make that one sentence something buck-wild or unexpected or random or inconsequential.

"Lavi was upside-down." There's one. I wrote that one day, and the next day I wrote:

""Lavi, why are you upside-down?" asked Sylv."

And the next day I wrote three sentences about Lavi being upside-down, and the next day I wrote the rest of the conversation they were having, and the next day I wrote the rest of the chapter, and I like it quite a bit.

Kill a character. Bring a new one in. Have someone walk in and say "what the f*ck?" and figure out what made them say it later.

 

You're completely jammed into a corner and hate where your characters are and the whole thing? Do something drastic. Delete the entire chapter where they got into the cave in the first place. Send them to a shop or a lake instead. Sometimes they need the change of scene.

And so, to be fair, do you. Get up, walk around, stretch, make a cup of coffee, then sit down and write that one damn sentence and then let yourself off the hook for the rest of the day.

 

If you set a daily goal of 1000 words and you're never hitting it and hate trying, make the daily goal 100 words. Sh*t, make it ten words. Achieve something every day, and realise that what you have done is still an achievement.

Maybe just don't write this novel at all for a while. Write a self-indulgent few chapters of something unrelated that you're more excited about. If it becomes a chore, you're not going to want to do it, and the more resentment and anxiety you build up around not being able to write well, the less you're going to want (or be able) to go back to it when you do have the inspiration again.

I read a thing by Terry Crews a while ago where someone asked him for gym routines and tips, and what he said always stuck with me. His advice wasn't to work until it hurts or to have body goals or to stick with discipline and all of those parts of the diet and fitness industries that normalise exercise as self-harm.

His advice was just to enjoy going to the gym.

He said he sometimes just takes a magazine and sits in the changing room for half an hour; he doesn't work out if he doesn't feel like it. He uses the machines that make him feel good, he goes because he enjoys it. When you have the pressure of hating your body and comparing yourself to other people and wanting to lose weight or get buff or any of that sh*t, you aren't living for what your brain and your soul need: you're making it a chore.

I've tried to run, I've tried to use ellipticals and do yoga and push-ups and punches, I've tried to force myself to enjoy it because everyone promised that the dopamine hit would override the pain eventually. It never did, I was just hurting myself and hating myself because people told me I should and it was another way to self-harm without visible scars (and one that was praised by people around me, no less), and like writing without love, I stopped as soon as I skipped one session because of a bad brain day or an inevitable injury. People say that you should write every day as discipline, like you should work out regularly as discipline, but that's not true. You don't need discipline if you love it.

I love swimming, I can bring myself to get up an hour earlier in the morning when normally I can barely drag myself to the bus on time if I know I have a session booked before work. I go four times a week now, and if I wake up in the morning and don't want to go... I don't go.

I don't swim to lose weight or build muscle - I love my body as it is and have no desire to change it in those ways and won't let anyone try to convince me it should be changed - I just do it because it makes me happy.

And that seems to confuse people. The idea that if I didn't want to go one day, I just wouldn't. That I'm not doing it to keep fit or slim or even to "exercise the depression away". People have such a hard time living for the joy of life, I think.

Similarly, I don't write to be famous, or to spread a message, or for discipline or therapy. I write because I love it, because the stories bubble up inside and want to be shown to the world, because the characters push their way out and I love giving them the stage.

Go to the gym to read a magazine. Draw a small frog in ten minutes and then put the art stuff away. Write one sentence.

Just write, dude. Not for discipline or because you have to. Because you love it, and you want to see where this story goes, and because even if it's a sh*t sentence, at least it exists now, out there in the world, and you can make it a better sentence later.

See? You made a thing! You tangibly impacted this world! That's amazing, bro. Take the afternoon off for all that good work. You get to write one more sentence tomorrow.

[Image ID: a digital painting of a small dark green frog wearing a hat. The painting was clearly done in less than ten minutes. The frog is smiling benignly and has big eyes staring blankly off past the viewer. There are clearly no thoughts in its head. The hat is a purple party hat with gold spots that is secured around the frog's head with string. End ID]

A Deep Dive into the Sylvestus Playlist

There's only one playlist for both Vol I and Vol II of Sylvestus, but I did update the playlist between them (apologies to anyone who particularly loved the original and hates the updated one - it's only a few different songs and tbh i can't remember what i took out now, but there's probably some old screenshots floating around somewhere). I've also done some art pieces inspired by the scenes or characters some of those songs relate to, though I never committed to making it a proper series as I've never completed any kind of art challenge and probably never will. So, I figured I'd go a little deeper in this post into what those songs mean for Sylv, the story, and me!

Major spoilers ahead for both volumes of Sylvestus. Mention of non-explicit themes of trauma and recovery.

As you read, you can listen to the playlist here:

If that isn't working, you can also search for "Sylvestus" on Spotify, or, idk, look at the track list below and individually find all the songs on YouTube.

Let's get started!

This Night - Black Lab

 

"So take this night / wrap it around me like a sheet / I know I'm not forgiven but I need a place to sleep / So take this night / lay me down on the street / I know I'm not forgiven but I hope that I'll be given some peace / Some peace"

 

This was the first song I ever associated with Sylv, and its lyrics are handwritten on the first piece of art I ever did of him, over six years ago, pretty much the same day I conceived of him (see this compared to a year-old piece below).

Sylv was quite a bit different then, as you can imagine. But this song encapsulates the core character I started with: a powerful, charismatic, dark figure in the daytime; haunted by night terrors that chase him down to sleep. He knows he's done bad things and that what happens now is his own fault, he's not asking to be forgiven, he just wants to give up and find rest. Thus, this is the song I imagine over Epilogue, and it was fitting that it go first on the playlist. Of course, by the end of Vol II, we realise that it is not giving up and finding rest at all, but that's the core of Sylv and how his character changed. He keeps going, but what he's going toward is different.

ID: a digital painting of Sylv, a white man with short dark hair wearing a brown tunic, brown boots, and a red cloak. He is sat hunched over with his head between his arms, his cloak pulled under him, his feet apart. His expression is one of despair. The background is dark and cloudy, and the shadows are painted in blue and green. End ID

ID: a traditional painting of Sylv. He is dressed in the same red cloak, a red tunic, and grey armour, with short dark hair in a slightly different hairstyle to the previous painting. He is in the image twice, in the first panel leaning on a brown wall looking down, and in the second panel standing straight, looking forward, and smiling. The background is pale grey and the lyrics to Black Lab's This Night are written in black pen around the edges. End ID   

Bullet in a Gun - Imagine Dragons

 

"The Roman King, the Romulus / the precipice, born to change ... Lose the mind, lose yourself / you only care about fame and wealth / Bullet in a gun, but in the end my time will come / Like a bullet in a gun, blood sweat and tears to be the one"

 

This one's p shallow in comparison to This Night lol. It mentions insanity and losing yourself, it mentions selling out for wealth, p standard stuff of which there are many songs, some of which are also on the playlist. I just chose this one cos it's also a jam with a nice beat and it mentions a "Roman king". I'm a sucker for a loose association on a good jam.

Wolves Without Teeth - Of Monsters and Men

 

"I can see through you / we are the same / It's perfectly strange / you run in my veins / How can I keep you / inside my lungs / I breathe what is yours / you breathe what is mine"

 

This is more of an abstract one. I chose the lines above for this post because you could very much make a Sylv/Nahvo'que comparison there, but that wasn't really my intention when I chose it. It's more of a vibe. It takes third position on the playlist because it's introducing the reader slash listener to Anteria, and Sylv's relationship to Anteria and Nahvo'que. You could also make a case for wolves and Vishade'que, and the song's references to sleep and Sylv's night terrors. Idk, it's just a vibe innit.

Which Witch - Demo/Bonus Track - Florence + the Machine

 

"Who's a heretic now? / Am I making sense? / How can you make it stick? / Waiting 'til the beat comes out"

 

This track's placement in the playlist is very simply because it represents Lavi's introduction to the story, and her role for most of Vol I. I can't really pin it down to a lyric or a theme (religion and imprisonment both feature, but they do so in a lot of Florence + the Machine's songs, what made this one special?) - it's just, once again, The Vibe. I always consider taking it off and then don't cos those drums and claps Get to Me.

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics

 

"Some of them want to use you / Some of them want to be used by you / Some of them went to abuse you / Some of them want to be abused"

 

... it's just a jam, folks. A long, long time ago, when Sylv was no more than a few scribbled chapters and a grand idea, a friend told me this line reminded them of him, and it's had an honourary place on the playlist ever since. For Divites, Lavi, Aemilius, Capito, Velleius, Pulex, Rom - and it's a really good dance tune. The playlist needed something lighter, y'know?

Control - Halsey

 

"I paced around for hours on empty / I jumped at the slightest of sounds / I couldn't stand the person inside of me / I turned all the mirrors around ... And all the kids cried out / "Please stop, you're scaring me" / I can't help this awful energy / Goddamn right, you should be scared of me / Who is in control?"

 

I've loved how perfectly these lyrics (and the rest of the song) match up with Sylv's descent into madness at the hands of Nahvo'que for years. Plus the neurotic circling of the instruments feeling reminiscent of someone pacing their rooms in tighter and tighter circles, caught up in the mind-mangle of their own head.

This song was also on the Vol I playlist, and comes early on in it, despite the fact that the lyrics match up much better to the end of Vol II between Lavi's death and Sylv's, because like. Foreshadowing bro. It's what Sylv will eventually become, but the signs were there from the start.

Pursuit of Happiness - Lissie

 

"Tell me what you know about them night terrors every night / 5am, cold sweats, waking up to the sky? / Tell me what you know about dreams, dreams? / Tell me what you know about night terrors? Nothing / You don't really care about the trials of tomorrow / Rather lay awake in a bed full of sorrow / I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know / everything that shines ain't always gonna be gold / Hey, I'll be fine once I get it / I'll be good"

 

There comes a point in Sylv and Lavi's relationship where they really start challenging each other; narratively it's more in Vol II, but I keep this song here to indicate what they have yet to come. They're both idiots tumbling into a friendship they don't understand. They're both in their late 30s, but Lavi is broken open from grief, impulsively letting herself be captured in a hare-brained "plan" to use Sylv to free her god; Sylv is cracked with a different kind of pain, unfamiliar with friendship and intimacy, planning to use Lavi to further oppress her people. When applied to them, the verse about night terrors is almost confrontational - they can't imagine what the other has been through... until they do. It also discusses this idea of both of them searching for something that will bring them ultimate unbreakable happiness, something equally impossible for each: for Sylv, his smallholding on Macedonia; for Lavi, a world ruled by Nahvo'que where she can be with her family again.

I Fought Piranhas - The White Stripes

 

"And I fought piranhas / And I fought the cold / And there was no-one with me / And I was all alone"

 

Another less the lyrics and more The Vibe. Arguably its position about halfway through the playlist indicates the end of Vol I and specifically the Aemilius/Capito plot, because the song as a whole is definitely there for Sylv's business dealings and crookery, both now and in the past. At the end of Vol I, he seems to have sided with Capito and Velleius to drive Aemilius and Camillus out of business, but we get the sense that this alliance won't survive the next book. After all, Sylv always ends up all alone.

 

Wolves - Single Version - Rag'n'Bone Man

 

"Keep the wolves from the door / I hear 'em scratching like I don't know better / Won't you keep the wolves from the door / It won't be long before I cave in and open up the door"

 

Normally I try to space out tracks on the playlist that have a similar theme or sound, but this one largely does represent Sylv on that grind to rip people off and make dolla. Though, I do think it demonstrates more what he's running from, rather than what he's driving to.

Arsonist's Lullaby - Hozier

 

"All you have is your fire / and the place you need to reach / Don't you ever tame your demons / but always keep them on a leash"

 

Ahh yes, the basic b*tch playlist choice of every morally grey protagonist. Looking at the lyrics about growing up haunted by inner demons and trying to overcome them, it's easy to apply this track to Sylv, and that definitely is a part of it, especially at the end of Vol I. But I also really like it as a Lavi song. After all, it is Lavi who is described as having "something powerful, something dark" inside her, Lavi who wants to see the world burn to free her god. Both Sylv and Lavi are driven by that dark ugliness inside themselves to do what they do, but both of them must learn to tame it or fall prey to it. Bruliinae helped tame Lavi's fire, Lavi and Rom and Pulex helped stabilise Sylv, but in the end, when they end up alone... all they have is their fire.

Ready to Let Go - Cage the Elephant

 

"Don't you worry baby / No sense tryna change it / I'm gon strike these matches / Never had control / I'm ready to let go now / Was I fooling myself? / I'm gon spread these ashes / Never had control / I'm ready, I'm ready / I'm ready to let go"

 

UGH. I really just. Love this song. I love the sound, I love the lyrics, I love the Sylv/Lavi connection. Sylv admitting that he never had control, burning it all down. Given that at this point in the playlist we're kind of representing the start of Vol II, he won't be ready to let go of Lavi for a long time, but the playlist needed a bop and I like to think of it as a "looking forward" song, especially after what Arsonist's Lullaby just told us.

 

ID: a digital painting of Sylv and Lavi from the shoulders-up. Lavi is a south-east Asian woman with her hair bound in red braids. She is facing to the left. Behind her and upside-down, Sylv is facing to the right. They are both highlighted in orange and shadowed in blue. The background is an inverted photo of the Roman Forum ruins, faded on parchment. End ID

Glory and Gore - Lorde

 

"No-one round here's good at keeping their eyes closed / The sun's starting to light up when we're walking home / Tired little laughs, gold-lie promises: "we'll always win at this" / I don't ever think about death / It's all right if you do, it's fine / We gladiate but I guess we're really fighting ourselves / Roughing up our minds so we're ready when the kill time comes / Wide awake in bed, words in my brain / "Secretly you love this, do you even wanna go free?" / Let me in the ring, I'll show you what that big word means"

 

Ooh that was a big lyric chunk, sorry. But this whole verse really stands out to me as being about the Romans, specifically the munifex, specifically the boys Sylv manipulates and twists. Divites, Musca, and Aquila, all people whose insecurities and masculinity Sylv exploited under the banner of serving Romanum imperium to serve his own ends. Even Velleius - while he's never been bothered about slaughtering natives, he does come to struggle with Sylv's agenda and the manipulative relationship they put each other in. Plus gladiators, Romans, you know how it be.

Third Eye - Florence + the Machine

 

"Hey, look up! / You don't have to be a ghost here amongst the living / You are flesh and blood / and you deserve to be loved and you deserve what you are given / 'Cos there's a hole where your heart lies / and I can see it with my third eye / and oh, my touch it magnifies / You pull away, you don't know why"

 

Iiiiiit's another Sylv/Lavi song! I just really love their relationship and I really love this track for it. I don't even think I need to go into much detail on this one; the lyrics kinda speak to their relationship and where it goes, and while things may end badly, I adore the hopefulness of this one.

But, secret... it's also a Sylv/Velleius song. Arguably Sylv does know why he pulls away from Velleius, but this comes into question as he grows closer and more vulnerable with several people.

A Little Wicked - Valerie Broussard

 

"No-one calls you honey when you're sitting on the throne / I'll be high up in that tower, he'll be down there getting stoned / Beware the patient woman 'cos this much I know: / No-one calls you honey when you're sitting on a throne"

 

A lot of the tracks on the Sylvestus playlist - and on the 5 hr writing version I have, which has some much more tenuous connections in it - are kind of ~female empowerment~ anthems. It was mostly these which I had first, the majority of other tracks on the playlist you see came a lot later - it relates a lot to Sylv's gender and sexuality issues in the culture of ancient Rome, which I have talked about before, but what Vol II touches on a lot more (and something I therefore plan to talk about eventually) is the privilege of his masculinity. Hispania calls him out on it, but the She-wolf, as his female sex worker foil and an enemy from his past, represents it best, which is why this track is on there for her, not for Sylv. Lorem Lupa is not a good person, but she is fascinating. She will do anything to sit on that throne, no matter who gets hurt.

ID: a digital painting of Lucia Lorem Lupa, the She-wolf. She is a white woman with long dark brown hair, standing facing the viewer with her legs apart and her shoulders back proudly. She is wearing a pink dress, a gold necklace, band, and belt, and has a wolf-headed dagger strapped to her left thigh. End ID

Life in Her Yet - Rag'n'Bone Man

 

"She still remembers a time that was uncomplicated / but sure as the sunrise she's seen things that you'll never know / losses and heartache amount to her strength / but oh, how they both take their toll / She's still here fighting, you better know / there's life in her yet"

 

Oh nooooo oh noo ohohoh nooooooo yeah it'ssssss Lavi's death song! That scene is my least favourite to write and read, but one that has taken among the most revisiting and redrafting of any in all volumes and drafts, because it deserves the best. It's probably the oldest Lavi song I have on this playlist. And tbh, there's not much more I can add beyond what's in the song and what's in the scene.

Run Boy Run - Woodkid

 

"Tomorrow is another day / and you won't have to hide away / You'll be a man, boy / but for now it's time to run / It's time to run"

 

The ultimate one-person concert jumping song! Do yourself a favour and watch the live version if you haven't seen it (and if u don't hate the song, i guess).

Pretty simple; it represents Sylv running away from his pater on that one morning, sprinting through the countryside as fast as he could as dawn broke, knowing that if he slowed for a second he would crack and go back and never try to leave again; and it represents that he's still running, always has been.

The drawing i did to accompany it is of Rom, because Rom, while his only companion and for many years his only source of vulnerability, also represents him clinging onto that legacy, taking his pater's dogs with him even while making them his own symbol.

Also because Rom was a lot easier to draw running than 15 y/o Sylv (i tried, several times).

ID: a digital painting of Romulus, a Molossus dog who looks like a kangal dog. He has thick cream fur with dark brown paws, ears, and muzzle, and golden eyes. He is running to the right with his tail high. The background is shades of blue altered to make it look as though Rom is sprinting past. End ID

 

Praying - Kesha

 

"You brought the flames and you put me through hell / I had to learn how to fight for myself / And we both know all the truth I could tell / I'll just say this: I wish you farewell / I hope you're somewhere praying, praying" 

 

There's definitely a full post somewhere about the surprising yet undeniable Christianity of Sylvestus, particularly Vol II, and its themes of forgiveness, so this seemed an apt choice. It's an unusual vibe and message for a song, but one I get along with very well. Sylv will never get justice for everything that happened to him, his pater will never repent or make amends, and in the end what Sylv needed to do was say goodbye for good and know that he would not let him haunt him any longer. And hope that maybe others who have considered themselves as unforgiveable and irredeemable as Sylv felt can find their forgiveness too.

Caught - Florence + the Machine

 

"And I'm caught / I forget all that I've been taught / I can't keep calm, I can't keep still / Pulled apart against my will"

 

I have taken this track off the playlist and added it back on a half-dozen times, mostly because I didn't really want to have four songs by the same artist and this was the one that skimmed the cut. It's been on the playlist for years, and originally to me was loosely about Sylv and Lavi and their inherently unbalanced relationship - but as I came to the end of Vol II, I realised how much more I love it for Velleius. He knows better, has known how it would end since the start, but they sunk their hooks in each other and couldn't pull free.

It Only Gets Much Worse - Nate Ruess

 

"I was born before the storm / My mother placed a dozen thorns / The sorrys and the take it backs / lay silent in her folded hands / Oh, head to headstone I just danced / oblivious to consequence / As morning sank into the ground / the highest branch I sought it out ... All your love may fade away / All you'll become may all go to waste / So I can't stand to hear you say it hurts / when it only gets much worse"

 

There's no real connection to Sylvestus here, apart from "I used to listen to the Grand Romantic album a lot when I was first writing Sylv" and "something about motherhood, Sylv not knowing his, the brief insight we get into Lavi's deep relationship with hers, futility, suffering, something". It keeps the playlist diverse at least 🤷‍♂️

Foreigner's God - Hozier

 

"Her eyes look sharp and steady / into the empty parts of me / but still my heart is heavy / with the hate of some other man's beliefs ... Screaming the name of a foreigner's god / The purest expression of grief"

 

Time to be Sad About Lavi and Kahickuen Again.

It's really the most classic, OG Lavi song for me, with insanely powerful lyrics in that context and Hozier's sweet sweet voice.

Emperor's New Clothes - Panic! at the Disco

 

"If it feels good, tastes good / it must be mine / Heroes always get remembered / but you know legends never die / And if you don't know, now you know / I'm taking back the crown / All dressed up and naked / See what's mine and take it / The crown / So close I can taste it / See what's mine and take it"

 

Remus is free and it's gonna make this everyone's problem. The song captures the vibe of those few late chapters very well, from Remus' perspective at least; for Sylv, it's more like...

 

The Sound of Silence - Disturbed

 

"Hello darkness, my old friend / I've come to talk with you again"

 

This cover of Simon & Garfunkel's soft acoustic classic is... certainly something. In terms of genre, it's not super my thing, and oh man, The Sound of Silence is sooooo overdone, right? But... something about the two together really speaks to me. Call me an emo.

Specifically, too, the original was one of the songs the creator of Remus/Nahvo'que originally picked out for it/him. She had this idea of the vengeful fiery god of death possessing a mortal tiger by the name of Remus, who was then going to attempt to pass the curse off onto Sylv; she kindly let me adapt this into what eventually became the plot of Sylvestus, the tiger already possessed (the loose canon implied in the text is that a cub's mother was killed by Capito and Divites - becoming the symbol of the Tiger's Jaw Inn and also of the Vol I cover - and that the cub crawled into Nahvo'que's templum to die, becoming his preferred mortal host when Sylv partially frees Nahvo'que at the end of Vol I) and now in pursuit of Sylv's soul. The "silence" is what Sylv faces in his night terrors, in the mirror, but it's also the lurking burning dark in which he, and all of Nahvo'que's other hosts - tiger, moth, shrew - are trapped.

Seven Devils - Florence + the Machine

 

"Holy water cannot help you now / Thousand armies couldn't keep me out / I don't want your money / I don't want your crown / See, I've come to burn your kingdom down ... Seven devils all around me / Seven devils in my house / They were there when I woke up this morning / And I'll be dead before the day is done"

 

If This Night is what plays over Epilogue, Seven Devils is what plays over Prologue: the same chapter, but also completely different in our perspective and understanding of it. I don't have too much to say other than that this is a very powerful song that very much encapsulates those final moments as Nahvo'que chases Sylv down into the dark. And he stops being afraid. Big trailer music energy y'know.

ID: a digital painting of a man's chest in muted colours of pale blue, purple, and grey, with rough sketched lines in brighter versions of those colours. The lungs, stomach, and liver are highlighted, however where the heart should be is a moth. End ID

Hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the official Sylvestus playlist! Buy your copy of Vol II now here, or find out more here.

Makin' the Moth

I mean, the cover of Vol II. That has a moth on it. I made the cover. I did not physically make a, or indeed the, moth.

... maybe I should.

Anyway.

I design all of my book covers from scratch using a variety of tricks and tools both digital and traditional, and I figured it might be interesting for folks to see how that happens. The Each Separate Dying Ember cover (see below) was pretty simple: on a white piece of paper I used Indian ink on a thin brush to paint a feather, then dripped and splattered all over the page, scanned it, and inverted the colours. On a separate page, I wrote the title, author name, and text using ink and a quill, then scanned that in and placed it on the inverted background image. By selecting all of the text, I could make it orange, then manually selected the parts that were over a white area of background to make them black. Ease 'n pease.

ID: the cover of Each Separate Dying Ember, by Tatiana AS Webb. The background is black, with a white feather and white ink splatters coming out from it. The text is orange and black. End ID

The covers for both volumes of Sylvestus have been uh. Much more complex.

Despite the fact that they have similar aspects and themes (parchment background, blood splatters, animal sketch, faded text), I actually re-made all of the assets for Vol II from scratch again. I considered re-using them, but the mock-up was too similar. At a glance, I don't want people to be confused about which book they're looking at, which re-using the parchment background for instance would have guaranteed. Instead, the challenge was to re-create all of those assets similar enough to Vol I that they are identifiable as a duology, but unique enough to not be so easily confused. For reference, here are the two finished covers:

ID: the cover of Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall, by Tatiana AS Webb. The bottom of the image reads "Leave your heart behind, because it will not survive this". The background is parchment, with a single dark blood splatter and some faded handwritten text. The cover features a sketch of a tiger skull. End ID

ID: the cover of Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise, by Tatiana AS Webb. The bottom of the image reads "This book is nothing short of remarkable". The background is parchment, slightly darker and more brown than the previous image, with three slightly brighter blood splatters and some faded handwritten text. The cover features a sketch of a moth. End ID

 

The "parchment" for Vol I was, as you probably guessed, tea-stained sketchbook paper. It was done in the washing up bowl of my first year uni accommodation (then dried on a flatmate's cupcake rack), using redbush tea, hence the distinctive pinky-orange colour - much more pinky-orange than I ever wanted or intended, though I have since grown attached to it. The "blood" splatters were done using the same pot of black Indian ink as the Dying Ember cover, coloured red in post, and the text and skull were both done by hand on separate pages then scanned in and put together - I did about five drafts of the skull and was very happy with this one. The title was done with a calligraphy pen and took probably more tries than any other part; in the end, each letter is taken individually from a different attempt, because I just could not get the handwriting right on every letter in one go. I still don't like the t, but I'm a big fan of that dare-I-say iconic first S.

Similarly, the "parchment" of Vol II is a tea-stain, though this time with Yorkshire Tea. I ended up colourising the entire thing to be much more orange than it came out, because it came out a, you know, Yorkshire Tea dark brown - which is probably more realistic to parchment than the final product, but I wanted to come closer to the Vol I pinky-orange, without actually matching it. I like the fact that the final product is a similar, but darker, shade, maybe matching the tone of the books or some sh*t.

Oh, yes, and rather than being done in a washing up bowl, this was done...

 

ID: a photo of a lasagne tray filled with tea. Important documents in the background are pixellated out. Probably should've moved those before I took the picture, eh? End ID

 

 

... in a lasagne tray.

 

I have had this lasagne tray for three years. I have twice made lasagne in it, three times garlic bread, and once brownies. In the past eighteen months, it has been used exclusively for craft projects or holding smaller kitchen objects. One day, I will be able to have nine friends over for lasagne again. One day.

It was then dried on, uhh, my oven rack.

 

ID: a piece of paper, recently tea-stained and still wet, drying on an oven rack which has been placed on a piece of kitchen roll next to a microwave. End ID

 

 

This had an unintended side effect: a couple of grease stains. One is obscured by the moth, but another can be seen on the back of Vol II, next to the word "fiery" in the blurb. I kept it because it looks like a burn mark, very much suiting the theme of Vol II, but do not be fooled my friends: it is a grease stain from my filthy, filthy oven tray. Yes, keep reading and let me ruin the magic further.

Search high and low though I did, I was sadly unable to locate the beloved Indian ink that has been my artistic companion for many years. I could have re-used those assets at least, but I've used the three "blood splatters" from Vol I in so many promotional materials over the years that I really just wanted something fresh. So I settled on red watercolours (would have used black again for better depth but my watercolour set doesn't actually come with a black) and had an absolute f*cking nightmare with it. Just use ink in future, lads. Much easier. You see, ink has the perfect viscosity for splatter: undiluted, it can be held on a brush or between pinched fingers from a height of "about as high as I can reach above the page while seated at my desk", and with a slight flick, go splattering down beautifully. For extra fun, you can flick the end of the paintbrush and get non-washable black ink over all of your clothes and kitchen counters. For more splatter, lift higher; for more consistency, lift lower.

Not so, watercolours. In order to get both the depth of colour that I needed (though I did end up re-colouring manually in post) and the splatter effect that I wanted, I ended up with the page on the floor of the kitchen, stood on a chair, reaching down to the table to dab my finger in water, then standing up and rubbing it directly into the red pigment in my other hand, then reaching as high as I could and shaking my finger roughly over the page. I think I got much better ones on the floor than I did on the page, but eventually it was enough:

ID: a sketchbook lying open on a tiled floor. At the top of the page is a collection of handwritten paragraphs, two of which appear on the cover of Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise. At the bottom of the page is a variety of pink-red splatters of diluted watercolour paint. There is also one splatter on the floor below the page. End ID

 

You can also see here the handwritten text, which was done with the same pens as previously. It had been easily four years since I had needed to do this handwriting (my Sylv handwriting), so it took a bit to get back into, but thankfully it was pretty easy to pick up again. Sylv's handwriting is one thing I have a very clear image of. The title asset, however, was just re-used 'cos it's a logo now basically, innit.

The text on the cover of Vol I is mostly related to the contents of the book but not actually taken from it, as it is supposed to represent what Sylv writes in his notes about the people of Anteria and the events of the story. One is what he thinks of Curtia Dorsuo but never expresses in the novel, one is a small note about Pulex, one is an Anterian legend he might have been told by Lavi, another is a list of expenses involved in running an estate.

The text on the cover of Vol II is similar; mostly letters written in the book, one section from Pliny the Elder's The Natural History (obvi), a few subtextual trains of thought from Sylv. For both books, I wrote about three full A4 pages, knowing that less than one page's worth would end up on the final product.

Of course, the last thing left is the moth. The star of the show!

That b*stard nearly killed me.

I drew five tiger skulls for the cover of Vol I, and I thought that was a lot of times to draw a thing. But I enjoyed it so much that I ended up just drawing animal skulls for fun for a while, and eventually getting one tattooed on me (not the sylv skull, i'm not that much of a vain ass nerd, just another... unrelated... big cat skull).

I drew twelve moths for the cover of Vol II, and lads? I hated every single one.

 

ID: a sketchbook lying open on a desk, showing two hand-drawn moths in the same style as the cover of both Sylvestus Vol I and Vol II. One is shown from the side with its wings folded, the other is shown from above with its wings open. More documents are pixellated out behind the sketchbook, though these are just D&D notes, not private documents. Not that you can tell, as they are pixellated out. End ID

 

I'm pretty happy with the outcome, though, when I eventually settled on one! I like moths a lot as animals, just not, it turns out, as the subject of my own artistic endeavours. I think my problem was the stripes. It couldn't be done in exactly the same style as the skull like I'd hoped. In fact, could have probably saved time and effort here and on the text by doing them using my Wacom tablet (which I didn't have when creating the Dying Ember or Vol I covers) straight onto my laptop, but I wanted the consistency that came from methodology. I draw differently on my tablet.

Nahvo'que as a moth is consistently described as "dark" and "furred". Antennae are also mentioned. I imagine the moth as being nearly the size of Sylv's head - I have seen moths that big in Borneo and Kenya, and I love them. I just wouldn't want one crawling out of my mouth, which uh... spoiler alert. Unfortunately, it is very hard to render something "dark" and "furred" (and, as i imagined of nahvo'que, stripey) in the same style as a smooth pale tiger skull. Further, the position and shape of the skull on the Vol I cover had set a precedent. So, it took a while to find a shape that fit. I was really fixated on a sideways-facing horizontal moth like the first one in the photo above, but it was just too shallow for the cover; there would have been too much space between it and the title, or else it would have had to be so long it would have wrapped all around the spine and back cover too. I eventually settled on the moth I did because the lines mimic so well the shape of the tiger skull, as well as it having patches of dark focused lines and patches of empty negative space, much as the skull does.

The final step, of course, is putting it all together. I use GIMP, even though all my artist friends both hate it and mock me for it. I just like GIMP. It used to be very good, and now it's less good, but until someone pries it out of my f*cking hands I'm not going to stop using it because I've gotten very good at it. The intricacies is really just a lot of layers, colourise tools, levels, temperature adjustments, alpha to selection-ing, and ever so much cut and pasting. The cover is designed as a wraparound,  all of it on the template Lulu provided me with.

 

ID: a screenshot of the cover of Vol II open in GIMP, the image manipulation programme. The left of the screen is a tool set, the right is a brush set and a list of layers. The cover of the book appears as it does in reality, except that it is overlaid with a 10% opacity template from Lulu.com which shows what will be the back cover, front cover, and spine, and bleed margins. The document is titled "Vol II cover mk3.xcf" and has 17 layers. End ID

 

 

What happens when I'm done creating the cover? Now that's a magic that isn't mine to spoil. Now go forth, friends, with newfound knowledge and probably less respect for me than you had previously! Admire that grease stain that looks helpfully like a burn mark on the back of your copy of Vol II that you won't be getting until it comes out in like a month, and rejoice!