Project: Faith - Prologue

I was looking through some of my work for Project: Faith and figured I'd post the prologue on here, just for kicks. I'll probably post some more work from it tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled!

***

She was thirteen when the Angel ran away to join the Devils.

She remembered sitting down in the small living room with her father, sitting silently as they both stretched their wings after a long day, and he mentioned it to her. She also remembered not knowing what to say - after all, it was unheard of. The Devils were evil and cruel, and they went against all that the Angels had been taught: protect the Pious, for the rest don’t matter.

But for an Angel to betray her kind? Unheard of.

So her father explained.

“L’Fae,” he said, “Do you know what happened a few days ago?”

“There was a ruckus,” she said simply, using a word from school that she had only learned weeks after her fellow classmates.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid one of our own kind betrayed us.”

“For the Devils.”

“Yes,” he answered again. “You know who they are, correct?”

She shook her head.

“They protect the ImPious, those who do not respect the government for what it truly is,” he explained. “They have been a thorn in the Angels’ sides for ages, always opposing our true views. And for an Angel to turn to their side . . .it’s unheard of. God Peter is astounded, I hear, to learn of this. It’s simply a disgrace.”

“But why did they leave, Father?” she asked as she stretched her wings.

“Because,” he said, “She was apparently a troublemaker. According to her father, she was a girl who rarely listened to orders and was always focused on herself. A selfish Angel, I hear,” he shook his head. “So, we suspect, she ran off to do whatever sinful things those Devils engage in. Drink, games, sex . . . And, of course, they mock us for our true ways.”

“You mean they’re wrong?”

“Very,” he said with a sigh. “L’Fae, you must understand. Some ways are just immoral and wrong. And you must never get pulled into these ways, you understand?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good.”

Silence. She stretched her wings a while longer, looked out the window at the star-strewn sky, protected by her kind. And then, she asked: “Who was the girl that left?”

“Her name?”

She looked to him and nodded.

He let out a sigh. “Her name,” he said, “Was Natasha Kameneva.”

L’Fae knew, later, that she would remember that name. She would remember it, for it would someday be the name she would follow after.

Faith might've been lost, but at least they still had Hope . . .

L'Fae didn't mean for things to go so far.

After an Angel sees her face and the Devil's Clubhouse is burned to the ground, the Domain of Heaven is thrown into civil war. The God Peter is hiding among the Devils; the still-loyal Angels join forces with the Devils to worrisome effects. They might be able to fight for the same cause, but what other problems could be faced?

And that's not all. Wherever L'Fae looks, she sees nothing but distance between her friends, caused by death and grief and fear and secrets untold. Even her lover, Natasha, is reaching towards revenge . . . and she doesn't know how to pull her back.

L'Fae never meant to be a catalyst for war.

But now she must become the warrior for peace.

***

There you go! That's the blurb for Project: Hope, the sequel to Project: Faith. Exciting, huh? I'm hoping to either make myself or ask around for a cover for both books. I actually have a concept in my head, although I don't know how well I'd be able to pull it off . . . hmm. I suppose we'll have to see!

For those of you interested in my Camp info, you can find my profile here. Feel free to drop me a message if you're camping out too - I'll share my hot dogs if you let me have some s'mores!

What my work for P: Hope looks like!

Project Hope, I mean.

(And this marks the first time I'm using my own images! Screenshots, of course, but who cares?!)

This is - you guessed it - my outline for my April novel for Camp Nano! It's not much - about six pages of rough notes - but it gets the job done, at least as a place to start working off of. There are still gaps in my plot, but they can be worked out within the next few days. April starts in those few days, can you believe it?! It's a good thing that I have Monday off from school, because I will need the time to plan!

So what is Project: Hope about? As you might've seen in a previous post, this is a sequel to another of my projects - basically, it's "remember all of the stuff from last time? Now add civil war. CRAP." That's the easiest way to explain it without major spoilers, but it's much more complex, I promise. There are at least three dead parents, some personal - and impersonal - grieving, war, discrimination, and - to quote the priest from The Princess Bride - TWOO WUVE.

So what else is smashed into this document? Let me show you!

(You might've noticed, at this point, that I use a very old version of Microsoft: Word. Don't mind that. Personally, I like this version, because it doesn't have many bells and whistles.)

(You might be able to notice that as the notes go further and further down, the more unhinged and dislocated sense it begins to make. Let's just say I'm very . . . familiar . . . with these characters.)

(See what I mean by "unhinged"? And yes, I do dislike Ms. Rudolle. She's probably going to die. And I will enjoy the act of killing her off.)

So clearly, I have a lot of work to do, but I also think that what I have so far is fantastic - if I absolutely had to, I could start working off of this alone. I go back and forth between being a plotter and a pantser; one of my projects from earlier this year, Project: Assassin, had a balance between planning and pantsing that I really enjoyed, although part of the reason it was so successful, I think, was because it was basically an anthology. Perhaps when I'm less busy, I'll post an excerpt from the work - I'm very proud of it, and as long as you're willing to put up with some lack-of-context issues, it's a good read. It's a long read, but it's a good read nonetheless.

Anybody else out there in the void who's busy scribbling away? Join me! I'd love to see what you're working on.

How about NaNo-WHOA-Mo?

Whoa indeed! I meant to post this two nights ago and was distracted by a) life, and b) rewatching Frozen. Not a good way to start a habit! At least I had this ready to go half an hour before bedtime...

As I mentioned in my last post, I am a big fan of NaNoWriMo. (That's the camp site, by the way, since April is the first session this year.) I've participated many times; I've won many times. Granted, most of my work from NaNo has been total CRAP, but nonetheless, it's hard to write 50,000 words in a month. It's the sort of thing that requires mettle, guts, and a little bit of bravery - especially if your life is busy enough.

Regardless, it's very rare that I don't enjoy a bout of NaNo. In fact, this will probably be my eighth try, hopefully my sixth win. Most times, NaNo is used to write a fifty-thousand word novel; however, I'm rebelling this time (as I think I've mentioned) in order to finish writing a novel I started last year: Project: Faith.

The easiest way to summarize the story is like this: in a country called the Domain of Heaven, there is a caste system of four classes: Angels, at the top, who act as protectors and government persons; Pious, who wear a symbol upon their brows marking themselves as worshippers of the government and God; ImPious, with bare brows and the view that the government is purely the government; and the Devils, the lowest of the low, the scoundrels that oppose the Angels.

But who are the real scoundrels?

(I don't own the image, I don't know the model, etc. This is just what I use as a frame of reference for what my characters even look like. A faceclaim, to use a popular term.)

Natasha Kameneva, whose likeness is based off of the model's above, was the daughter of a high-standing adviser and was, herself, an Angel. Where her father got press, she did as well, for she was to take over his job one day - until one day, she disappears from Cath, the capital, and runs away to join the Devils in their debauchery. Why? Nobody knows. The story told is that she was a troublemaker and a rebel, despite what the paparazzi saw, and the news afterwords is covered up by hushed whispers.

Natasha's story is what motivates the main story to begin - the reason why a girl named L'Fae Judian, another Angel, to follow the same path herself.

(Still don't own this one. Just another faceclaim. Now stop reading the fine print and read the post!)

L'Fae Judian was a shy, academically-struggling girl who worked for the Angel's Army as part of the Border Guard - that is, until she runs away from home one night. She arrives at the door to the Devils' Clubhouse and quickly asks for solace, simply expressing that she wished to protect those who she wished - for that, exactly, is the problem. The caste system stood as such: the Angels would protect the Pious, absolutely, but ignore the ImPious almost exclusively. That's what the Devils were for - to protect the ImPious, even at the expense of their reputation. L'Fae, however, has the power to sway the tide of peace between the Angels and Devils - including driving the groups straight to war.

So why did L'Fae leave? What did the Angels do to make her leave? And who is the woman that L'Fae followed after? The story concerns those points and more, quickly delving into how the lives of the Devils change and how fast one can fall in love with who had once been an enigma and an inspiration.

So that's what I'm going to be finishing, guys! I'll probably post a bunch of excerpts from the original piece as I start going through and plotting out the next parts of the story, most of which will probably be romance parts (since they're plot-significant, but not plot heavy, per se). And for what you might be thinking, yeah: it's a lesbian romance. I'm pretty sure that's all I need to say for you to guess who's going to be involved . . .

So that's what my next few weeks are going to start looking like! That, in and amongst other work . . . ugh. Maybe I need to go back to that food plate and dump out some of my meal, because I think I'm going to fill up way too fast...