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Kingdom: Konir
Aug. 3rd, 2013 02:27 pmLearn more about Konir (at my wiki).
Stories
Clay: Making an Informed Decision
Amelia: Going Underground
Characters
Clay
Amelia
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
Kingdom: Haerith
Aug. 3rd, 2013 02:23 pmLearn more about Haerith (at my wiki).
Stories
Xavia: Making a Decision
Characters
Xavia
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
Kingdom: Ialaera
Aug. 3rd, 2013 02:18 pmLearn more about Iaelaera (at my wiki).
Stories
Becoming Human
Jillian: Hunted
Mackenzie: The Thieves’ Hideout
Mirica: A Thief in the House
Characters
JillianMackenzie
Mirica
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
Kingdom: Atecia
Aug. 3rd, 2013 02:13 pmLearn more about Atecia (at my wiki).
Stories
Calix: Knowledge, Unchangeable Knowledge
Harrison: Learning to Control FireAurora: Aurora Blooms
Aurora: Trust
Harrison: Sauin Day Celebrations
Aurora: Blooming on Sauin Day
Opal: Talking to Margery
Characters
Calix
Aurora
Harrison
Griffin
Opal
Margery
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
Sauin was the first magic user to bloom, almost five centuries before Calix had. Sauin was the son of the king, the crown prince because his older brother had died young, and ever since that day the number of magic users had slowly grown. Before Calix’s life had changed it had been hard for him to believe there had been no magic users in the kingdom before that day, and it wasn’t known until a century after that at least one child of the king would have powers. As he walked through the palace he thought about what was to come, because it was likely that there would be a time when there were no magic users in the kingdom once again.
( Read the rest of this entry » )Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
Standing on the doorstep Clay glanced down at the piece of paper in his hand one more time to make certain he’d found the right address and then, breathing deeply, he knocked on the door. He didn’t know what to expect, but she’d said he’d be safe if he could get to the house he was standing in front of. All he could do was hope she was telling the truth because if she wasn’t he was going to be executed. Like all the other magic users in the kingdom were. It seemed like he was waiting for hours before the door opened and when it did he found himself staring at the woman who had helped him to bloom.
The smile she gave him was full of relief. “Good morning, Clay. Come in.”
As she stood back he stepped into the house, closing the door once he was within the building, and that was when she realised she was wrapped in a dressing gown. “Did I wake you?” Clay asked, feeling guilty.
“You did, but it’s not a problem. When I invite someone to my house it’s because they’ve survived becoming a magic user in a very dangerous world and I want to save them from death. Last night I helped a girl bloom, so she’ll be coming here too.”
“That’s…” Clay didn’t know what to say. “…good.” He shrugged. “How many have you helped?”
“Not enough.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Are you hungry?”
Even though he was he shook his head. “You said there’s somewhere underground, where I’ll be safe.”
“There is and if you’re sure you aren’t hungry I’ll show you the entrance.” She looked at Clay closely. “The door leading to the underground can only be opened by a magic user and can only be opened from this side. I don’t know why, but that’s the way the magic works. From what I’ve read of the journals written by the man who created the underground it’s a safety mechanism, because it’s not unknown for magic users to want to have their fellows arrested for one reason or another. Once you step through the door you’ll probably never leave.”
Biting hard on his lip Clay thought about what that meant. “What’s the underground like?” he asked, needing more time to make the decision.
“Clay, have breakfast with me. Take the time to let me answer all your questions as best I can and then make an informed decision. Don’t do this just because you’re scared. As with every choice you make there are other options.”
“Like what?”
“The mountains. There have been magic users living in the mountains ever since magic was first declared illegal and it’s because a safe place for them. You’ll never be able to come back from there either, but at least there you’ll be able to see the sun.”
“I…” Clay looked at her, knowing that she’d already saved his life once, and then nodded. “I’ll have breakfast with you as long as you answer one question first. What’s your name?”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
Mirica didn’t know what it was that caught her attention, but it was probably nothing more than the tiniest noise. Like her brother she heard things that no one else did and there had been a couple of times when that ability had saved both their lives. That time… She made her way down the stairs, slowly, with the knife she always had, just in case. When she thought about it later she realised she should have stayed in her room, which would have been much easier to defend, but she couldn’t go back then and change what she’d done. All she could do was deal with the problems her decision had caused her.
The first thing Mirica saw was the butler on the floor. She had a chance then to turn, run back upstairs and barricade herself in her room, but she allowed her worry to get the better of her. The butler was always the first person to get hurt. They’d lost two already and she didn’t want to lose a third, especially as she liked him. When she knelt down next to him she checked his pulse with her free hand, hoping that she would find one, and couldn’t stop herself from breathing a sigh of relief.
“I didn’t hurt him,” a male voice said from behind her, making her jump.
“What did you do?” Mirica asked, in an attempt to keep him talking so she could work out where he was.
“I put him to sleep.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “It’s a new power, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it work, but I did.”
It was those words that caused the first tremor of fear. The only people who could gain new powers were the thieves and having a thief in her house was the last thing she wanted. Add to that the fact Mirica was alone apart from the sleeping butler and the conclusion she came to was one she should have avoided. That left her one option.
Waiting until he touched her was one of the hardest things Mirica had ever had to do. There had been other thieves, but she’d never had to deal with them alone, and she knew she’d only have one chance. Her powers weren’t useful in a battle most of the time, but she had some idea of what he was likely to do, which was more than she’d hoped for. Finally, after what felt like hours, he put his hand on her shoulder and that would have easily been enough for him to be able to take her powers. A part of her did wonder if her life would be a lot simpler if she didn’t have any powers, but almost everyone ended up dead when they had their power taken from them and being dead wasn’t on her list of things to do.
Unfortunately the knife missed him. He looked at Mirica and she could see him change his opinion of her, but that change made him grin at her. The words he was going to say next were ones she wished she could have stopped him from saying, because she knew what they meant.
“You’re a feisty one.” He raised an eyebrow. “How good are you with that knife?”
Mirica knew she wasn’t good enough to stop him, but that didn’t mean she was going to back down and let him have her powers. “You’ll just have to wait and see.” All she could do was keep him busy and hope that her brother turned up soon. “What’s your weapon of choice?”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
Welcome!
It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m K. A. Webb, a crowdfunded writer with a love of creating fantasy worlds, and this is the place to start if you’re new to my work. Here I’ll introduce you to all of my collections, my way of crowdfunding (because all crowdfunders work a little differently), and hopefully make things much easier for you than they would be if I hadn’t written this post.
Currently I write fiction for fourteen different collections. Some I write more for than others, because they’re favourites with certain readers, but it’s easy to get me to write more for your favourite collections. I have regular prompt sessions, as well as a prompt page for prompts outside of sessions; you can sponsor a collection so I’ll post more fiction; you can rent a setting, adopt a character, or create your own ebook, and have fiction emailed to you. The majority of them are fantasy, because I enjoy world building, but my main focus is always the characters I’m writing. That’s a part of the reason I enjoy writing AUs and crossovers.
Most of my collections have been a work in progress for nearly a decade now. There was a time, before I started crowdfunding, when I thought my work wasn’t good enough. It’s possible I still would now if I didn’t have readers who tell me that they enjoy what they’re reading, but I started crowdfunding without knowing if I would succeed or fail, and that was terrifying. I have no idea now how I convinced myself – I’m just thankful I did. People do read my work, although I have no idea how many, and I’m glad I took the plunge.
The oldest collection I write fiction for is the Donor House collection. I started writing the first story for this collection when I was still at school, in a way that could almost be seen as writing serial fiction, because I used to write a bit each night and then my friends used to read it the next day. That was when I realised how much I enjoyed having an audience. Now my focus is the Donor House, which is set locally to me, although I do also write for the world outside the house too. In time I want to begin writing for the two other houses that are in the UK and I would love to have a couple of houses in other countries. At the moment I’m writing fiction from all over the timeline, including from before the house was created, and my aim for this collection in the next year is to introduce all the main characters in the first Donor House that would be there in 2008.
As with all of my collections the Donor House has changed a lot since I first started writing for it. When I first started writing the stories I had this image of a house that had been in use for centuries, but it turned out that I started writing right at the beginning of the timeline. I would love to write about the House in the future, and the vampires I’ve slowly been introducing, because I started this collection to explore the different ways the vampires deal with being what they are. The House itself was started as somewhere vampires who were having trouble being vampires could hopefully find a home, as well as somewhere vampires could begin integrating with humans. Writing about the characters in the House is something I really enjoy and as it’s also a favourite with others I guess I’m not the only one who enjoys this collection.
If you’re new to this collection I suggest you start here.
My next oldest collection, and the one that has changed dramatically since it was first thought up, is the Thear collection. Originally it started as a story about a number of girls who were sent to the planet Thear because there weren’t enough females there for all the males. There were arranged marriages and it was all very different to the collection it’s become, although I am also posting some AUs that show where I began with Thear. Now it’s about the three races who live on Thear – the Dorma, the Uisdro and the Tein-Igni. One thing I plan on doing relatively soon is going back to the beginning of the story and finding out why these three races ended up living together on the same island. I know at one point they got on well, working together to make a home for themselves, but things changed and that’s something else I want to explore.
Thear is easily my most religious world. Everyone here believes in at least one of the deities of Thear, although there are problems here caused by their religion, which is one of the things I’m exploring. As Thearan deities were also once worshipped on Earth this collection has a very close link with the Deities’ World collection.
Strangely the Deities’ World collection is one of my newer collections. I started working on it because Callidora, the daughter of Hades and Persephone, wanted me to start writing about her. The collection has grown as more deities have started pushing me to tell their stories, including Lucifer. I plan on writing about all of the Thearean deities, continuing to write about Callie, exploring the world a little more, and it seems likely I’ll end up writing about Archimedes (Callie’s older brother).
It’s also possible that the Deities’ World collection may start connecting with the Pagan collection. Paganism has always been something I wanted to write about, because I’m a pagan (although I’ll admit that I’m not a very good one), so I’ve been working on fiction for this collection for a long time. Anna, one of the main characters, has changed a lot during that time, and she’s now a girl with amnesia trying to work out where she fits in now that she can’t remember her family or old friends. She is one of the characters I want to throw into as many situations as possible to see how she reacts.
New to these collections? Start here with Thear; here with the Deities’ World; and here with the Pagan collection.
One of the things I love doing is writing characters with magic and seeing how it affects them. Three collections I’m writing fiction for have different magical systems: the Aurora’s World collection; the Heliopath’s World collection; and the Brotherhood collection. (I’m planning on changing the names of Aurora’s World and Heliopath’s World, because they were working names created using characters I was focusing on in the collections.)
The Brotherhood Collection is another one I’ve been working on for almost a decade. Originally it started out as a werewolf story, then it become about two different groups with magic fighting each other, and now I’m using a mix of both ideas, along with the Millennium Bug. The basic storyline is that children born after the year 2000 can have magical abilities and the Brotherhood want to collect them. Shapeshifting is one of the first abilities to maifest, which often has an adverse affect on the children with that power. Later on there are two distinct groups – the Brotherhood and Unity – who aim to teach the children how to use their abilities, but go about it in entirely different ways.
The Aurora’s World collection is relatively new. I started it because I wanted to write about magic being illegal and it ended up becoming the home of one of my most involved magical systems, where the magic a character has is related to when they were born. Every power they have, how it manifests, and when are all affected by the exact moment of birth. I’ve been working on it slowly, because making it’s not a simple way of doing things, but it is fun. Recently I’ve started exploring the other kingdoms and this has led to the introduction of the magic thieves. They steal power from those who don’t know how to use it, some collect magical powers, and their hideout was created using magic. Learning about them has been really interesting, so they’re definitely something I plan on exploring further.
The Heliopath’s World collection is also relatively new, but has gone through a lot of changes during that time. Originally it was a dream world, where characters lived two separate lives on in two places and the story I wrote was about what happens when those two lives collide. Now it’s become about addictive magic, which is something I’m still working on, but every spell a character uses leaves them with some form of withdrawal symptom and the harshness of that symptom depends on the strength of the magic. The other thing I’m exploring is about what happens when a group of magicians all live in one town and forget about what is happening in the world around them.
New to these collections? Start here with Aurora’s World; here with Heliopath’s World; and here with The Brotherhood.
A group of collections that are connected are the Fae World collection, the ‘Astral’ World collection, and the World Walkers collection. I’m still trying to work out if I should integrate the ‘Astral’ World stories into the Fae World collection, because I’m pretty certain that both the worlds were created when the fae were experimenting.
The Fae World collection is actually set in a number of different worlds, including Earth, due to the destruction of the fae’s home world. An overuse of the world’s magic led to the problem, because the fae had no way of returning the magic they used to the world’s core and didn’t want to stop using magic. Stories follow what happened to the griffins, a natural race whose home was the world the fae destroyed; the Dragons, a race created by the fae; the Shifters, who split between going with the Dragons and the fae; the merpeople, who went with the fae; and the twinned worlds, where Lena lives.
The ‘Astral’ World collection is about two different groups of people: the magicians, who have magic and live on Kalinia; and the thieves, who don’t have magic, want it, and spend the majority of their time trying to get it. but can only travel to Kalinia for short periods of time. I’m not certain I started with the right characters or in the right place in the timeline, but I do plan on exploring the creation of the thieves, how the magicians ended up on Kalinia, and exactly what the magic can do.
The World Walkers collection is about another group of the fae, the Thirteen Families, who buried their heads in the sand before realising they had no choice but to flee their home world. In order to stop the same thing from happening to their new world, Athare, they chose to create a web of worlds in the hope they can collect magic using that web. Currently I’m exploring a number of worlds, getting to know some of the races the fae created, and learning about all the different magics the races were given. No one really knows what’s going to happen in the future, especially not the fae, and the name of this collection comes from one of the most unexpected things to happen – the evolution of the World Walkers. The fae aimed to be in control of everything, but magic often makes decisions for them.
New to these collections? Start here with the World Walkers collection; here with the ‘Astral’ World collection; travel to the twinned worlds; meet the griffins; meet the merpeople; meet the Dragons; or meet the fae.
The Afterlife collection is one of my newer collections and I was originally planning on focusing on Caitlyn’s studies as she learnt to be a spirit guide. Instead Richard, who was originally a minor character, ended up becoming Death and taking over. I started working on this not long after someone close to me died, because it does help to write about the afterlife, and I’m glad I did. Somehow it’s become another reader favourite, so I often get prompts for this collection, and I plan on working on a lot more bonus material, as I’m writing about my view of the afterlife.
If you’re new to this collection start here.
The Magi collection is an older one and another that went through a number of changes. Thomar is the character who’s changed the most, because in his first incarnation he was not a nice person, but slowly he seems to have become one of my favourite characters and one I want to write about more. With this collection I seem to be beginning in the middle of the storyline once again, between when the Magi were kept as slaves by the Carne (Thomar is one of the Carne) and when they slowly begin to rebuild their relationship. The Magi are healers and known around the world for their abilities, but due to their past they refuse to help the Carne, until one Magi girl puts aside her feelings and does what she thinks should be done.
I plan on exploring the history of this world a lot more than I have done, especially the history of the Magi, as well as the other races and the magics of the world. This is one that doesn’t see to have become a favourite, although I love it, so it’s been on the backburner a little while I work on other things.
Start here with this collection.
My final two collections are both set on Earth, but they are alternate universe Earths. One is Kim’s Earth, where a population surge changed the world, and the other is a world where there is still an Inquisition.
Kim’s Earth is one that I want to work on more than I have. The idea is one I’ve had for a while – a man-made apocolypse, where the majority of people remaining are under sixteen. My apocolypse was an injection, created to stop Earth’s population from increasing for five years, that ended up killing everyone that had it. Of course there are conspiracy theories about whether the drug was tested well enough before the injection and some people take them seriously, including Kim’s father. She is one of the few people over the age of sixteen alive and ends up taking on the job of looking after a group of children, because they all look up to her. I plan on exploring this world a lot more, as there are other groups that I want to write about and I want to write about the future that they all have.
The Inquisition collection has a very basic premise – the Inquisition never ended. What would life be like if there was still an Inquisition, although this Inquisition is a little different. As I haven’t worked on this collection as much I’m not certain on some of the details, but it’s one I want to make more time for this year.
Start here with Kim’s Earth and here with the Inquisition.
I also write AUs and crossovers, because I love exploring different decisions my characters could have made, how they might have lived if they’d been born on a different world, what their story might have been if they were a different gender. If you’re interested in seeing more of any of these remember the prompts page, you can use the write more button that I have on the bottom of all my posts (every click equals 500 words), or you can commission me to write the story you’re craving.
If a story has already been written it’s going to be up for sponsorship. Every donation of £3 or more will gain the donor a perk and if you have no idea what you want to sponsor then you can ask for your donation to go into the general fund. If you’re low on money but would love to purchase some extra words then collect credits – every comment you make could get you one step closer to what you want.
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
There had been no word and they were running low on food. Even if they kept rations to a minimum it would be days before they ran out, rather than weeks. Xavia glanced at her brother, who just shook his head, because they had no other option. Opening the door could easily be the end for all of them, as they had no way of knowing who was outside, but a quick death did, at that moment, seem a better choice than dying slowly of starvation. Biting hard on her lip she did her best not to get involved in the argument, knowing that once she did it would be up to her to make the final decision, and she wasn’t ready to kill everyone in the room.
Sighing, Xavia sat down on one of the chairs. They would, as always, eventually ask her what she thought. Unfortunately there was only one answer she could give, no matter how scared she was of what they might find when they did open the door. A couple of times she’d been certain she’d heard noises, someone waiting for the day when they eventually had to risk their lives in order to survive, but that didn’t mean that whoever it was still waited for them. She had no way of knowing anything, until they opened the door.
“What do you think?” Hadar asked, looking at Xavia and she wondered how it was that she had become the one they all turned to for advice.
“Neither option is good,” Xavia replied, shrugging. “We don’t have enough supplies to survive here for much longer and we don’t know what’s happened out there. It’s entirely possible there may be someone on the other side, waiting for us to open the door. We might be the last of our race. I just think a quick death is better than a slow one and right now we still have the energy to either scavenge for food or fight someone. If we leave it until we’ve got nothing left then we’ll have no chance of survival at all.”
“Opening the door is a mistake,” Cyrus said, sounding amazingly calm considering the position they were in. “Staying here is a mistake. Deciding which is the worst mistake is what we have to do right now.”
Mair shook her head. “I don’t agree. The only option we have is to open the door. Staying here and starving isn’t something I’m even contemplating.”
“The problem is,” Suvi answered, “you’re not the only one here. Staying here may not be an option for you, but I think I may prefer starving to having my head chopped off.”
“We can’t know that there is someone on the other side of that door waiting to chop our heads off,” Paolo said, running a hand through his hair. “It could be safe for us to leave.”
“It won’t be safe,” Xavia replied, looking at the people she had been living with ever since it had happened. “Even if there isn’t someone out there waiting for us we all know that we were placed here to keep us safe, because something was coming. Something none of our families would talk to us about. That means that whatever has happened is bad, so we need to be prepared for what we might find, and ready to fight for our lives if that’s what it comes down to.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
Written for a Crowdfunded Creative Jam prompt: pull down the stairs that ye may go up.
Mackenzie checked to make sure she was alone before she reached up with her hand and grabbed hold of the chain. Only certain magic users were permitted to know of its existence, because it led to a safe place mostly inhabited by the thieves. She was lucky to be one of them, especially as she would never steal anyone’s magic, but instead she would help the people who couldn’t cope with blooming. It meant she had more magic than most of the thieves, she had to watch her back more than anyone else would, and if anyone ever found out who she really was…
Shaking her head Mackenzie put her foot on the first step, pushing all thoughts about her past out of her mind, because there were several telepaths who might be in the safe place when she entered. A couple of them she liked and trusted enough to talk to them about every day things, but she didn’t trust anyone enough to talk about who she had been before she bloomed. It didn’t matter if they liked her or not: if they found out the information would be all around the kingdom within a couple of hours and then she’d be in real trouble.
Once Mackenzie was in the safe place she headed straight for her room, because she didn’t really want to spend time with anyone. She didn’t want to be alone either, but it wasn’t as though she had any friends, and it was better to be alone than to have to deal with people she mostly didn’t like. Most of them were interested in one thing: power. It didn’t matter where they got it from as long as they had more of it than anyone else, which made everyone compete against each other, and, unfortunately, everyone wanted the amount of power Mackenzie had.
It wouldn’t happen, but they didn’t know that. None of them knew that one of the powers Mackenzie had gained when she’d bloomed was the ability to take someone else’s power without endangering herself. That was another one of those things she had to keep to herself, because there were some thieves who collected different abilities as well as power. She wasn’t the only one with the ability either, so she had to keep them safe as well as herself, because they weren’t as strong or as capable of using their powers as she was.
As she walked she nodded to a couple of people she thought, under different circumstances, she might like, picked up a bottle of something drinkable, and finally got the key to her room out of her top. Mackenzie kept it on a necklace, because if anyone thought they could steal it they would. It had taken her years to be able to afford even a small room of her own and she wasn’t going to let anyone steal it. Once she was in, with the door locked behind her, she kicked off her shoes. Sighing, she flumped onto her bed.
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
Aurora’s World: Jillian: Hunted
Nov. 16th, 2012 05:51 pmIt was simple enough to recognise a thief, but recognising them didn’t make the getting away part any easier. Once they’d seen someone, anyone, with some power, no matter how little it was, that person became a target. After that the only real choice is to run if you want to live, even though there’s no guarantee they won’t find you. Some of them have the ability to track people by their power and Jillian had been dealing with that ever since she’d become a target. No matter where she went or what she did, he was always there, one step behind her, and she knew that she would never be able to stop running. At least not if she wanted to live.
Not feeling safe to sleep was her main problem. Jillian would let herself nap occasionally, but it had been months since she’d had a full nights sleep. Every time she thought about him, about what could happen to her if she let him catch up to her, it stopped her from sleeping anyway. She wished she had learnt how to use her powers instead of ignoring it and hoping they’d go away, because she’d never wanted to have them. Admitting she had powers meant that she would have had very few choices.
Sighing, she shook her head. It was too late to think about what she should have done. Jillian had never really believed in the power thieves, at least not until she saw the one that was after her, and that was when she realised that she should have done. Lacking any knowledge in how to use her power meant that she’d been in danger for years. Fear of being executed stopped most people from learning how to use their powers, including Jillian, and that meant they were prey for the power thieves.
Jillian knew the day would come when he’d catch her. There was only so much she could do to keep away from him and every time she saw him he seemed a little closer than he had the time before. All she wanted was a safe place where she could sleep for a night, not having to worry about the thief, but that wasn’t going to happen. His ability to know where she was at all times meant that the safest places for other runners weren’t safe for her and she refused to put other people in danger. She was just determined to live for as long as possible, because she thought she might be able to protect herself from him if she was able to use her powers.
Experimenting was, unfortunately, dangerous, especially on the streets, but it was the only thing Jillian could do. Using her powers made it easier for him to find her and more likely that someone within the police force would see her. Either way she’d end up dead, which wasn’t something she’d imagined happening to her at twenty-three, even though there was every possibility she might lose control of her powers.
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
