The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

Written for a random number prompt.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Posted, with others, in return for the posting of a poem by Elizabeth Barrette.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Part 1Part 2

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Written for Elizabeth Barrette’s prompt.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

After reading the report in the paper Juliet gave Charlotte a few days to email her. The girl would need time to deal with what had happened to her, but once she had Juliet knew the first thing she’d do was get in contact with the circle. When there was nothing from Charlotte in Juliet’s inbox a fortnight later she really started worrying and sent a message to Charlotte checking on her. It was the lack of reply that had Juliet hovering outside the entrance of the college she knew that Charlotte went to, waiting for her, because that was the only place Juliet knew for certain she might find Charlotte.

By half past five Juliet was beginning to think it was time to give up for the day. Then Charlotte walked through the sliding doors and Juliet stretched before wandering over to her, but by the time Juliet had reached halfway she was beginning to think there was something wrong. Something more than having been involved in a car accident. Without saying anything Juliet watched the girl she had known for almost two years and wondered why she hadn’t said anything to her. Charlotte was watching Juliet back, with a wariness in her eyes that Juliet felt a little hurt by.

“Do I know you?” Charlotte asked, breaking the silence first, brushing her hair back with her hands.

“You’re not Charlie,” Juliet replied, because she’d never seen Charlotte do that before. “What happened in that accident?”

“I have amnesia.”

“Are you sure?”

The girl she’d known as Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “That’s what my doctor said was wrong.”

“Doctors aren’t always right.”

“Would your theory help me work out why I wanted to be called Anna?”

Juliet tilted her head to one side, studying Anna. “Maybe.” Juliet smiled at Anna. “I’m Juliet. Charlotte was in the circle that I’m a member of and after I read about the accident I expected an email. When she never contacted me…”

“You got worried?”

“Yeah, I did. I’m not going to say we were friends, as such, because I don’t think Charlie really had friends, but we got on well enough. We never found out much about her life outside the circle, apart from her college.”

“I’d like to learn about Charlotte.” Anna bit her lip. “I’d like to be Charlotte, but I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Do you remember anything from before the accident?”

Shaking her head Anna ran one hand though her hair, looking almost annoyed when it was the wrong length. “I really need to get this cut.” She sighed. “When I first woke up I was still in the car. I don’t know if it was before the ambulance crew arrived or after. In the back one of the girls was crying. I just felt numb, because I didn’t know anyone in the car, and at that point I didn’t know the man sitting in the drivers’ seat was dead.” A single tear trickled down her cheek. “Even when I found out I didn’t really feel anything, apart from a sort of sorrow that he was dead. It’s really hard to explain.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Name: Lloyd
Gender: Male
Birth date: unknown

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Family: Anna
Charlotte

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Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Name: Vitali
Gender: Male
Birth date: unknown

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Mirrored from K. A. Jones 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.

Written for LJ user ysabetwordsmith’s prompt: Anna musing on the myth of John Barleycorn. (My favourite typo – John Barelycorn.)

Some days, when Anna felt like she really couldn’t cope, she spent hours surfing the net because it helped her to stop thinking. If she was honest her problem wasn’t thinking too much, but dealing with the people who didn’t see her. Every day someone reminded her of what had happened and it made her wish she could run away from her problems. Instead she forced herself to keep going, because it seemed like it was the only thing she could do, even though giving up would probably be much easier, or maybe pretending for a little while that she was Charlotte. The girl she wished she could be and never wanted to be at the same time.

Coming across the story of John Barleycorn had been an accident. Anna couldn’t remember exactly how it happened, but she kept going back to reread the page. It made her wonder why things had happened the way they had. Was Charlotte a sacrifice? If so, what was so important about the person it made Anna? She kept the page with those two questions scribbled on it where she could see it and couldn’t come up with any answers.

The Corn King died every autumn so his blood could be used to fertilise the land. Did Charlotte die in order to fertilise Anna? Anna shook her head. That didn’t even make sense. How could you fertilise a person? She stared into the mirror, looking at her reflection. It was still Charlotte’s reflection too, no matter how many changed she made, and sometimes she wished she could have plastic surgery so she looked like Anna. There were days when she knew she had too many wishes and no fairy godmother to grant them. Instead she had a Lloyd, who was doing everything he could to help her, and a possible new friend in Vitali, which was more than she had hoped for when she first woke up without her memories.

At least it looked like John Barleycorn knew what was coming. There was no mention of memory loss. Charlotte hadn’t known what was going to happen when she got into the car on the night of the accident and Anna hadn’t known what was coming, if she had even existed before. If Charlotte had of known what was going to happen then she might not have got into the car. Anna may not have existed. She sighed. Maybe it would have been better that way.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have been. Anna didn’t know what Charlotte’s life had really been like. It could have been that Charlotte wanted a way out and somehow that had caused Anna to come into existence. She had a feeling it would take a long time to work out what the real answer was, if there was an answer at all. There was a possibility that it had all been down to pure bad luck, Anna was just a construct created by a body without any memories, and due to that nothing would ever be the same again for Charlotte.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.