Changeling

The Time Between (The Sheets) – A Fan Fic

~ JP Marshman ~ 1 Comment

Hellooooo. Long time no see, eh?

My darling friend CB Archer got the idea to write a fanfic short story about two of my characters from CHANGELING, a story of mine that he beta read wait, idea? no no i told him i wanted to know what would happen if…

So he did!

Linked here is the post on his website. But be warned – he writes wonderfully filthy erotica, and you have any sort of aversion to same sex freakiness, maybe don’t go read it. Or do. But don’t bitch to either of us if you’re offended.

Enjoy!

I know I did 😀

The Time Between (The Sheets) – A Fan Fic

Updates on the projects

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

Abomination Changeling comparison

And now, an update on the many projects I’m working on!

Changeling

Now, Changeling has been finished for a long time now, and I’ve already gone through and edited it once. But I’ve just sent out copies to beta readers, so the second round of edits will be starting shortly. I’m also in the process of organizing a photo shoot with an old friend and photographer, and my friend and beta reader Lexi, to start creating a cover for it, so she can be sold online!

Abomination

Abomination, as can be seen from the above picture, has surpassed Changeling, its predecessor, in word count. I always had a hunch this would happen, and now it finally has! I’m actually very excited about this, because it means that ‘Bominatino is getting close to the climax. Plots are being brought together now, and others are being opened for the next in the series, thus far titled Usurper. Though I have had Lexi beta reading ‘Bominatino since I started, I will be going through a round of edits fairly soon, and will need more readers once I begin.

“After the tremors began to shake buildings from their foundations, the sky split and the mountain burst.

“Black snow belched from the crater atop the mountain and covered the city in dust. Molten fire and rock came next, and melted everything in its path. We could do nothing but watch the city burn, watch as the river of fire came closer and closer and finally consumed all.

“For countless aeons after I swam in empty blackness, unable to move or speak or do anything but listen to the final cries of my people as they drowned in ash and flame. Until the day you came along, magus,” Mirek Ko’shul, the King of Ghosts, murmured, and his dark eyes fell on Leto, “and the power you carry in your soul, so like my own, woke the curse in all of us.”

The quote above is a story told to the main characters by a ghost of a long dead king, explaining the final days of his people. This is a vital point for them, to solving the mysteries that have plagued them for so long. Continue reading →

The Fall: Changeling teaser

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

My spirit suddenly trembled, and for just a moment I thought my hold on the owl body would break. Nearby, the harpy eagle body that was Eleri let out a mournful wail that even the wind could not swallow. Though the dragon below me did not falter, I knew Mama had felt it as well; her sprit shivered loud enough for me to hear it, to feel it within myself.

I recovered, head spinning. What was that?

The dragon screamed, and Mama answered, I don’t know. Stay close to Eleri, just in—

Then it came again, before she had a chance to finish.

The pain struck first.

It was pain that I could never have imagined—pain that stabbed my heart and burned my bones. My vision blackened; I no longer felt the glacial wind ruffling through my feathers.

And then it happened.

With as much warning as a hiccup in time, I was thrown from my false body.

For just a moment, we were suspended in time, and I could see everything with such perfect clarity.

Eleri had been pushed back into her body; her long hair streamed behind her as she fell like the licking tendrils of a fire’s shadow. Mama still wore her dragon skin, but her wings had gone limp; Morwenna was little more than a blotch of polished copper amidst bronze scales and a flat grey sky.

In the moment before time resumed, the whole world was quiet, and realization slowly crushed me—

I was trying to fly on clipped wings. Continue reading →

The conundrum of being a writer

~ JP Marshman ~ 2 Comments

WRITER’S BLOCK.

There. I said it. And what a phrase it is.

Two simple words shouldn’t be so terrifying. But they are. They really are.

Whenever I want to sit down and write, I’m at a place where I can’t – namely, at work. And vice versa: whenever I have time to sit down and write, I’m unable to do much more than gawk at my computer screen or get wholly distracted by imgur or the newfangled television James set up in my bedroom. Even as I write this post, I’m getting distracted by the Tudors.

Like, three days distracted. I’m sick.

But the thing is, distraction is the only cure. If you sit there and stare at the cursor, waiting for something to happen and damning your brain for suddenly being a sack of shit, nothing will ever come to you. Distraction is the only means.

My best time for inspiration is Tuesdays and Wednesdays at work. Why, you might ask? Well, I might answer, because that is the day the LMPI – import – magazines arrive at the store, and the day I do nothing but sit in the back and price and receive. It’s monotonous and distracting, and because of it my house is littered with handwritten notes for full write-up at a later date.

I’m weathering a bit of a slump right now. It isn’t terrible, and I am powering through it, but it’s a challenge. After not touching ABOMINATION for a while and only working on OF THE ARBOUR, I’ve pretty much switched places, only I’m trudging on the former and now flying through it as I did with OF THE ARBOUR.

Ah, the life of a writer is a troubled one.

What does everyone else do to power through writer’s block?

Happy anniversary!

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

I missed it. Like some kind of forgetful man.

Yesterday was my second anniversary blogging here. How time flies when you’re having fun, right?

In writing news, Purity is just finishing up the very last dredges of editing and will be published at the end of the month, as per my last post. Abomination is just about 150 000 words in, and aside from a writer’s block I’m currently weathering, still going strong. I planned out the next few chapters (which is terribly rare for me) and it looks as though it’s going to very easily overcome Changeling’s 180 000+ word count that being said, Changeling could have easily gone longer, but I thought I should probably end it at some point. The Of the Arbour rewrite is about 17 000 words in and things are really kicking off. So things are happening, albeit a little slowly. Purity is my first priority right now, naturally.

What better way to celebrate an anniversary than with a publication?

Arranged Love: Changeling teaser

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

“He loves her, doesn’t he?”

Alistair sighed and cracked open one eye. “Just when I was about to fall asleep, too,” he mumbled, and rolled onto his side. By the light of the fire across the room, he could see Aisling staring up at the ceiling. The firelight cast shadows across her face, illuminating her frown and scowl. “What are you babbling about?” he asked, squinting at her as he rubbed his face.

“Lord Hession.”

“Please, just call him Sonny. He only stopped cringing at his title a few years ago, and I don’t want him to revert back to it.”

“Trained him like a dog, did you?”

“Can’t do less with Cantons.”

“No, I suppose not.” She brushed her hair off her face and rolled to face him. “Sonny. He loves his wife?” Continue reading →

Of the Arbour rewrite update, and the similarities in style

~ JP Marshman ~ 2 Comments

As you may have seen with a previous post, I’ve begun writing a rewrite for Of the Arbour. It started out strong and feverish, but now that the initial excitement has worn down a little, it’s become as plodding as the other stories I’m working on not that I’m slow, per se, but I’ve been weathering a slump as of late. I’m very pleased with the direction it’s going so far, despite being only around 15 000 words in. I’m still really excited to get to some of the major plot points coming up. Sage’s final year at the Arbour is only just starting where I’m at, and with it come strange dreams, a permanently crippling injury or two, and a life-shattering revelation. I’m also very excited to get past his time at the Arbour, and touch over his time spent as a mercenary before leaping into his meeting of Maia and Stride, rediscovery of old friends, and the beginning of the main plot’s manhunt. I plan on this being a lot darker and more violent than the original, which was fairly violent to begin with. Lots more descriptions of how bleak and grim of a place Hailstone is.

Not a lot of note has changed since the original, save a few minor things touched on in a previous post.

  • Carol’s name has changed to Thalia
  • Sage has more friends
  • but is more reviled by his classmates
  • He doesn’t deal with this well, and gets into more fights than the original (in which he got into a lot of fights; 15 000 words in and he’s already been hospitalized 4 times) as his way of dealing with it
  • He knows virtually nothing about his parentage (he used to know a little about his father)
  • He’s self-conscious about his appearance—despite being a strapping young lad in my head—and especially his height (he towers a head over most men)
  • Kell, a friend two years younger than he, has become a major character quite without my meaning her to. She’s a fiery redheaded giantess (she’s taller than Sage by an inch or two) with a foul mouth and a hairtrigger temper. Which actually ties in with the second part of this post:

I noticed something the other day as I was writing a scene between Sage and Kell in which she harasses him about his sex life. While he fumbled about in true, head-to-toe blushing, awkward Sage fashion, she sat there with a wolfish grin and watched him squirm. She talks in slang and is considered foul and uncouth by other characters.

In other words, she’s a redheaded Sophia Henson.

For those who might be unaware, Sophia is a minor character in Changeling, who grows up to become a major character in Abomination. She’s 10 in Changeling, a precocious raven-haired girl who has a penchant for swearing, getting her way, getting in scraps with boys—who also happens to be the daughter and only child of Vincent Henson, the pirate king of Canton. In Abomination, she’s hitting 30, has become powerful in her own right, keeps daggers on her person at all times, is known for her brutal war over Canton (during the first year of which she never bathed, so the people would see that she still wore the blood of her enemies), and uses such phrases as:

  • old whore’s cooter
  • meat shield
  • calm your balls
  • son of a cock sucking whore
  • for fuck’s sake
  • what in the holy shit
  • witching slut Continue reading →

The Librarian: Changeling teaser

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

When we were bowed through the heavy oak doors to the library wing, and I stepped beneath the gilded dome for the first time, I thought my heart might stop.

Hundreds of oak shelves, polished and carved with the faces of the Spirits, lined the hall, stretched to the ceiling save for where the dome arched over us. Packed face to face, spines out, were hundreds of thousands of books, bound in leather and names written in gilt.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Hession stepped up beside me and let out a whistle. “Wow.”

Alistair grunted and touched the crackled pages of an enormous tome laid flat on a nearby table. “Where do you suppose—”

“Excuse me!” A head appeared over a nearby table. It was a woman—an elven woman—all narrowed eyes and messy hair. “Please, keep your voices down. You are aware of where you are, yes?” She straightened and tucked flyaway curls of bown back into the tight bun at the back of her head. “Who are you? I wasn’t expecting students today.”

Father let out a short sigh. “No, we aren’t students—”

“No?” She rolled down the loose sleeves of her dark dress and gave Alistair a severe stare. “Do you have guest credentials for the day, then?” Though she continued to glare, she reached up and lightly scratched the corner of her eye.

“Er, no, I didn’t know—”

“This is the largest centre of learning not only in Cyril, but the known world. You do know that, right? We can’t just let anybody run amok, especially”—her gaze shifted to me, then to Sophia behind me—“fool bloods and ruffians.”

Alistair pressed a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. I hid a smile as he straightened his back. “What is your name?”

“I am Scholar Saraid of Oakspring, the librarian here,” the woman replied curtly. “Had you actually taken the time to get guest credentials, I would not have to ask who you lot are.”

A pleasant smile crossed Father’s face, but it was so painfully obvious that it was forced it was a wonder the woman didn’t force us out right then. “Well, let me do the honours of introducing myself, then, since I don’t have these credentials. I am Alistair Wymer of Nallis.”

“Y’know, the king,” Hession helpfully piped up. Continue reading →

Whoops

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

Sorry for the lack of updates for the past few weeks. My better half came home from a month away working, so I’ve been a bit preoccupied with seeing him as of late.

The other day I was walking around at work, as I do, and I was struck with inspiration work seems to be the best place to find inspiration – I wonder why that is. I’ve wanted for a while now to expand on the First Men in the world of Changeling – the ancients to the people of modern Cyril who are like the Romans to us. Ruins of their civilization dot the countryside, and modern culture and government is built on their foundation. So I came up with a bit of a plan. I might write a novel (once I power through all the other work I have to do with WIPs) about one of the last kings of the First Men. It’s going to be brutal and bloody, because it will be set in the peak of their conquering. I’m pretty excited about it, myself. The past is always fascinating.

I’m also going to write another collection of short stories to go between Changeling and Abomination, as a partner anthology to The Time Between. The current working title is Paint Them All Red. It will take place in Canton during the Reclamation, when Sophia Henson conquered the country after the death of her father. So I’m pretty excited about that too.

Anyhow. That’s basically a brief update from my end. How’s everything else going in the interwebz?

Time to buckle down

~ JP Marshman ~ 1 Comment

Changeling necklace

A friend of mine started reading Changeling under some pressure, I’ll admit and was thrilled when she finished and found out there was more to the story. After reading the short stories that come before the sequel, Abomination, and after telling me about how furious reading one short story made her because of how an otherwise endearing character was behaving, she was bugging me to print off what I have of Abomination for her to read. I did, and the look of joy on her face when I gave it to her was just too much. It warmed my cold author heart to see.

In Changeling, Aisling, the main character, has a necklace whose origins are unknown even to her parents. It is a leather leaf pendant on a leather string, with a blue jay feather attached. This necklace was inspired in part by a necklace of my own. It was one I bought at Creative Chaos, an artisan show in my hometown, from the Earth Nynja booth (they make leather and metal designs). It was, as you see above, a leather leaf pendant. I recently had the urge to truly make it into Aisling’s necklace, so I hunted down blue jay feathers on an Etsy shop online (six for good measure, even though I only needed one). It only took some crazy glue and black thread to make this.

I also recently got into an “extra” kick, thanks largely in part to my friend Elisa Nuckle. We had talked about how neat it is when authors include, for free or for cheap, extra information and facts about their fictional worlds. If anyone has spied the new Legends of the World page under Changeling’s header, you’ll have noticed that it’s one such thing. In preparing that page, I finished up a map of Althaea and got excited to write more about the nonfiction of the Changeling world.

Also, note that my domain name has been officially registered. That is also a huge factor in this decision!

All of this has come together to inspire me to get my procrastinating rear in gear and finally finish the thorough editing of Changeling. She has been edited through once, and gone through two beta readers, so it won’t be long before she’s ready for the public eye.  I’m so excited to release Changeling to the world. I already know that this series will be my magnum opus, and just the idea of someone else, a stranger, reading it and feeling something for the story I’ve created… it makes me so excited I can’t find words.

If everything goes to plan, I would like Changeling released in the wintertime, before Christmas. It seems suiting, as so much of the story seems to take place in the snow.

This is my pride and joy, and I am so excited to share it with the world.