Revealing...

6:00 AM

Hello all!

After months of frustrations and getting no where with The Apple in the Snow, I made the decision to scrap everything except for my characters and half the plot.

That meant scrapping...

My title.
My theme
My aesthetics (aka my Pinterest board)
My soundtrack (Spotify playlist)

In the middle of my grad school chaos, I've been attempting to reconstruct this story. And I think I've got it!

Behold! It is time to reveal.....

Eirwen’s core is slowly rotting…..

From infancy, she has only desired to be a good and kind queen to her people of Glywysing. But a scandalous marriage by her widowed father sows seeds of anger in her heart. An anger that, in a kingdom about to rebel and a castle full of scarred hearts, could be advantageous or disastrous.

When a hunting party trip turns deadly, Eirwen is forced to flee into a decaying orchard. But she doesn’t leave those invisible seeds behind….

Will Eirwen cut through the undergrowth of her heart or will an invisible orchard hem her in?

The Cast of Characters:

It is the same as the Apple in the Snow, with the addition a couple of new characters. One is too minor to mention, and the other would cause some spoilers. Hence I will not reveal them right now.

I did slightly change Eirwen's character, and gave her some new faults.

The Title:

So, I found this really really nice Welsh proverb that really got me.

A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible

After examining my new theme, I thought that this proverb really was a really really awesome metaphor.

The Theme:

I think that this is where I struggled the most before. Who knew that theme was so important??

As you can kinda see, there is a strong theme of interior anger vs. meekness. It's definitely something that I know about - and struggle with. After looking through my notes, I realized that my previous theme of avoiding bad company was really weak for the kind of story that I was dealing with.

I'm also trying to weave some actual Welsh legends from the Mabignon, so we'll see how that goes.

The Aesthetics:

I did wind up getting rid of my private AITS board, saving the few images that I wanted and starting a new private one. Instead of trying to find Snow White images, I concentrated on finding character aesthetics, Welsh scenery and language/quotes, ~~informational posts about medieval poisons~~.....

The Soundtrack:

Like the Pinterest board, the old Spotify soundtrack also got axed completely. Before it was fantasy music with an overwhelming saturation of Welsh music. I think most of those Welsh songs were from much later than what I was writing in. Whoops.

The new soundtrack now has a growing mix of fantasy, some Welsh songs and actual medieval music. It's currently shorter than my old one, but that may change :).

Soooooooooo........what do y'all think? Do you like it?

Scribblingly yours,

Catherine Hawthorn