That time my protagonist took the reins and suddenly I have a series
While I’m figuring out what I want to do with my author self, Hotaka throws another bombshell at me. I could write more about him and his rich world and serialise it.
Sometimes it’s strange to remember a time when I wasn’t working on Tales of Yamato. It’s been my near-daily life now for a short while, and before that I was planning bits and pieces towards it. But it wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t even meant to be a whole book and more originally.
All the way back when I was writing a short story for Darkness & Moonlight, I had a different idea. It had major Asian influences, magic, and gods, however it ended up more towards the high fantasy genre. After feedback I realised the piece I’d written needed so much more work than I could do in time for the deadline and I had two options. Not have a story for that anthology, or write something new. I wasn’t ready to give up however, and so I went for the latter option.
For those of you who have read my stories, you might agree with a statement that gets given to me often by my beta readers. I’ve whittled it down to: BIG ideas, small space. I seem to have the knack for ideas which could expand out into something much bigger, and yet I cram it into a 2-5k story. Side note: At the very least my currently short stories keep gaining in length and I am learning how to write longer! So because I’d already had a failed story because of plot, and now I had pretty much no time to write a second story, I was worried about the same thing happening again. The thing is, I never do these things on purpose! It just… happens. And gaining ideas itself is tricky for me too, so the whole thing was a crazy idea, but damn I was going to give it a try.
Introducing Hotaka. My saviour and creator of so much chaos, the good kind at least.
During my flailing for an idea, I’d latched on to two things moonlight and the film Saw. Why Saw of all things? Well, I’d reminded myself of something I’d learnt about it on a random facebook post (those are useful after all!); they were low on budget and it made things so much simpler and easier to shoot it all in one room. Bingo. Just what I needed. If I kept my characters to one room, the plot can’t get too out of hand… Right?
So I had a vague location and the moon… and then what? Well amongst this I’d also latched onto a comment of a Japanese saying thanks to the author Natsumi Sōseki: 月が綺麗ですね / tsuki ga kirei desu ne which translates into “The moon is beautiful, isn’t it?”. It’s a beautiful way of saying I love you without saying it directly, and I loved the idea so much. That, and combined with various moon viewing scenes I’d read or watched in the fandoms I am in sealed the deal. (I’ll also talk about the fandom side in a later post!)
Armed with my idea, I broke open a new document and threw myself into the scene. Hotaka immediately emerged, as do most of my characters who make themselves, and oh boy was he looking at Ryoichi. Fantastic. So they did their thing and Hotaka broke my heart, even though I knew what he was going to do, and finally my story was done. I’d written it faster than any other story before (however it also was a shorter than average story unfortunately) and it could be submitted to the anthology after all!
End of story.
No?
Well along comes the next Worldsmyths anthology, this time about seasons. And as I’m trying to figure out what to write again, along with help from some others, Hotaka rears his pretty little head. Summer has wonderful matsuri (Japanese festivals) which are so much fun and another fandom I loved covered it and I fell in love. So here we go again. Hotaka runs around doing his thing some more and it’s a continuation of the first story but still a standalone story, and things are going great and then…
Oh by the way Hotaka is a yokai.
What?
He dropped that little bombshell on me, making me flail and figure out which yokai he might be (I only knew a few back then). And that opened up so many things. I finished the story, ended it in a way that could be continued if I felt like it, or left alone. Part of me knew that Hotaka wasn’t done with me yet.
Fast forward a little more, and while I’m figuring out what I want to do with my author self and also learning all about serialising fiction, Hotaka throws another bombshell at me. I could write more about him and his rich world and serialise it. As with the comment of my BIG ideas always being squished, by doing this I could change that issue by going back and exploring more ideas which had cropped up. I could see other yokai, meet other gods, try to finish writing about Hotaka…
And that’s pretty much where I am now.
Except Hotaka’s story is still not over. I planned one more story with him, making a trilogy of short stories with him in, but it wasn’t enough. Now he has a full prequel too, plus a very small glimpse in between that and where we see him in Beneath Tsukuyomi.
I’ll be sad when I finish the last story with him in. I vaguely know what will happen, and it won’t be long before I write it. However it needs to be done for Tales of Yamato to be complete. He’s resilient and unpredictable, and knowing my luck, he’ll find a way of coming back somehow. But at the same time, I think I’m ready to let him go. He swooped in at my time of need and completely set me on this path, and I’ll be forever thankful for that.
To my Hotaka, who I hope others enjoy as much as I have.
The first story I mentioned with Hotaka is Beneath Tsukuyomi, and the second is Survival, both can be read for free right now.
The anthologies they are published in are Darkness & Moonlight and Seasons Unceasing both by Worldsmyths, of which I am a member of.