The Co-Writing Diaries #4
Nyra's World
Welcome to my blog series chronicling the wild, wonderful journey of co-writing the romantasy series, The Department of Dark Errands—London’s most elite (and most dangerous) magical intelligence agency. From brainstorming the magical underbelly of London and morally gray love interests to navigating the (occasionally stormy) waters of collaboration, I’m unlocking the bedroom door to share the real behind-the-scenes story of crafting a fantasy romance series with .
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Let the adventure begin.
In the short stories that I read, the FMC has been as young as 18 and the MMC has been as old as 48. Overall, I tend to avoid age-gap tropes, especially when the gap is, like, 20 years. There’s a bit of an “ick” factor for me that I want to avoid.
I don’t mind the stories where the gap is 1-9yrs. Mr. Ex and I were 7yrs apart (I was the older woman).
When the gap starts getting into the double digits, starting around 10, it’s pushing it... but I’ll still read it.
20yrs is the No-Go Zone for me, and I’m out.
When I decided to try my hand at writing short story romance, I unconsciously made the decision to write characters in their early to late 30s. Weird? Yes, I would agree. And at some point, that’ll make for a great future post because that sounds like something I need to unpack.
So, needless to say, when I saw Alisa’s character sketches and noticed that Nyra was 46 (I would later change this to 45), and Beck, the MMC, was 47 (I would later change this to 46), it was like
Errrrrrt…
Total record scratch moment.
I was all, “Hold up, wait-what? But I don’t write… ok, uh… well. Huh. This. Is going to be interesting.”
Because in that microsecond, I remembered who was going to be writing this story—two midlife women—and who was going to be publishing it—her publishing company, Empress Editions:
An indie press dedicated to amplifying the voices of midlife women and transforming the publishing landscape.
It made complete sense.
When I asked Alisa if Nyra was going to be a POC, and she said yes, the wheels started turning.
My homework assignment after our second meeting? Creating Nyra’s world.