A Day Of Faces (13 page)

Description:
Ordinary house - pretty old, wooden, more like something you’d find in Texas or Florida. Been in the family for years, but quite decrepit now.

Sights:
Peeling wallpaper. Outside is pretty ragged. But Marv does his best.

Sounds:
Laughter. It’s a happy place, even if times are difficult.

Smells:
Great exotic cooking.

Notes:
Mostly a cameo appearance. Might return to it waaaay down the line.

Zhangao

Role in Story:
Equivalent of Shanghai. Cal travelled here to find the last remaining Spectre.

Related Characters:
Cal

Unique Features:
Very old culture, with very different historical and cultural beliefs. Worship a religion representing diversity of appearance.

Description:
A wet, monsoon climate. Swampy. Always cloud-shrouded.

Sights:
Huge population. The city is massively over-crowded and under-supported.

Sounds:
Bustle.

Smells:
Food stalls, steam, industry.

Notes:
Off-screen in Arc 1.

Aviary

Role in Story:
Centre of government in Perlyn. Arc 1 climax goes down here.

Related Characters:
Cal, Kay, Marv, Holt

Unique Features:
Hidden in the top floors is a secret room which holds a device connecting inter-dimensionally to parts unknown.

Description:
“It was a spire, reaching hundreds of feet into the sky. Most of the spire was office space…As you go higher up the… offices [get] fancier, and the view better. Then, right at the top, perches the Aviary, inaccessible to anybody without wings… The spire ended, and then the Aviary sat on top, with no connecting walkways or elevators or stairs.”

Sights:
Enormous tower. Surrounded by gardens.

Sounds:
Business. Government. Efficiency.

Smells:
Beautiful garden smells outside, clinical offices inside.

Notes:
Kind of a big deal.

1.
Tonally, hitting that collision of the mundane and the fantastical was essential to establish up front. This first paragraph pretty much informs a reader as to whether or not they’re going to enjoy the rest.

2.
This is another element that’s supposed to unsettle the reader - it’s a familiar date, but in this context feels anachronistic. Familiar, but with an as-yet unexplained twist. Getting that balance right - weird, but not off-putting - was quite tricky in this first chapter.

3.
The awkward collision of Americana and Britishness is something I will be returning to later in the story. At this stage, it should simply feel a bit ‘off’ - like something doesn’t quite make sense.

4.
I’m very proud of the pun inherent in this chapter title.

5.
When I wrote this chapter, this was intended to be the last time we’d see Marv. He was only ever meant to be a minor scene-setting character - but I kinda liked him, so he stuck around.

6.
Figuring out whether to spell this ‘arsehole’ or ‘asshole’ took longer than you might think. The cultural mash-up that is the world of Locque makes decisions like that oddly critical.

7.
My house is actually somewhat like this. It freaks out a lot of people. I rather like it.

8.
After the more-or-less consecutive action of the first five chapters, this is the first jump cut. It’s something I do repeatedly to keep the pace up, and to avoid trudging through too much exposition or character shuffling. This makes it easier to skip to the point, and also keeps you, dear reader, on your feet.

9.
Kay is a character who has agency most of the time. Writing a female lead is a first for me, and my general approach has been to approach it in exactly the same way I have approached male protagonists. Even if she didn’t have repitlian abilities, she’s still be just as strong a force. Kay’s mother represents the flipside of a character entirely without control - that’s a big part of what drives Kay to forge her own path.

10.
The story that gets glimpsed in this chapter was always planned and unknown about, but I didn’t initially intend to reveal it at this stage. It was only in the middle of writing Arc 1 that I realised it could function as an interesting and unexpected intersection. It lays foundations while also raising a whole bunch of questions.

11.
In the original version serialised on Wattpad, Rachel was also waiting in the basement, and was going to be part of the scooby gang. This never quite happened, and Rachel’s involvement to that level introduced one too many elements to juggle in the Arc 1 finale. It’s OK - she’ll get her moment down the line.

12.
This concept owes a slight debt to the Fables comic.

13.
This is left a little unanswered in Arc 1. That’s deliberate.

14.
I rather admire writers who come up with cool heists. It’s surprisingly difficult to come up with a fictional heist which is complex enough to be challenging without being confusing or tedious.

15.
The main thing to accomplish in this chapter was to make Kay seem actually threatening and scary. Sure, she’s Kay, and she’s great, and funny, and has her heart in the right place. But given the wrong motivation, she could do terrible things.

16.
This is one of those point-of-no-return moments. Not just in the story, but for me as a writer. Given I publish ADoF as an online serial, once a chapter is published it pretty much locks me into that direction. There was no going back from here.

17.
Thus far, this hasn’t happened. In fact, it went the other way - I now write a chapter on the same day it is published.

18.
This joke actually becomes rather more important in Arc 2. But I won’t spoil that here…