A Big Project Win and NaNoWriMo Fail

Hello friends!

So I tried to do NaNoWriMo this year… and I got a bit distracted. I live in the United States, I’m not sure anyone can blame me if I’ve been a smidge preoccupied. With all that and the fact that I haven’t really written anything in about a year – I was going to back in April but due to an unexpected death of a close friend, it didn’t exactly happen – Marcus, Evaline, and Kisuke might have to wait a bit for their second book to actually get going.

However. Whilst in the middle of trying to do anything related to the Redgate Chronicles, I picked up a project I started back in February, which might seem a little unorthodox. I didn’t really want to say anything about it here in case it ended up being nothing but a pipe dream, but sometime in late November I started the project back up after a several month break (April was rough) and managed to bull my way through it in the space of a couple weeks. That’s the power of a Taurus, my friends.

What is this mystery project? The Five Realms Oracle. The art from which I’ve been posting on my author page over on Facebook since I started. Spoilers are kept to a minimum, I promise. Unless you’re really good at symbolism and theory crafting.

Why am I making an Oracle deck and not, say, a Tarot deck? I certainly have enough characters to do so, between all of the stories. I actually did try to create a Tarot deck once, but the characters and stories changed so much by the time I was done with just the major arcana that I couldn’t continue it. A full 78-card deck is also a massive undertaking, and one I didn’t really think I was ready for after completing the major arcana.

The Five Realms Oracle is a 40 card deck – which might change after I’ve gotten a chance to look at the proof copy, we’ll see – featuring 34 diverse characters from the Five Realms as well as five landscapes (one for each Realm) and a Wyrd card. The deck uses my own hand-made font, Ratatosk, and also pictures 33 runes from the Elder Futhark and Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. I plan to create a full guidebook for the deck at some point, and be able to sell the cards and the book as a set. There are a lot of steps involved in that process though, and I anticipate the cards won’t be out until sometime late next year.

This project has been and will probably continue to be a massive undertaking, for me at least. I find it an excellent way to pay homage to my universe and my characters, in a way that might help guide someone else through their life, or even just have around as a curiosity. It’s something I can hold and work with, which is important to me. At some point I might end up revisiting my previous attempt at a Tarot deck, but that will likely take more than a year to complete.

Have a good one, my friends!
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