Hearthsange, which I base off of a combination of orange juice, Ovaltine and Horlicks which I drank in abundance when I was a child becomes Frances favorite go-to comfort drink.

Cover of Redwall by Brian Jacques featuring main character Matthias a mouse holding a sword and shield

section of prose from a fractured song: Frances wasn’t sure what liquid she was holding. It was an orange-colored drink that sent grey smoke trailing into the air. Edana had made it after boiling water and adding some orange pellets to it. “Master, what is this?” “Hearthsange. It’s good. Just be careful. It’s really hot,” said Edana, giving her mug a sip. Frances eyed the orange drink. “I’m sorry. It’s just… We don’t have this from where we come from.” Edana’s eyebrows shot up, and she grinned. “You are in for a treat then, Frances.” Frances took a small sip and her eyes widened. It tasted nothing like an orange. The nearest equivalent to it was a hot malt drink like Ovaltine, but with a deep cinnamon spice flavor to it. And even though she drank just a little, she felt the heat run down her throat, into her stomach, and then into her arms and legs. Bruises that still hadn’t healed, and had swollen from when she’d flailed in her dream were soothed by the heat and tense muscles she didn’t know were tight seemed to uncoil. “It’s amazing… like hot chocolate,” said Frances.

An inspiration for "A Fractured Song" was the Redwall series by the late Brian Jacques, specifically the detailed food descriptions! I could never master Jacques prose, but I think I did a good job with this unique drink called Hearthsange!

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...
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I don't think the Canadian brass did shirk it but it's very *not* talked about in the circles I've seen and in the documentaries discussing the matter. Often the blame is pointed at the British and Montbatten who given his history is a much more convenient scapegoat

Trololo was this the one from our writing server about epic rap battles?

p.2 before scanning them in and then adding them as layers to the final project. This is why Book 1's cover has such textured layering and line-art. I don't know the exact science of it but I always see inklings of this human achievement in the artwork and it blows my mind.

Pencil line art drawing of young girl (Main character of A Fractured Song) standing by a tree wielding wand.

water and ink painting of A fractured Song main character Frances standing by tree

p.1 Continuing on with my book cover series, one reason I will never use AI art is because www.artstation.com/quietvictories kinda blew my mind with his work on "The Broken Melody's cover. To help get the textured effect of the cover, he actually hand-drew and hand-inked the artwork
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Fleet Admiral Ernest King - Semper Iratus YouTube video by Drachinifel

drachinifel did a video on king which gives some insights and context. While also listing the man’s talents. There were apparently a lot. But yeah those actions for the second happy time were damming as hell.

youtu.be/Zm-GrI-BuLM?...

To be clear… everybody claimed vital lessons were learned from dieppe not just MB. Especially the Canadians in fact. ppl do funny things when they want to deal with the loss of their countrymen and friends

One thing ppl really don’t know about dieppe because the Canadians don’t like talking about is… the higher up Canadians asked for the assignment as it looked like the Canadians hadn’t done their part in the war at the time. John roberts did have the authority to delay or cancel the op.

Correct about the Canadians. According to my research back then, Arrogance, political pressure from all sides and different factions asking for SOE and Canadians to be doing something important. And the most dangerous thing of all… optimistic thinking that things will turn out right.

Actually Hardthrasher, if you ever want to look into Dieppe feel free to ping me b/c I did my MA History on representations of the Dieppe raid and the more I looked into it the more I became convinced nobody knew why they were doing the damn thing in the first place

That's what I figured b/c outside of that *one* incident I've not heard anything else bad.

Dieppe is the other incident you might want to look into involving Montbatten, Mcnaughton and Canadian general John Roberts b/c that was a *cluster* that bears examining.

O. Bradley took a lot of shit for Battle of the Bulge but i'm not sure if that was entirely his to blame?

I'm tempted to watch this and record myself reacting but it would probably take 3 hours...

I mostly agree with this with the caveat that there are a number of books I wore out at my local or school library and never had the funds then to support the author. So I bought these nice new copies later when I was employed as a thanks for the childhood XD

... I pre-ordered this so hard. I think it's the only book I ever pre-ordered lol

p.4 And none of it is in the main story! It's just buried so deep in his backstory no reader will see it!

p.3 While writing a fun short to flex my writing mind, I realized that part of it is he had some really bad experience with women who pretended to be romantically interested in him. So he finds it more comforting to just be friends with women who are just interested in him as a friend.

p. 2 I recently found this out with Martin, one of Frances, my female lead's best friends. He's the lone dude in a friend group primarily of women which is a little odd on appearance and I never got to answer that question in the series! (see p.3)

p. 1 One of the weirdest things I've recently learnt as a writer is that your side characters can have stories, very personal secrets that they just don't tell the main character even if they are close friends. It's not like a plot ending secret but it's intriguing

#writingcommunity #booksky

P.4 The best part imo of commissioning coverart is getting the artists take on your work. Sometimes it isn't exactly what you want but at times the invention from a human artists really blows ones mind eg. the addition of the tree and the light from Frances' wand was not my idea but it looks great!

P.3 The tree is Fedor/Quiet's invention and I actually incorporated into the final draft of the book! (it wasn't originally there in the draft). I always prefer to give my artists certain "spaces" where they can go wild becuase I mean, that's why I commission human art. I want their creativity

P.2 Quiet then started on the lineart for the cover! Now I can talk about the references and equipment I told him to give Frances.

Frances is wearing a gambeson, a heavy padded jacket meant to deflect weapon hits and projectiles on top of a dress. The idea was to be both feminine and practical

A Fractured Song book cover concept e10 version by Fedor titov, featuring a young girl (Frances main character) standing against a tree with her wand raised and glowing

Lineart for a Fractured Song book cover concept e10 version by Fedor titov, featuring a young girl (Frances main character) standing against a tree with her wand raised and glowing

P. 1 Book cover E10 was the final version that I went with. The leg problem from E7 was fixed by having Frances stand against the tree, one hand braced, giving her a grounded pose. In this way she looked like a heroine setting out on her adventure www.artstation.com/quietvictories
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You had one hell of a good thumbnail! That and the premise was rather intriguing.

Loved it when I visited. Still can’t quite believe it’s free for the public and tourists

Bloody brilliant hardthrasher!

One thing that isn't talked about much in writinng circles is the writer's day job, which occupies most of their time, and yet keeps the food and rent coming. I'm *very* lucky and privileged to have a job that provides for my needs, and I try to give thanks to that every day

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Continuing: The cake references are *apt* and I am now hearing the sloooow breakdown of your sanity as you go on *ooof*

Oh I found Second Story through her "fanfiction makes modern writing bad" nonsense video which kinda drove me nuts. Annnd I found you and some other interesting creators. So I suppose there's a silver lining! Lovely vid!