juliantics

Hi, I’m Juliana! I like to write fantasy and sci-fi stories about good people making mistakes and fixing them as they try to do right by the people they love. 

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You can find a guide to navigating my writing tags here. Besides media and writing, you may also see posts on my blog about: art, linguistics, Magic the Gathering, fashion, cosplay, natural science, and cultural history.

I'm always looking for more creative mutuals (writing or otherwise) who want to take an active role in getting to know and supporting each other's work. Feel free to send me a message or interact with this post!

Sometimes I really want to reblog somebody's OC art as #oc tag [whoever] but I'm afraid they'll take it as "I'm claiming your OC design as mine" and not as "your OC matches the vibes of my OC and thus you're inspiring me with your work to continue creating my own"

Ohh get ready for some Juliana Deep Lore... ABFHMM was what got me so interested in vampires in the first place! I initially made Jacket a vampire for practical reasons, not because I was particularly fascinated by vampires themselves. Then the more I started delving into the many things vampires could be a metaphor for* and into all the fun ways you could play with the lore, I just got more and more invested until it became My Thing.

I wouldn't have the idea for MR until about two years later!

*In ABFHMM particularly, vampirism is used to explore a variety of different ideas, including chronic pain and illness, what ordinary people choose to do with power when it's suddenly given to them, bodily autonomy and informed consent, and the question of how immortality would affect the experience of grief.

Oooh yeah, that's a good idea! It relies on me deciding how connected Bash already is to the magical world -- certainly he will at least know about it. In the original draft he was pretty knowledgeable.

But when I decided to write out two major characters who were the audience conduit for introduction into the worldbuilding, I thought about making Bash someone who had knowledge of magic but little connection to it, like a family heritage without current practice.

"Distraction from imminent family drama" is always a go, though.

Sometimes I wish I was four years old so I could have a little meltdown in the Target home and garden aisle. as a treat.

This is something I still have to decide! I was really winging the original story so there was not a lot of consistency in places visited. In the original draft, Jacket's father lives in New York City, so if I keep that detail then that would be the endpoint (or at least the point at which arcs converge and climax, though this is also another Whole Thing because I think either this story will be two books or it's just gonna have multiple climax points).

In any case, I'd like the roadtrip to be cross-country, so starting somewhere out west is probably a solid move, unless I move the end location.

Oh, thank you for asking this, because this is a concept I fully intend to carry over from the WIP's original concept!

In A Brief Family History of the Magical Mundane, I want to play with the idea of "liminal spaces" -- places that are transitory in nature or places where time or space seems somehow altered. Think: airports, empty gas stations just at sunset, deserted hotel hallways, cities at night that are so bright and busy it reads like daytime, back alleys in touristy historic towns.

The idea is that these are the places where the magical realm and our realm exist most closely, and where magic can bleed over. Sometimes these places are only magical during certain times of day or in certain situations or they can only be utilized for one specific school of magic. Part of having magical skill is knowing how to make use of these spaces and when it will work.

The original concept for my old WIP, A Brief Family History of the Magical Mundane, was a modern fantasy roadtrip to magical hotspots around the US to document research for a college internship.

This was a very fun concept in theory, but the work ended up really outgrowing itself. It had strong character arcs focusing on family betrayal and reconciliation, but with no support for that thematic material in the plot concept.

I'm currently brainstorming a re-concept where instead of roadtripping for a project, Jacket is roadtripping to a family reunion (specifically their father's 250th vampiric anniversary), and bringing Holly and Bash for driving help.

I'll still need excuses for some of the various stops they make along the way that drive the tension in discovering and unpacking familial history. But I feel like making the focal point of the narrative a family reunion when the central theme is all about the complications of family is a really good start.