Hello, and welcome to Ariele University. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s because I made it up. You can read all about it by clicking here. Long story short, I wanted more education in writing, publishing, and marketing, but I didn’t want to pay a bajillion dollars to a university to get it. So I invented my own Fake Master’s Degree program, and named my university after myself.
Since mid-2018, I have been reading books on writing, marketing, business, and publishing, as well as have a pretty solid selection of fiction in quite a few genres. I have also written essays, done writing exercises, and tried to blend the things I’m learning into my works in progress, my marketing, and my business plan. I also started a Discord server of writers, who, possibly unbeknownst to them, serve as my “classmates,” and engage in discussions on the aforementioned topics on a regular basis. I’ve also taken quite a few workshops, over the last few years, ranging from Joanna Penn’s courses, to the Crash Courses with Hank Green, to workshops at conferences and writing groups in the region where I live.
You can see my curriculum, conveniently organized into a Google spreadsheet, here.
Last year, I promoted myself to teaching assistant + grad student, and started preparing courses and books on writing and marketing, and I have been teaching in-person and digital workshops right along.
The only thing I was missing was … a thesis.
So today, I am going to introduce my thesis to you.
I considered a lot of things—creating a series of courses on writing, a podcast, an art project. But I wanted whatever my thesis was to incorporate as much of what I’ve learned over the past several years as possible. I needed to demonstrate what I’ve learned.
Hence, it quickly became clear that I needed to write a book as my thesis.
But the thing is, writing books is my full time job, so I needed it to be something slightly different than my typical monster book or fairy tale. It had to be something new, it had to challenge me in its themes and style, as well as in the production and marketing of the book.
So, please welcome my newest trilogy: Aria’s Song. (Disclaimer: it is not published yet, so I reserve the right to change absolutely anything about it, including the title and or series name.)
My thesis is this: write a new series in a new genre, do something new with the design and production of the books, and do something new with the marketing.
The trilogy is now fully drafted, has been beta read, and is in final edits. It is a fantasy series (so far I’ve only written sci-fi!), and to challenge myself with the design, I am developing a world map myself and doing the cover design for the series. I will, however, continue to hire my proofreader and book designer, to ensure the quality of the final product. To challenge myself on the distribution and marketing side of things, I have also decided to attempt what I’m referring to as a “Netflix-style series drop,” where all three of the books will be available for sale at the same time, and my goal is to have everything completed by summer of 2022.
Once the book is launched (and assuming I finish all my other assignments [note: I will]), I will consider myself graduated from Ariele University with a Fake Master’s Degree in Writing and Indie Publishing.
The series is set in a futuristic sci-fi world with androids, hovercars, and skyrises. Magic used to exist, but the final king (before they switched to democracy) instituted a purge of all magical people, and as a result, magic has long-since died out. Civil unrest ravages the world, the conflict between those whose ancestors could do magic and those who hate magic in all its forms.
The story follows a young woman named Lenna, whose entire life has been plagued by the sudden appearance of a mysterious train. For as long as she can remember, anytime something bad was about to happen to her, a mysterious train would swallow her up and drop her off somewhere else—somewhere safe. On one hand, this was good, as it served as a form of protection from anything significantly traumatic that could have happened to her. On the other hand, it makes it impossible for her to build a life with friends, a job, or any kind of stability whatsoever. And in fact, she finds it difficult to even think about the train, no matter how hard she tries, which makes it nearly impossible for her to sort out exactly what is happening to her.
She doesn’t know what the train is, why it comes, or what happened to her family. All she knows are three things: 1. She has to find her mother, 2. All computerized things die when they come too close to her, and 3. She should never speak of the train.
The story begins when the strangeness of her existence is about to be uncovered by a man hunting for an android murderer. She must decide whether to help him or to run from him, and discovers quite suddenly that there are dangers in this world that not even her train can protect her from forever.
So far, I have done three separate cover designs, though I have yet to decide which one I am going to use, or if I’m going to design a new one entirely. I am far from an expert in cover design, but I think these all turned out reasonably well, though with slightly different vibes. In addition, I keep reminding myself that I can always hire a designer to do a second design, if whatever I choose ends up selling poorly.
On the writing level, I have worked really hard on this series to weave in diverse characters, complex themes, and elegant language. I wrote it in first person, as well; normally, I stick to third person.
For example, here is a brief snippet of a scenic description from the third book in the series that I particularly like:
I let my eyes drift across the scene below. I loved how the different color greens of the trees blended together, with browns and greys mixed in, creating a multi-layered texture that coated the entire scene before us. Vibrant flashes of other colors peeked through too—a hill of bright-yellow flowers; a hedge of brilliant red-leafed trees; the bridal-white blooms of flowering bushes turning their faces toward the warm setting sun.
All the night creatures would start slinking out of their dens soon. And somewhere, not too deep in the woods, I heard the twitter of a bird, then the howl of a wolf. The hoot of an owl. The lonely aching cry of a loon. And then, the first peeper—and another and another and another—until all the frogs were harmonizing in their unmistakable, reliable clamor.
And underneath the sounds of the animals, I thought I heard something else: the wind, maybe, bending a branch that now rubbed against another branch; the trickle of water—a stream, flowing downhill to feed the roots of the trees and the plants, and to give the raccoons someplace to wash their hands... but no, it was something else, something deeper—a silky, delicate susurration; a feathery whisper; a gentle, rippling croon like a mother humming her child to sleep or the tranquil thrum of barely audible strings.
The last thing I will be doing is hiding secret messages in the manuscript. That probably sounds ridiculous, lol, but I wanted to challenge myself. And some readers love little secrets hidden inside their stories.
So there you have it. My thesis project.
I will share a couple more updates as I make progress, but stay tuned for the release of my new fantasy trilogy, Aria’s Song, and my graduation from Ariele University.
Happy New Year!
