Making the Magic Work For Me

(and hopefully you too)

You may remember back to this post (The Unbecoming Genesis of the Môrdreigiau Chronicles) where I explained that this fictional series stemmed from wanting to do a themed journal. Even as the idea grew and became not just novel sized but book series sized (four and counting), I wanted to continue with the initial idea of making a themed journal to go with the first book.

Something for my fictional blogger to find and share — which begged the question: how authentic would I make it?

If you’ve followed me on Instagram or even seen the little hint I shared on Chat (see below), the answer is: not very.

I could spend a lot of time tea-dying book pages (actually on my to do list this week), and using period-specific ink and quills but … after using a dip pen to write an opening page: Who Has The Time For That?

Also, the goal of this entire project is to have fun …

So that’s what I’m going to do, with all the stationery goodies I have to hand, in the form of memo papers, stickers, washi tape, holographic PET tape, and stamps. It’s also within a Travelers Notebook which has elastic, for Pete’s sake.

The pages I’ve completed so far do have a vintagey air to them, but are not something a young woman of 1814 would be able to create. And I’m okay with that.

If this bothers you, then you’re probably here for the novel that contains magic and sea dragons… Oh wait, you’ve already suspended your disbelief in order to enjoy this, haven’t you?

This is a magical journal, which fits within the rules of the alternate history world I am building: one of the few magical abilities our heroine has at the outset of the book is to make things appear other than they seem.

Let’s have a sneak peek at the magic spell inscribed on the first page:

This is the journal of a lady, just as you would expect, to reflect upon manners and morals. May it seem such a journal for all who read this.

May it seem such a journal for all who read this.

With these words, the magic shifts our perception of reality. Our heroine probably had no thought beyond hiding her words from her family, but the strength of her spell has somehow persisted through the ages.

Thus, a person in 1814, would expect to find the journal to look appropriate for the period. A person in 1899, would perhaps find some collage in the journal — because a lady of late 1800s probably kept a commonplace book, if not some sort of scrapbook … and so it goes down the generations until we come to the 2020s, where there is an excess of materials with which to decorate one’s journal.

Chat Updates:

I know a lot of you are reading this via email, so here’s a chat moment you might have missed.

Over on YouTube this week, I shared about how I am doing the hidden journaling, so if you want some crafty behind the scenes, head on over. (And yes, it’s a bit of a shout-out for the novel serialisation on Substack.)

If you want to see the goodies I’ve collated/curated into one box to use for this project, I have a whole playlist for Project Starfish:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMgoRabplYQcivI1Eh-3wSh3dTs7cQZxk

What kind of magics would you expect sea dragons to have? (Yes, I’m looking for ideas. I only have a few collated thus far.) Let me know in the comments!