The Making of shattered stars
As the first post in a continuing blog series, I thought it might be pertinent to muse on how this project came about in the first place. For example, what kind of self-respecting person sets out to write dark sci-fi fantasy romance in 2026?
The answer, is of course - they don’t.
For me, this story started over a decade ago. It came from two somewhat simple ideas:
Why isn’t there any good “Witches in Space” content? (remember this was mid-00s)
What if the religion was actually true and real and everybody knew it?
Those two simple questions led to some of the earliest drafts of Shattered Stars. Back then, it was a simple adventure story. Jack was not but a kid with an idea to invent something like electricity, and he crosses paths with a surly Xela and scheming Nigel who decide to help him in exchange for getting them out of a bind with a mob boss. I always wanted it to end with Xela facing down a Lovecraftian-esque monster. Some ideas are too good to give up.
Over the years, I collected ideas, folklore, miscellany - and slowly this project became a beautiful amalgamation of all my interests. Jack became my take on the folklore hero of the same name, Nigel gained her royal titles, and Xela… well, my girl has been mostly the same since she was conceived. It’s fitting - I think, considering that she herself has had 700 years of almost no character development.
Now my problem was medium. I had some solid direction, characters and lore, and even some amateur fanart. At the time, I started a screenplay, thinking that something visual would be the best. Unfortunately, I kept hitting roadblocks in the magic system. COVID-19 had just begun, and so I decided to do something different.
I started a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
I recruited a few friends who I’d played with for a long time, and walked them through the magic system. I had about eleven post-it notes and a dream when I started. Of course, I couldn’t have my own characters play along - so instead, I made them the quest givers. This required reworking the backstories a LOT - but it was a success. In fact, that campaign served as the primary inspiration for Jack’s lab, and his early failed experiments.
That game gave me more than I bargained for. When you have five chaotic and seasoned players to deal with - you learn on your feet how to create NPCs, settings, lore, and otherwise innocuous nonsense to move the story along. I became so engrossed in world-building that I ended up expanding the campaign to give each character a quest that fit their backstory.
Afterwards, I wrote the first few chapters - the heist (that was originally titled “Be Gay, Do Crime”!) and the bar scene. Before long, I got tangled up in real life - and the book was set aside.
But not for long.
I had another campaign on the brain. This one was more ambitious - and was built on a home-brew system centered around Kingdom Hearts. I’d played many versions of these campaigns, and I was a bit sick of Disney.
So I thought - what if I took my trio, and had them recruit a bunch of keyblade wielders to help them “purify” a dark Kingdom Hearts? While it sounds absolutely insane - it ended up being the perfect convergence of events. The players were all “dead”, Xela resurrected them against their will, and brought them to Disneyland, USA (yes, the actual theme park). Xela acted as a Yen Sid type mentor, giving out quests with her signature chaotic flair. Nigel - being the princess she is - lived in Cinderella’s castle, and became a Dole Whip influencer. Each week, the players would get sent to a non-Disney world, and forced to combat whatever they would find there.
In between sessions, we ran a role-play chat - essentially letting the players interact with both each other and the various NPCs around the park. It was open every day, and I found great joy in dropping in fun random events for the players to partake in.
How does this relate to the book, you might ask?
Turns out that writing character voices for 6 months straight in real time is AMAZING practice for novel writing. The campaign gave me a sandbox to play with plots, dynamics, character beats, and voice in a way that I would never have otherwise. Jack and Nigel probably grew the most through the entire story, and most of that bled into their final prose.
The other major change was that Shattered Stars was not supposed to be a romance. Jack & Xela would always have chemistry - but getting together was out of the question. However, a campaign has no such restrictions, so while the other players paired off - I had some fun of my own. Getting them together ended up being a great idea, and a lot of their dynamic in the books comes from their forced-proximity Disneyland living situation.
Once that campaign ended, I started writing almost immediately - every single day. The words flowed like nothing else (except maybe the whiskey), and the first draft was completed within a month. Editing is a long process - but I was so proud of that time, and I’m still thankful for all the lessons that got me here.
If you’ve made it this far - I hope you enjoyed this venture into nonsense, and I especially hope you enjoy the output of all this.
✦
Until next time,
lexe
