The Coterie finds each other again and prepares for one final push! Marcus has the Scepter, Natalia is fortifying herself, and the city of Charlotte rests on a needle’s point.

Get ready for a long one people! This was one of my favorite chapters to write, so we’re going to be taking a look at this one pretty in depth. Faith is a fickle friend, should you be lucky enough to have it in your life. But where does it come from, how do we lose it, and can we ever truly recover it once it’s gone?

This week we seem to be exploring faith a lot. What does faith look like in a fictional world, either on the tabletop or in a book? And, more importantly than that, what can we learn about faith and how it should look in our real lives through these works of fiction?

Returning to Diego and Callie, our troubled Ventrue needs to start coming to terms with the World of Darkness that surrounds her, realizing that her safety wasn’t nearly as assured as she’d been led to believe, and that the world is a lot grittier than her Ivory and Glass towers allowed her to see.

The budding relationship is beginning to bloom, but why and how are unique to how I’ve written it in the past. You got your kiss, shippers, but can it last?

What would you do if you could rewrite history? What would you do today if you had the power to affect immediate, widespread change in the world? What would you do if no one could stop you?

Would you be a hero?

Grey has saved Isadora, Isadora has saved Grey, now they need to save each other by saving themselves. Can they do it?

There was quite a shift in Diego this week. He’s not the scared little boy that he used to be. He’s cut loose, letting his darker side out, and he is just feeling fine about that. Let’s delve into why…

A behind the scenes look at my opinions on AI in gaming and reflecting on my own experimentation with it in the past year, now that I’m officially in my late thirties now.

Gotta give Diego his time to shine too! But no longer will he allow others to dictate who and what he is. Its time for Diego to stand on his own two shadowy feet!

Getting the opportunity to really get into Isadora’s head was a blast, and I do hope that I get to do so more often next book as well.

For me, control is all I ever think I have (and thus I’m lying to myself). What happens when control gets ripped away from us completely?

What is innocence?

What is blame?

What are cows?

Apparently I’m on a HHGTTG kick this week.

The best laid plans of mice.

And men.

What?

That whole saying, “the best laid plans of mice and men.”

I don’t think that’s how it goes…

— HHGTTG (Movie Memory)

When we become monsters, we begin to wonder if that was all we ever were…

Time to give Callie a little love, not just with a spotlight, but with a dive into who she is and why I wrote her that way.

A lot of things end up on the cutting room floor. How can I make these decisons, or justify them considering I have a lot more to work with than movie or tv directors do, not being limited by technology, time, or investors?

What’s this? A change in perspective! How rare…

Missed a blog-blog this week, sorry about that, but here, why not delve into a reflection on what it feels like to almost give up completely and how one can save one’s self from it?

Its easy for people to say to “never give up,” because most of those people have never found themselves at the bottom of a mineshaft thousands of feet below the surface of the city, impaled on a stalagmite.