Writing Romantasy - And Exploring the Darkness

One of the hardest things I have to do as an author is choosing between story ideas. At any given time, I have hundreds of ideas floating around in various states of development - lists of concepts in my phone's Notes app, story and mood boards on Milanote, plot outlines (for some stories - I'm not always a plotter), Pinterest boards, and Google Docs of partially written scenes.

Thanatos (Death) upon his horse

But sometimes, an idea has me in a chokehold, demanding that I put all other projects aside and give it the time and the attention it deserves. That was the case with my most recent story idea, which features the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and will be a darker romantasy with gothic undertones. I'm not ready to share more details (yet), but I am so excited to share the first look at Thanatos, the fourth Horseman representing Death and main character of the tale.

This gorgeous piece of art was created by GammaTrap (@gammatrap on Instagram and Threads), an exceptional artist who might very well be a mind reader with the way he plucked this image straight from my brain.

This book will be my first attempt at querying publishers for a larger work (my goal is to hit approximately 85,000 words with this bad boy), so I hope you'll follow along with me through the drafting, editing, and querying process.

I can't wait to see where Thanatos leads us!

-Tiff