Feel the Power (Diagram)

I’M HOME. And man does that feel good. It was nice to see my family in Utah, but my travel reserves (and people reserves, and all the reserves, basically) are spent. I told one of my sisters that they’ll have to pry me out of my bedroom with a crowbar.

She asked, “What about for food?”

…Maybe for food.

Just kidding, of course I’ve left my room regularly for all sorts of reasons, including meals. But I’ve also spent a lot more time in there recharging my batteries, unpacking, and catching up on business. We got back late Saturday night, but it’s taken me this long to feel like I could maybe start writing again. Hopefully next week. 🤞 Hopefully.

Bonus stuff

But guess what? This week I’ve made something I have wanted to make for you guys since…forever. Seriously, since before the sixth and final book of the Blood of the Covenants, Dragon’s Child, came out almost a couple years ago.

Confused by the end about how all the Powers work, how they compare, and how they differ? What about the timing of their power cycles? Yeah, I figured you would be.

I myself had to take a break after writing the fifth book to do some serious world-building work, and as part of it, I made myself a massive matrix in OneNote (where I kept all my writing notes at the time) to keep track of all the magic stuff. I even put two versions of that matrix in the front- and back-matter of the Word-doc beta-version of the sixth book, but there was no way I could format the matrix properly in my book formatting software, Atticus. The only way to include it in the published book would have been for me to fully design the book myself,^[1] and I wasn’t about to do that.^[2]

So I vowed to at least put the matrix on my website so readers could reference it there. But that proved to be a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, and I ran out of time before the publication date of the sixth book.

And…it’s been on my list to figure out ever since. Honestly, it’s probably for the best I didn’t get around to it on my old Wix website, because it probably would never have looked good. Wix (at my experience level, at least) is simply not built for that.

But now, at long last, not only is the matrix on the new website, but I also finally have the kind of gorgeous diagram to go with it that I knew I needed all along and even attempted making myself, but I totally failed at. (I’m pretty sure I scribbled something down at some point, but I can’t find it right now to show you, so just trust me—it was truly bad.)

Behold!

Now, I feel like I’ve said “matrix” enough times, some of you guys will be expecting a Matrix meme, but…problem is, I haven’t seen the movie, so…here’s what’s been going through my head instead!

Footnote
[1] Weeeell, not technically true, since now I’m better at inserting images into Atticus, so I could have made it work with a series of full-page images, but…I didn’t know it at the time, and I probably couldn’t have done a nice enough job creating the designed matrix to begin with, because ⬇️.

[2] I was only ever a passable designer in college, and it’s never been a skill I’ve kept up. (Sorry, my editing and design teachers. 😅) I know what good design looks like—I had to, as an editor, and in that capacity, I’ve actually worked with visuals and designers quite a lot—but I can’t produce good design myself, and I only remember just enough about InDesign to be dangerous. Which is why I am so very glad my amazing assistant has that skillset and has been working so hard on the frontmatter visuals for The Great Bookmatter Update.^[3] Thanks, Kelly! 💛

[3] In case you missed what that is before, I am finally putting real, professionally made content in the Blood of the Covenants books! Some of it is replacing old stuff (like my old Six Realms table—which was literally a screenshot of a Google doc 😅), and some of it will be brand new, like the maps I shared before! Or the Lind family chart Kelly is making!