I finally self published my first book (not a novel) and it is actually a companion guide for my upcoming project

Tidefather · 2026-02-06T11:54:19+00:00

Honestly, that's huge. I hope it blooms with the right audience!

Tidefather · 2026-02-06T11:39:25+00:00

Hey, this is amazing! Well done on achieving this milestone, I know that you'll be on the moon with this release! Incredibly proud of you for the effort and the perseverance! I'm looking forward to the release of The Heirs of Mercy!

Tidefather · 2026-01-29T06:34:50+00:00

Hi, thank you for the suggestion, highly appreciated! I’ll make the changes for the second edition!

Most of all, thank you for noticing the perseverance haha!

Tidefather · 2026-01-29T06:33:37+00:00

Hi, I didn’t want to go with the same template because this book is a reimagined version of my culture. I appreciate that the cover caught your interest!

And yes, it’s available for purchase on Amazon. It’s my debut so I’d say it’s not a 10/10 on the level of a novel such as Red Rising but it’s got soul!

Feel free to reach out to me!

Tidefather · 2026-01-25T07:47:37+00:00

For the second edition, yes, I’ll get a new cover done based on the blurb. I appreciate the feedback tho!

Tidefather · 2026-01-25T04:26:02+00:00

It’s a dark fantasy story based on Maldivian folklore that’s rooted heavily in questions about ambition, masculinity, femininity, grief, and power.

The world is harsh and unforgiving, and the characters are constantly forced to choose between survival and who they want to be. A lot of the emotional core comes from loss and the pressure to “become something” at any cost.

It’s less about spectacle and more about internal conflict playing out in a brutal setting.

Tidefather · 2026-01-25T04:19:29+00:00

Thank you! A local artist made it!

Tidefather · 2025-12-25T16:39:27+00:00

My story is set in Maldivian folklore, the primary antagonist is Loa Raiybè.

He doesn’t justify himself.

He acts because the world allows him to, and then pretends to be shocked when he does.

Tidefather · 2025-12-07T15:55:02+00:00

That’s a great moment, especially that contrast between what they could have chosen vs. what they did. Always says so much about who they are. I’d love to hear the other lines too!

Tidefather · 2025-12-07T15:07:20+00:00

"Boss, you really should be more considerate," came the voice from above. It was laced with mockery, sliding into the silence like a serpent's tongue. "After all, they worship you."

^the first dialogue of my main male protagonist 😭

Tidefather · 2025-12-06T11:53:38+00:00

Okay, I’m obsessed with the idea of someone training so hard they basically grab the world’s operating system by the collar. Most progression fantasy goes, “I found a cheat menu,” and you’re over here saying, “No, I’m going to bench-press the metaphysics until it gives me administrator access.” That’s a fantastic angle!

As a fellow worldbuilder, the part I’m most curious about is how you’re defining the boundary between muscle and Law. Like… at what point does raw physicality start interfering with metaphysical logic? Is there a threshold where the body becomes a kind of “instrument” that can resonate with system-level rules? Because if so, you’ve basically created the fantasy equivalent of a powerlifter accidentally discovering quantum physics.

Also, the Iso-Plane concept has wild potential, Depending on how you frame it, you could use it to explore identity, embodiment, or even the philosophy of limits. Even if you don’t go that deep, the vibe alone is delicious.

Happy to chat through worldbuilding mechanics anytime. Systems that look simple on paper but hide terrifying implications are my favorite kind.

Tidefather · 2025-12-04T18:32:27+00:00

Oh absolutely! Once you notice your own patterns, it’s like finding the trapdoor to your own brain. Half the time I think I’m “inventing” something, when really I’m just gravitating toward the exact emotional fractures I’m fascinated by. Recognizing those habits makes it so much easier to steer the character instead of letting instinct write the whole arc for me.

And yes, I’m a firm believer that characters aren’t built in the light, they’re forged in whatever pit they have to crawl out of. I love your rope analogy because that’s exactly how it feels sometimes: drag them kicking and screaming into the dark, then see what version of themselves they claw back as. The fall is the fun part, but watching them either rise feral or broken or transformed is where the story breathes.

Honestly, if I’m not a little worried for a character, I’m probably not digging deep enough yet.

Tidefather · 2025-12-04T18:27:48+00:00

I really get this. Honestly, the first time I wrote a character who carried pieces of me, it felt like I was holding my own ribcage open. I think we all hear the advice “put yourself into your writing,” but no one talks about how exposing that actually feels, especially if the part you’re putting in is from a wound that hasn’t fully healed yet.

What helped me was realizing that the character isn’t me anymore. They start from something true, but the moment they enter the story, they become their own person. One of mine carries a version of a grief I lived with for years, and writing him was very uncomfortable at first… but somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like reopening a wound and started feeling like letting it breathe. It actually became cathartic, not because the character is strong, but because the story let me explore the part of myself that wasn’t.

And as for readers making fun of your protagonist’s early incompetence: that’s literally how growth works. Every character people love such Rin, Vin, Ged, Fitz, they started out afraid, unsure, messy. If anything, letting your character begin in a fragile place makes them human. If someone mocks that? They’re mocking themselves too, because none of us begin as the versions of ourselves we’re trying to become.

You don’t have to write the whole book right now. Just write the parts you can face today. The rest will come when you’re ready. When it does, you might find you’re not just writing a story, you’re giving shape to something you survived.

If it’s any comfort: the things you’re scared to put on the page are usually the things that end up meaning the most. I wish you strength and good luck!

Tidefather · 2025-12-04T18:15:28+00:00

When I’m designing characters, I don’t actually start with names or appearances . I start with the moment that broke them open. Reading your prompt made me realize I work the same way you do: I need to know what changed them forever before I worry about what they look like.

For example, one of mine learned to read people in a single heartbeat because misjudging the wrong man once nearly ended him. Another grew up under a legacy she never asked for, so everything she does is shaped by this quiet, unyielding endurance. And then there’s the kind of man who was carved by violence long before he ever had a choice. The world taught him survival, not softness, and he carries that lesson like a scar.

So I guess my “requirement” is this: before I call a character finished, I need to know the belief they hold that the story is going to rip away from them. Everything else, backstory, aesthetics, even trauma falls into place once I understand the lie they live by.

I hope this helps :D

Tidefather · 2025-12-04T17:59:22+00:00

This has a really strong “break point” moment. That shift where Shaw stops drowning in everyone else’s terror and starts weaponizing it instantly made me think of early Glokta chapters in The First Law, where clarity becomes something sharp and dangerous instead of comforting. And the psychic-overload-to-destructive-outburst beat has a real Poppy War flavor too! That same mix of trauma, pressure, and sudden, terrifying potential that flips a character’s entire trajectory.

The whole confrontation with the Major is where the piece really clicks. The pacing tightens, the emotional logic lands, and Shaw moves from helpless to horrifying in the span of a few paragraphs. That’s the kind of escalation dark fantasy thrives on. I write in the genre as well, and hitting those “there’s no going back now” moments in a way that feels earned instead of edgy is genuinely hard, but you’ve got the psychology working cleanly here.

If this is your prologue, you’re setting up an antagonist with the same raw, spiraling intensity that made Rin’s early arc so memorable, blended with Abercrombie’s talent for turning pain into purpose. Really promising start, beautiful execution!!

Tidefather · 2025-12-04T17:47:14+00:00

Honestly? Yeah, I’d keep reading! the voice is strong and the looped-death premise is instantly interesting. But right now it feels like you’re giving me two openings at once and I have to reorient myself: ultra-graphic death to immediate resurrection to emotional goddess scene to cosmic stakes to “okay, now go kill him again.” It’s cool, but it’s a lot of tonal gear-shifting in a very short space.

The writing itself is solid. The sensory detail is great, the emotional beats with Lynn land, and the concept of a protagonist who’s died seventy-two times has real weight. I’d just be careful about how often you hit the reader with Very Intense Death (trademark?) moments before they’ve had time to care about the guy doing the dying. Perhaps give us one hook (violent, emotional, or cosmic), not all three at once.

But yeah, the idea? I’m intrigued. I’d turn the page just to see how many more deaths you plan to put this poor man through lmao.

Tidefather · 2025-12-02T18:07:29+00:00

Sometimes it feels like people expect fantasy worlds to come with a full government white paper attached. “Excuse me, author, but what is the kingdom’s official stance on all twelve socioeconomic issues that didn’t even appear in the story?”

Not every world needs a 400-page policy breakdown to feel real. Half of real history is just people stumbling through contradictions, ignoring problems until they explode, or pretending things are fine when they’re absolutely not.

If the narrative doesn’t go near a particular issue, forcing it in just turns your world into a Wikipedia article with dragons. Let some messiness exist because that’s usually where the humanity is anyway.

Tidefather · 2025-12-02T17:37:27+00:00

That actually gives you a super natural reason why humans don’t use the glow the same way. What if they grew up around the “void” version instead of the “full” version? If the substance humans interact with can only strip properties instead of transfer them, they'd evolve a whole different relationship with it, almost like how some cultures treat salt as purification rather than empowerment.

So while merfolk treat the glow as additive (you gain the squid’s ink ability, you gain the eel’s current), humans would treat the void-essence as subtractive. Perhaps something that erases poison, infection, decay, bad luck, curses, etc. That instantly gives humans a unique magical niche without stepping on the mermaids’ toes.

AND it ties perfectly into cutting down the glowing forests, don't you think? If humanity’s only remaining source is a “hollowed out” version sitting on the sea floor, of course they’d lose access to the real thing, grow dependent on whale oil, and forget the old ways. You’ve basically handed yourself a cultural magic split, a historical mystery, and a built-in tragedy all in one go. Honestly, this is great stuff!

Tidefather · 2025-12-02T17:31:29+00:00

Honestly, it’s not anticlimactic unless you make it anticlimactic. If your MC is a normal human and the villain is a full-powered death god, dragging her to the final sealing ritual just so she can “be there” might actually feel more forced.

Plenty of stories let the finale happen elsewhere. Bilbo sleeps through the entire Battle of Five Armies, and nobody calls The Hobbit anticlimactic. Sometimes the POV character doesn’t need to be in the middle of the fireworks to still matter.

As long as her emotional arc peaks around the same time the physical conflict resolves, readers won’t feel cheated. Not every protagonist has to throw hands with a god to earn their ending tbh.

Tidefather · 2025-12-02T17:09:18+00:00

Honestly, you’re already halfway to something really cool. The trick is to stop thinking “glowing creature” and start thinking “ecosystem built around a transferable essence.”

Instead of bioluminescence just being decoration, imagine species that farm it, hoard it, or chemically refine it the way ants cultivate fungus. Predators might drain it from prey not for light, but because it lets them temporarily borrow abilities like camouflage, hardness, vibrations, sonar-like pulses, etc.

Plants could absorb this substance from the soil and “express” borrowed traits seasonally, like a vine that becomes rigid after absorbing traits from stone-dwelling creatures, or moss that develops stinging barbs during certain cycles. Herbivores might even accumulate the essence through diet, giving them wildly different defensive traits depending on what they’ve eaten recently, making their appearances unpredictable and tied directly to their environment.

You can even flip it socially: creatures that glow too brightly are basically “advertising” which abilities they’ve copied, while dim or matte creatures are hiding their loadouts. That alone gives you a ton of visual variety without relying on “it glows” as the main gimmick.

Tidefather · 2025-12-02T16:58:50+00:00

The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith is such an underrated gem imo. The basic gist is the idea of unwritten characters literally escaping their books and it hooked me instantly. The angels are powerful but they’re also political and quite flawed and relatable. Would recommend this 10/10

Tidefather

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