Early Veilfire Accords Series Writings

I was digging through some old writing today and found a bunch of snippets and stories from around 2017 and earlier, and honestly? There were some gems in there. So I thought I’d start sharing a few.

Back then, I wrote almost exclusively in third person. I’ve only switched to first person in more recent years, which has been a fun evolution to look back on.

This particular excerpt comes from a series concept I dreamed up about eleven years ago, which I originally called The Blackwoods. It centred on a house of mostly female mages in a supernatural underworld. I was playing with an idea...if Gandalf and his kind existed in the modern world… what would that look like? It had a gender-bent, supernatural, sons of anarchy kind of vibe at the time.

Since then, the idea has grown with me. I’ve reworked and expanded it into what’s now The Veillfire Accords Series, with more world-building and the house is now called the Blackburns. Robyn is now called Zade. I've worked on building out the 12 mage houses, adding layered realms, and giving a modern romance edge to the whole series.

It’s wild (and kind of wonderful) to see how stories evolve alongside you.

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Robyn came to with a crash as she fell off her Swedish-style bed and onto the floor of her one-bedroom apartment. The apartment building used to be an old two-storey motel, one of those pay-by-the-hour places on the edge of town that the locals never admitted to going to, though many of them had at one time or another. The owners sold the place five years ago. They were close to bankruptcy and really had no other choice. Who could blame them with a steady clientele of hookers, johns, pimps, tweakers and wayward biker types?

An ambitious couple, The Green’s, bought the place and gutted it. Leaving any trace of its wayward endings in a pile of rubble in a dumpster, they hauled it off to the dump on Seven Mile Corner, northeast of Black Creek Falls. The Greens combined every second room to make several one-bedroom suites. Each has an open living area and a full kitchen. But, they had cut corners to keep the rent cheap, using the most inexpensive furnishings they could get. Because the rent was relatively low, the old building had seen quite a few tenants in the last five years. Robyn had been one of the first but had never left.

She had moved out of her mom’s place when she was eighteen. She just didn’t feel right living under her mom’s roof, being a burden when she was technically an adult. She got a job at Al’s, one of her mom’s exes’, garage as a mechanic apprentice and got her own place right out of high school. She couldn’t afford her own apartment right off the cuff. Al didn’t pay her very much as an apprentice with no experience other than a semester of shop class, so she had to take what she could get. She stayed in some real dives and some room and board situations that were less than ideal until she moved up in the ranks and made enough money to get a place of her own. That’s when she moved into the old motel turned apartment building, known as the Starlight. She didn’t mind the crappy paint job, vinyl wood floors, and old, cracked white cupboards. She liked the old style of her second-floor apartment. There was something nostalgic to her about the place. It reminded her of another life.

She grumbled as beer bottles hit the floor and clinked and clanked and rolled away. She got up on all fours, crawled to the bathroom, pulled herself up on the edges of the pedestal sink, which she noticed needed cleaning, and turned on the cold water. She cupped her hands together, let them fill with water, and dipped her face in the cool pool that formed. She did it a few times, then inspected her reflection, the puffiness of her eyes, the unevenness of her skin tone, the deepness of her frown lines, then she noticed the other inhabitant of her bed enjoying his morning sleep.

“Hey!” She called out. She grabbed her head and winced. “Ugh! Too much beer,” She chastised herself for yelling so carelessly. The other inhabitant of her bed rolled around like a bear in his den. Justin Fitzgerald, tall, lanky, dark hair, dark eyes, not the worst guy to look at and not the worst guy in town to have in your bed, although he was up there. “I’m gonna take a shower. You better get your ass up and out of my bed by the time I get out,” She said at a lower decibel.

“Ugh! Why do you always have to be so friggin’ loud all the time?” Justin grabbed his head and threw a pillow over it. “-- and bitchy!”

Robyn’s nostrils flared. She stomped towards him. Her head pounded with her footsteps, but she was too angsty to care.

“You oughta be used to it by now, buddy. Now get up! You think you’re gonna spend all day in my bed stinking up my sheets with your man smells? I don’t think so.” She threw back the sheets, revealing his naked body to the cold morning air, as well as a bevy of unsettling morning aromas.

“It already smells like ass in here.” She made a face of disgust.

“Hey, that ain’t just me,” he said as he grabbed the sheets back from her and pulled them back over himself.

“Ugh! Out!” She pointed a finger at the door. He rolled over and away from her, determined to sleep in, in her bed.

Robyn shook her head at him, watched him as he tried to remain as still as possible. After a few moments, she relented.

“Fine! Be that way."

She marched herself back into the bathroom and turned the shower tap on hot, all the way, disrobed unabashed and waited for the water to warm up, testing it with her hand every couple of seconds.

“Get your ass out of my bed, Fitzgerald.” She called out.

“God, you are such a pain in the ass, Blackwood!” Justin yelled back.

“Yeah, and you’re a lousy lay,” She said under her breath. “But a convenient one.” She rolled her eyes at herself and stepped into the shower.

“Good Robyn, good. That’s real nice. Keep going, and you’ll have reserved yourself a nice cushy spot in hell."

he lathered up with an absorbent amount of shampoo and worked on scrubbing it into her spiky black hair like a mad demon barber intent on torturing clients.

She heard her cell phone ring, then again, and again, and again.

“Hey!” She waited. It rang again. “Hey, sleeping beauty! Would you get that for me?”

She listened.

Nothing.

“Justin!” she hollered.

She winced again and clutched her head with her hands until the ringing and throbbing stopped.

Then, she heard rustling, a great deal of grumbling and cursing, followed by heavy footfalls pounding across the floor. The ringing stopped, and she heard Justin saying something, but she couldn’t make out the words. She continued to scrub her scalp with her long nails. He spoke again. She wasn’t sure if it was directed at her.

“What?” she said as she peered through the shower curtain with one eye open as suds dripped down her face.

Justin entered the bathroom abruptly with a sheet around his body, toga style.

“It’s your mom!” He yelled at her.

He handed her the phone in the shower.

Robyn fumed.

“Well, I can’t answer it in here, you jackass.”

She grabbed the phone from his hand and got out of the shower, covered in suds.

Justin threw his palms in the air in defence and proceeded to take full advantage of the eyeful he was getting. A cocky smirk formed on his face. Robyn shook her head at him and cleaned her left ear off with part of the sheet he was using to cover himself.

“Hey,” She said into the receiver.

“That boy’s an idiot!” Evelyn abruptly cut her off.

Robyn rolled her eyes and cocked a hip, did her best to cross her arms while still holding the phone to her ear. Justin watched her intently.

“Find someone with a bit more meat between their ears to spend your nights with,” Evelyn scolded.

“That’s not really the meat I am concerned with, especially at night."

Robyn looked down at Justin and noticed he was aroused by her nakedness. He grabbed at her and tried to plant a kiss on her neck. She shoved him off and waved a finger at him.

“Ev, you didn’t call to give me shit about who I spend my nights with, what’s up?”

“We’ve got a problem. I need you at the house. Family meeting.”

Robyn didn’t ask any questions. She knew enough that when Evelyn used that tone, she wasn’t to ask questions. She was to move her ass in the direction ordered. Justin came at her again. Robyn pushed him into the wall of the bathroom with more force. He looked down at her small, thin arm, his eyes darting about in his narrow head, as he struggled under her hand.

“Kay, I’ll be there in five,” She hung up the phone and removed her hand from Justin’s chest.

“You are freakishly strong for a girl,” Justin said to her, rubbing the spot where her hand was.

“Yeah, well...I lift weights,” Robyn said haphazardly as she looked for her fluffiest towel in the cupboard across from the sink, where she kept such things. Justin winced as he continued to rub at his chest.

“You know it’s also really weird that you call your mom by her first name,” He said as his eyes rolled up, into the back of his head, like he was physically searching in his brain with his eyes. Robyn was beginning to notice he did that a lot. It was a good thing he wasn’t that bad to look at.

“It’s because she’s not my real mom. I’m adopted. Idiot!”

Robyn whipped a towel off the cupboard and walked out of the bathroom and into the open area of her apartment that served as the bedroom and living area. Justin walked into the room behind her and sat on the edge of her bed.

Robyn ignored him and started rummaging through a pile of clothes in a basket on top of a large, locked cedar chest at the end of the bed. She gave each article a thorough smell, discarding any that smelled slightly off into the corner.

“It’s still weird,” He said as he picked up a discarded black sheer bra with his fingers and looked at it like it was a puzzle of some kind. To him it was. One he couldn’t solve, at least last night, anyway, Robyn thought to herself.

“You know nothing about my family,” She snatched the bra from his fingers and pointed at him with her index, “And you never will.”

“I know what people say about your family,” Justin said under his breath but Robyn caught it.

“Yeah, what’s that?” She stared at him with blazing hazel eyes from beneath a hooded brow and the fringe of her dark side bangs.

Justin’s eyes went wide, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi-truck; he stammered.

Robyn helped him out.

“Duh-duh-duh! I know what they say, too. Those Blackwoods are a bunch of bitches, witches, freaks, part of a cult, satanists, harpies, pagans, dykes, whatever bad name they can think of. People in this town are just a bunch of nobodies who have nothing better to do than talk about other people, especially when they don’t understand those people or don’t want to. Now get your gear and get the hell out of my apartment.”

She found his pants and threw them at his head. He caught them before the belt whipped him in the face.

“Jeez! Well, they got the bitch part right!” He said as he began to put his leg through a hole in his worn-out jeans.

Robyn’s nostrils flared again. She came at him with full force and pushed him off her bed.

“What the —,” Justin fell on the ground, lilted and then unevenly managed to get to his feet.

“Get out!” Robyn shoved him again as he stumbled backwards.

“Jesus Christ! People in this town are right about you, you know.

You are a psycho! I used to stand up for you, but not anymore. You crazy ass witch!”

“Ugh!” Robyn yelled. “I am not crazy, and I am not a witch! I’m a Blackwood!”

She kept shoving him until he was out the door and on the balcony of her apartment building, one leg in his jeans, still partially wrapped in her sheet.

“And don’t you forget it,” She slammed the door in his face. She leaned against the door and exhaled.

“Hey! Hey! Can I at least get my shirt?” he hollered at her from the other side.

She caught a glimpse of it on the old armchair she kept by her bed. She grabbed it, opened the door and threw it in his face. She slammed the door again.

“Should’ve kept it and put a curse on your stupid ass,” She hollered and skulked back to the pile of clothes.

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Storm Forged Prophecy 

Book One in the Veilfire Accords Series

Callia Blackburn, of House Blackburn, is the youngest mage in centuries to survive the Rite of Ascension, marked as her House’s true heir before she was grown. When the Twin Blades of Destiny and Ruin choose her, ancient weapons that should have slept forever, the Twelve Houses panic, the Veilborn Courts stir, and a war older than memory begins to wake.

And Callie doesn’t know the truth. Not about the Blades. Not about the shadowed realm stirring beneath their feet. And not about the Veilfire Accords breaking. The Thirteenth House rises. And the Dark Triad are coming into power once again. Callie must choose: to be a weapon of prophecy, or face her undoing.

Think: Crescent City meets The Witcher with Supernatural DNA. Gritty, smart, emotionally charged.

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