Author Notes: How I Became a Therapist in Another World Novellas 9 and 10

Novella 7 has its own author notes / trivia page here.

Novella 9: Evil Overlord for Hire (Authenticity Not Guaranteed)

I don’t entirely remember where this idea came from, but I think it developed from conversations with my spouse. Originally, I had thought the Dread Army should start up a news network of sorts – bringing updates to subscribers in person, the way they do with the Dark Lord. But this idea of the impersonation scheme came in from somewhere, and…well, here we are. Part “let’s put on a show,” part reverse heist, part farce.

In its own odd little way, this story is about stories and audiences and persona-building: what people want out of a story or a person, whether or not that has anything to do with what the story’s creator thinks it is or who the person actually is. It doesn’t matter that the Zil-Dark Lord isn’t the real thing. The nobles want a roller coaster, something “dangerous” but ultimately safe. There’s more for Drekar to do in terms of trusting more people with his real self while setting boundaries for his own privacy, but he’s not the narrator of this story. There’s also a bit of an homage to the age-old fandom tradition of falling in love with your RP partner through your characters. I see you out there.

I didn’t have much planned out for Zil ahead of time (“scout who delivers Drekar’s news updates”, as we see her in book 7) and reverse-engineered what sort of person might be fun to get embroiled in this sort of scheme. More than that, I wanted as much of this as possible to be her idea, because otherwise her nervous-Nellie nature would make her come off as too passive. She is a team player who’s thrust into a leadership role, after all. It was nice to have another female narrator, though.

Originally, I put Captain Vorgarag the quartermaster in the role of Zil’s costumer, but I decided that realistically, he would be too busy. This also lets us get to know Aspen a bit before he has his own turn as narrator, and keeps the whole team within the realm of minions/underlings. They get help from the higher-ups, like the training by Sergeant Glasha, but by and large they’re grunts doing their best.

Aspen was another bit part in book 7, one of the guards who follows Drekar on his shopping trip. I reverse engineered why he might be sent on that trip (works for the quartermaster) and why accompanying the Dark Lord into a porn shop would be especially traumatic (ahem).

Ultimately, Aspen does a little bit of a few different things in this story (prepared guy, critique from inside the team, costuming), but it amuses me that he ends up as the getaway driver: at the end of most of the fights, Zil is trying to escape unnoticed, and the mages are wiped. So Aspen runs to get the horses. A lot.

I floundered for a bit trying to define Felix; I needed a reason why he had trained in magic but then failed out of the Mage Guild. I didn’t want him to be an asshole or a danger, because he had to fit into the team, but there had to be a solid reason why he wasn’t accepted by the Guild.  “Very specific, very offputting specialty” ended up being it. I enjoy a cheerful purveyor of horror. (I have some more details in my head about how his final exam went, but it ended up being outside the scope of this story.)

Magnus came about because a) I wanted to bring in more beastfolk, and b) when I think about what kind of sound mage would work as a roadie to a band of bards, a laid-back hippie type came immediately to mind. Hence the pipe smoking, the gentle demeanor, the love of snacks. Making him a raccoon seemed a bit too on the nose with his habit of stealing food, so he stayed an opossum.

Both of the mages also played into my overall goal for this story, which was “solve problem, cause other problem.” It’s a farce, after all; we want things to almost tip into chaos, even as the group overall learns to work together and get closer to their goals. So we get Felix’s overeager yes-anding and Magnus’s sticky fingers, and finally Zil continuing to fall for Tanathil.

Tanathil took a long path. Originally, she was the co-narrator of Aspen’s story. She worked for the Dread Army mess hall and got assigned to plan the new mess hall – basically Clive’s role. I wrote an entire draft of that version, which was supposed to happen before the fake Dark Lord story. Zil showed up as Tana’s crush/friend, and at the end recruited her into the impersonation scheme to roll into this story. But that draft felt flat to me for various reasons, and I took it back to the drawing board. That left Tanathil free to be a bigger part of Zil’s story, and ultimately I swapped the order of the two. Then more edits…it’s a process.

Specific notes:

Solan’s comment about “don’t bother with a back harness” is a shout-out to the fact that back harnesses basically don’t work IRL. He had it made because it looked cool, in-story. He’s Dollar Store Kirito, who is Dollar Store Guts in turn. You gotta have a big sword in a back harness + black armor to be a Stereotypical Shounen Sword Guy. So I’m going to pretend that in-universe, it has some kind of pivoting action or something to let him get his sword off his back, and also it’s a pain in the ass, so he warns Tanathil to just use a normal scabbard like a normal person.

Speaking of Solan, there is a tell in their performance that none of the team members would have known, including Zil: Solan’s magic use manifests a shadow self while he casts, which Lavender takes to be a demon in book 1 and that came up in books 4 and 7. Felix doesn’t know that, so he doesn’t copy it; Zil doesn’t know that, so she doesn’t comment. She might have noted it, if Solan and Drekar hadn’t gotten embarrassed by their hot-and-botheredness and cut practice short. As it stands, Fake Solan only got one outing before being retired after all.

All the party hosts were made up on the spot, to frame the various ways the scheme goes to hell. I wanted the nobles to be a bit ridiculous – when/if I get to Francesca’s full origin story, we’ll really get into that – but I at least wanted them to be different from one another and present different challenges. It would be fun to bring some of them back in some form, probably as part of Francesca’s story.

Overall, this story was the most outwardly comedic one I’d written in a while, maybe ever. It was a blast. Sometimes the wheels fell off a bit, but I did my best.

Soundtrack:

Most of the writing music for this one was a mixture of OK Go and Two Door Cinema Club.

Novella 10: On the Care and Feeding of an Evil Army

Hello, I’m back in my comfort zone, writing about crabby introverts.

The writing of this one was more convoluted than most of the Therapist novellas so far. My first attempt aimed at cozy status: food theme, no dark backstories or strong feelings, conflict as mild as possible and quickly resolved whenever it arose. It took place before Evil Overlord for Hire and tried to set up that story along the way. On top of that, it had two narrators: Aspen and Tanathil, who in this draft took the place of Clive: working for Lillian in the kitchens, arguing for a culinary district.

It was, unfortunately, kind of a mess. Even without any major conflict, setting up two new narrators within the space of a novella was a challenge. (Let’s note that in Salty and Sweet, we’ve watched Solan’s arc since book 1, and Drekar has been a bit part since book 2.) There were elements I liked, but I wasn’t invested. To be clear, that’s a skill issue, not the genre’s fault. 

Later, I came back to the story, flipped the order of Care and Feeding and For Hire, moved Tanathil to the other story, and gave Aspen the floor for this entire story. I also allowed him to be the full cranky bastard he hints at being during For Hire, which kicks us further out of the fluff zone. I felt self-conscious about this volume being dude-heavy, especially after making Clive a man (sort of; more below). I’m often worried about readers who come in on book 1 expecting nonstop lady-time, and soon find out that everyone is invited to the party. Oh well. That’s how I am, y’all. You can stop any time you want.

We knew Aspen from Zil’s story, and with him as the sole narrator, we had time to unpack his arc. Setting up Clive as a non-POV deuteragonist was a bit more tricky, but hopefully it got the job done.

If Clive’s defensiveness about his hair seems like egg behavior, well, let’s be honest, it is. Check out the newsletter bonus story where we get a lot further into his backstory. It’s a doozy. He does consider himself a man, though, at this point.

Actually, I waffled up to the last second about Clive’s gender in general, especially after replacing Tanathil. For a long time I considered making him nonbinary, which would have been fine, but went with the current situation in order to unnerve Aspen a little more with the parallels with his lost love. Plus, Aspen being an asshole to him doesn’t come off as gendered then. And also because at least one of the narrators in the next batch is going to be nonbinary. There’s no limit on nonbinary characters, but I was reserving my own “let’s get into gender stuff” energy for that one.

Plus, suggesting that Clive hasn’t worked through his own identity makes Haven feel more dystopian. Next time we encounter him, I want to give him some resolution both on the gender stuff and on his bad blood with Haven. Those threads are being woven in for a story down the road that I’m a little scared to write? It could end up being heavy. But we’re going there eventually.

Ironically, a story called “Care and Feeding” has more handicrafts than cooking in it, now that the kitchen-staff narrator has been changed to a supporting character. It was nice to finally be able to flex a little sewing knowledge. Aspen was already established as a former tailor so that he could make Zil’s disguise in For Hire, and I decided to give Lars knitting as a hobby so they could have a similar interest. (A kind-hearted himbo with a socially-constructed-as-feminine hobby? In my universes? What a surprise.)

Plus, this story is very wintry. They need warm gear constantly. It’s where we are in the timeline, it’s ***SYMBOLISM*** around Aspen as a defrosting-ice-king character, and it’s part of the theme of caretaking and caring exchange that runs through this story. Aspen lends Magnus his blanket as they play chess. Felix and Aspen trade books (Book Trading as Love Language, also on the bingo card). Aspen tells Clive about the shops in Crystalbrook. Lars gives Aspen a scarf both as flirtation and to keep him warm. Tana gives Clive hairstyling tips. Someday Clive will pay it forward, I’m sure. But it’s okay to need help in the meantime.

Finally, I have to give a shoutout to one of the beta readers for a suggestion that affected the end of the book. Originally, my concept of a compromise between Clive’s plan and Aspen’s took the form of a competition, where twenty applicants pitched their restaurant ideas, the judges narrowed them down to ten, and the Dread Army voted at the spring festival for the last three. In that draft, we don’t find out what the final three picks are; I had left that for a future book to get into.

Azaliz, one of the beta readers, pointed out that a collaborative approach would be more in theme with the Dread Army, rather than a competition. I agree; I’m embarrassed that I didn’t think of that! So now we have three teams, which no doubt will go through their own friction as they learn to work together. People forced to work together, learning to get along?? In my books?? 😉 So thanks to Azaliz for that suggestion.

As for the other open question at the end: is Aspen going to move into the Tower next door to Lars? Probably. Maybe they, as well as the new restaurants, will show up in a future book.

Soundtrack:

Because of various circumstances, I didn’t end up soundtracking this one much. Large swaths of it were written with the backdrop of Songs of a Lost World by the Cure and Placebo’s best-of, Once More With… Because, well, cranky introvert.