A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post about his project’s inspiration, magic, and themes. (Shout out to Edward Patrick and The Rage of a Boy, the first book in his Grey and White series.) I thought it was such a great idea, that I’m going to do a similar thing. This is the introduction to my universe: The Keter Archives.
Welcome to The Keter Archives
The Keter Archives is the universe in which I, Izzy King, write all of my dark and urban fantasy projects, as well as some of my horror stories, and a majority of my serials and short stories. Depending on the story, the timeline varies from the creation of the universe to the medieval to the age of discovery to the modern day and beyond.
Like many writers, my inspiration comes from a wide variety of media—books, video games, TV shows, etc. My urban fantasy and paranormal romance projects are inspired by the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton, The Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, and the shows Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries. The Final Fantasy video game series hugely inspired my dark fantasy projects, as well as movies like The Road to El Dorado and tv shows like Winx Club. I know those last two aren’t dark fantasy, but I take inspiration from everywhere I can get it.
I’m a huge fan of horror in all forms, with a big appetite for found footage. I’ve started writing one found footage serial (Whisper), and I’m planning a couple more stories in the genre (WIP titles: Savanna Swallow and Chronicle). I love the concept of ancient evils, and have been working on some stories that feature them that I’ll be posting as flash fictions/shorts.
Works in The Keter Archives
I have a long list of works in The Keter Archives that I keep in a spreadsheet which I add to whenever I have a new idea. Aside from some fanfics I’m working on and To the Sky—which takes place in its own universe—all of my works are in The Keter Archives.
My big projects are Serenity, Sandalwood, and Her Demons. Each is part of The Keter Archives universe.
Serenity is a dark fantasy about a soldier who summons a dragon to fight the demons killing his people. It follows Rueben and Serin through their adventures to find more dragons to help with the demon problem. Trust, devolution of character, and magic play major parts in Serenity.
Sandalwood is an urban fantasy about a witch who’s trying to solve the mystery of other witches dying in their city. Dakota has to balance the witch deaths with the arrival of Ipsimus, the King of Hell, who has now taken an interest in them. Magic plays a huge role in the story, as well as friendship and relationships in general.
Her Demons is a paranormal romance about a witch who is kidnapped by a demon to remove a curse from his friend. Luna finds herself in the home of the demon Vex while her friend, Cassia, works on the spell to remove the curse from Marreg, another demon. Friendships, romance, and trust are major plot points.
For those curious about other projects I’m working on, you can check out this page on the website. It has blurbs for a few of my stories, as well as summaries of other, future projects at the bottom.
Worldbuilding in The Keter Archives
I am, first and foremost, a character-driven writer. That means my stories follow characters and their antics instead of plot-first storytelling. My worldbuilding is also character-first, meaning I work on the world around the character—bottom-up instead of top-down.
The one worldbuilding tidbit I’m most proud of is my demons. It took me years to hone them, and I have so many details on them and the way the world works around them. I’ll give a more in-depth look into them in a future blog post.
My magic varies from story to story, but most of it is specific to the character. There is ritual magic, but most of the time the magic comes innate to the character—from demon to dragon. Everyone has a colored aura that’s specific to them, and their magic reflects that. Rueben is red, Dakota is purple, and Luna is pink.
Conclusion
I’ll be going deeper into The Keter Archives in future posts, from demons to characters to settings. Anything that strikes my fancy that I think more people should know about. I have a whole private wiki of information that I can use to write up posts, so that’s what I’ll be doing.
Also, I’ll be making sign-ups for my Newsletter available on November 10th and the first one will go out December 1st. If you’d like more info on posts like this one, last week’s post about reading, shorts/flash fiction, or anything else I cover, watch out for that!