BoM/TWS Message Forum

Hi all,

I thought you might be wondering why five chapters have suddenly appeared, including a brand new school, whole host of new characters, and some unexpected twists. There are two levels to this post: first, the non-spoiler discussion of how the ridiculously named St Francis Xavier School emerged. Second, a spoiler section that discusses the five chapters (please, read them all first).

So, The St Francis Xavier School. In a back-and-forth, Seuzz and I discussed the problem I identified in my last post: that it’s tricky to write for established characters. Initially the masks were going back to Westside, but Seuzz observed that did not have to be the case, and listed some wonderful options, one of which was the unused Agape Christian Academy. This idea quickly morphed into… well, why not just create a whole new school? So far we have three schools in the county, but none of them are elite boarding schools. There was a hole in the map that could be filled. (Literally – the school has been dotted on the county map and designed up).

The name. The church Will was hiding in couldn’t be any that already existed, as none are Catholic, and so it had to be invented. I chose St Francis Xavier virtually at random (he’s a real, popular Jesuit saint; I picked a small US city and Googled Catholic churches, this was the first hit). Initially the school and church were closely linked so had the same name, and when it became a boarding school some distance away the joke about the X-Men was still too good to pass up.

For the past few days, I’ve been doing a little world building. Xavier’s soon took form and was populated by its own (small but growing) cast. Once I started, I knew I had to get a few chapters out quickly to cement the world in place; it was still too amorphous in my head. Don’t expect such a burst in the future, I just had to set down some outlines before I went insane. The five establishing chapters are, I hope, filled with enough hooks any writer can read them, get what kind of place Xavier’s is, and jump in if they wish. They are welcome to do so.

And so… to the spoilers…


*SPOILERS*



By now I hope you’ve read the five chapters. So you will know that 1) Abigail Steiner is a real piece of work; 2) the student body of Xavier’s that I’ve shown is beyond corrupt; and 3) Will has the masks, but Kristen (annoyingly called Kirsten in the wiki blurb I gave to Seuzz – my error) has used one. So let’s go through the choices.

1. Abi Steiner is an amalgam, but the most outrageous aspects of her character are all taken from real life. Not all evil incarnate comes in the form of a cheerleader, and if Will enters Xavier as anyone other than her, they’re in for a rough time. That’s why she was the ideal intro to Xavier’s and got two chapters more or less to herself.

I chose a squash match with Kelsey as it’s an inconsequential life event, but one that lets you see all aspects of her character, and also compares her against a known variable: she’s beautiful, she’s broken, and while she isn’t as good as Kelsey naturally, she’s completely happy to cheat. I know I’ve used Kelsey a little like a wrestling ‘jobber’, but certainly it’s not my intention to belittle that character and have her just beaten by a new arrival: without Will there and without being high, Abi would have lost (and, in the other branch, can lose) convincingly.

And if Abi Steiner feels a little too Machiavellian at the moment, remember we have only seen 24 hours of her life. This is a sketch of a villain, and just like Chelsea Cooper, she has reasons for being that way and redemptive qualities.

2. The corruption at Xavier’s was an obvious choice. It would have been boring otherwise. Schools like Xavier’s expel on the drop of a dime, and the populations are (almost) too lean to have a thriving ecosystem of bully/bullied. But boarding schools are full of bored rich kids, and smoking, drinking and drugs happens. I wanted to give readers and writers hooks, so I made the very pupils in charge of discipline the very ones who need it. Have fun.

Again, this is *not* a 3D view of Xavier’s. I’ve thrown the reader into its very blackest heart: Abi Steiner and Todd Baldwin are the worst it gets. If Will had chosen Niamh Stirland, you’d have seen a very different, far more positive side to the school. Most of the prefects and students are honest, principled and not involved in anything illegal. Just not the two I’ve written so far.

3. And finally, the twist. Well, if Will just got the masks back it would be boring, but I didn’t want to leave that plot point hanging over readers forever. I haven’t *explicitly* said the journey of the masks, but it’s fully mapped out and I’ve told Seuzz the sequence of events that happened; I will only say it’s a branch-specific event triggered by Will’s choices. So, I asked how I could keep screwing with Will Prescott’s life while integrating Xavier’s into the existing universe? The answer was simple: have one of the Xavier’s gang use a mask.

Now, we have an Xavier student in prime position to discover magic and, through the memories stored in the mask, that Westside, Will Prescott and Shelly Nolan are involved. Of course, she doesn’t know that both ‘Will’ and ‘Shelly’ are golems, Will is disguised as her leader/tormentor, and the book is about 15 metres away. So how is ‘Abi’ going to handle Kristen’s discovery? There are so many options…

But I might make you wait. I don’t want Xavier’s to be a cartoon, and the easiest way to give it a little life is to show you things from Niamh Stirland’s perspective. Perhaps that’s what’s coming next.