Hall of Shadows [The Celestial Chronicles #2]

Fun Facts about TCC

I know it's hard accepting the fact that there won't be a book 3 coming out on Wattpad, so I decided to make a little fun facts corner about the process of writing TCC. Maybe be this will even answer some of your questions!

Fact #1 : Jasper is named after a real life person.

Yes, it's real. Jasper is a person I met in my high school years. He's super cute and crazy tall ( hit a growth spurt so he went from tiny to TALL) and he's pretty musical. I just love his name, so much! Another funny things was when I was teaching middle school tuition, a new kid came into class. I asked him what was his name and he answered "Jasper". I had to resist my internal urge to scream for the rest of the class. Turns out this Jasper is totally different from our Jasper. This kiddo Jasper talks too much that I have to resist the temptation to glue his mouth shut. :3

Oh, just for fun. Jasper is a leftie. ;)

Fact #2 : THoG was rejected 3 times for Wattpad featured.

Yeah, you saw that number right. I was rejected 3 times for featured before I finally got onto the list. I took the rejection to heart, so you can say I was pretty depressed all the time. But I got  a lot of help from my friends who guided me into good writing and how to phrase sentences professionally as well as writing to-dos and do-not-dos. Now that I think about it, I'm actually grateful Wattpad rejected me 3 times, or else I wouldn't have grown as a writer at all! My writing would still be stuck in purple prose, adverb-riddled and over-run sentences.

Hence, all rejections are actually opening up new opportunities!

Fact #3 : THoG was my escape from reality.

Studying for university-prep was not easy. Throw in taut familial bonds and peer pressure, you'll get depression. Let's just say I had a very tough 2015. Wattpad and THoG saved me from depression and opened up a whole new world to me. Now, I can't imagine where my life would go without Wattpad and TCC!

Fact #4 : Elijah is also named after a real life person.

After I returned from my abroad studying, his name was stuck in my head. I love how it sounded --- Ee-lee-yah. He is a nice dude I met from Macedonia. Like Eli, he had beautiful green eyes and golden hair. Both clicked so I named Eli after him!

Fact #5 : Cadence's name actually means  "a sequence of notes or chords comprising the close of a musical phrase". 

Her name foreshadows something of utter importance in the whole series, but it isn't music related, but rather, a chain reaction of events. 

Fact #6: TCC was meant to be a series of 7.

When I first drafted out the series plot, I initially planned it to have 7 books. However, I ran out of plot material for book 2 and 5 for the plot draft. After some time, I consolidated everything into five books. Book 5, which is the final book, will be a monster ( I'm estimating it to be around 300k words) so I will be splitting it into two parts, both told from different POVs. 

Fact #7: The draft you see on Wattpad is the 10th draft. The 11th draft is the rewrite. 

I started writing this series when I was nine, plotting and planning everything since then. Little by little, Esvanira grew. Over the years I kept on writing and rewriting. My first 6 drafts were all hand written. Drafts 7-10 is wrote on MS wheres draft 11 is on scrivener. Hopefully this draft 11 ( rewrite) will be the last!

Fact #8: Cadence and Cole were initially twins.

True fact. ;) They remained as twins until rewrite 9. Then I decided it didn't fit and was a nuisance to the plot.

Fact #9: TCC went from portal fantasy to high fantasy.

From drafts 1-10, everything took place in our world in which they will find a portal to Esvanira. Only in the recent rewrite did the entire story take place in Esvanira, making it high fantasy.

Fact #10: TCC was not inspired by the Mortal Instruments.

Contrary to the belief that TCC was inspired by the Mortal Instruments, I only started writing this because I was inspired by the magical worlds created by Enid Blyton. She was my first writing hero before I turned to YA and general fantasy authors. Currently the rewrite is much inspired by Bardugo and Sanderson ( guilty look) so it is more twisted than it was originally intended to be ( Thank you KarateChop for helping me generate evil plots and MissBookNut for putting up with them!

This is the meme my friend would always send me whenever I say the word "evil" or "twist" in my story ( for my countrymen, this is my fav meme ;D)

I hope you guys enjoyed this little extra facts and if you have any extra questions, just comment below and I'll try to reply to everyone! I'm now gonna hit the publish button before I regret it.