Hullo everyone, elveloy here with inksorcery author of "The Tendrils of Fate," @Adultfiction' s Book of the Month for June.

Elveloy: Thank you for coming in today. To begin with, I see that you are actually two people, Narcisse Navarre and Marzio Ombra. Can you tell me how that came about?

Marzio: In the 'real' world, Narcisse and I are best friends. We met over ten years ago during a game of Dungeons and Dragons and hit it off right away. We share a love of roleplaying, writing, and creativity (not to omit gardening). When I was younger, I wrote short stories and dabbled in poetry. Once I got married, I let writing fall by the wayside. All credit goes to Narcisse for rekindling that old flame. We had been roleplaying some characters in World of Warcraft. We created some detailed backstories and histories for the characters. While fun, it was also frustrating because, in many ways, we were limited by the game's sandbox.

Narcisse suggested that we would be better off writing our own stories set in our own worlds. She was right. We quit gaming and started writing our first novel. We had no idea what we were in for! Three years later, we had hundreds of pages and no cohesive book. Writing a book is hard, writing with a coauthor doubles everything, both good and bad.

Elveloy: I can imagine!

Narcisse: For about four years Marzio and I toiled on a series of books called The Soulbinder's Covenant which follows characters who make cameos in The Tendrils of Fate, but the project never came together. At the time, it didn't occur to us to try to shift the timeline of the story or approach it from a different angle. In those early days, we lacked experience and wisdom. We felt like five-year-olds with survival kits in the middle of the woods. We had all the tools to make fire, but no idea how to strike a spark. Our word counts were painfully low and we spent a lot of time staring blankly at the screen.

Luckily, in the summer of 2012, I wound up in Turks and Caicos. I'm Cuban, and the Caribbean has a way of unknotting the kinks left behind by the harried pace of New York City life. I arrived in Providenciales on a sunny day and made our way to a quiet resort facing the ocean. For about four days I didn't touch electronic devices. My routine included beach, beach and more beach. My husband and I took walks and snorkeled our days away. It was blissful.

One night, after waking from a lucid dream, a story began to gnaw at the back of my mind. It was abstract at first, a series of moonlit rooftops stretching as far as the eye could see. Darkness. Shadows. An assassin. But what was he doing? What was he after?

I got up, grabbed my laptop, and began to write. By the time 4 AM rolled around I had 3000 words and the beginning of what would become The Tendrils of Fate. During the next five days, the story grew and grew. I sent Marzio my updates through email every night. He was excited that I was writing again and it wasn't long before he got involved in the process. When I returned from vacation, Marzio and I went to our usual spot to brainstorm––the Russian bathhouse. Apropos, considering this new story was influenced by water. In the hot tub, we began talking about the plot. As fate would have it, that's where our villains were born!

Marzio: It took us a while to find our groove and our voice. There were tears, shouting, and a lot of frustration. If our friendship weren't as strong as it is, the stress of collaborating would have killed it dead. After several years of head banging (no, not the heavy metal kind), writing did get easier. The years we had spent working on The Soulbinder's Covenant, weren't a wasted. At the end of that process we had an enormous grimoire of world building information. Cities, nations, religions, languages, you name it!

Narcisse and I are very different writers. We decided that her voice would be the dominant one as her writing style is very literary in flavor. We each write chapters and pass them back and forth (usually on Google Docs), editing and adjusting with Narcisse's as the final wordsmith. At first she had to do a LOT of work, but later on, my writing style grew closer to hers. It was important to us both that no one knows who was the primary author of which chapter, that the entire book have a unified tone.

Elveloy: That sounds amazing, a truly epic journey in its own right! What made you choose wattpad to feature your work?

Narcisse: Wattpad was a leap of faith as much as a move triggered by a desperate need for feedback. The first draft of The Tendrils of Fate took us three years to complete. During that time, we had very little support from friends and family and had only each other to judge whether or not the book was good. We were way too close to it. After an expensive experience with an editor, we were left more confused than ever. At that time we went back to the drawing board to see if we could salvage the nearly 650 pages which had consumed our lives. Fast forward another year. We found one beta reader which we had to pay to read our book. Luckily, she came back with great feedback. She loved it and felt that we should pursue publishing. And that is precisely what we did. Query after query letter went out for another year. Sixty rejections later (some of which were vile), Marzio and I were in a dark place. We had run out of steam. We needed to try something new. At that point, I didn't care about selling the book anymore. I just wanted someone to dive into the world we had built and enjoy our hard work.

Enter Wattpad.

Elveloy (smiles): I'm sure many of our other writers here on Wattpad can identify with that!

Marzio: We were intrigued by what we saw on the site, enough to start reading books and connecting with authors. Early on, we met Wattpad Star extraordinaire @Ms_Horrendous which proved auspicious. She was incredibly welcoming and very generous with sharing her insights. With Jakayla's encouragement, we dove in and began serialization our novel. For me, one of the coolest things about Wattpad is the community. Jakayla was only the first of many cool people we've met since we joined.

The feedback has been wonderful. The weekly stream of comments from readers all over the world has given us our second wind. Who knows, maybe in the future Wattpad fans might even buy a copy of the book (crosses fingers). We've given this project our all and we're glad it's finally out there entertaining folks.

Elveloy: That's great to hear, I hope you are finally getting some reward for all your hard work. I love the accompanying illustrations in your book, especially the map of Laremlis, your fantasy world. Can you tell me a little bit about the artist or artists?

Marzio: The map and calendar graphics were created by Narcisse. It took her a long time to piece together the world from sketches on napkins and scribbled notes. She's a Creative Director with 20+ years of experience and designed the whole thing from scratch in Photoshop. Narcisse is an amazing artist!

The cover was a collaboration between Narcisse and UK Fantasy Artist Emily Hare. Narcisse came across Emily Hare's work on DeviantArt while browsing images of underwater scenes. From Pegasus rising from the waves to a kraken snapping a ship in two, it was evident that Emily knew how to treat water in her paintings. Narcisse photographed two of our close friends (Romanian supermodels Andrei Andrei and Carmen Ungureanu) in their tiny NYC apartment and sent off the best five shots to Emily in the UK. The digital painting of the cover took about three months to complete. Needless to say, we were both thrilled with the results.

Narcisse discovered Agata Fiszer's illustrations while reading the Wattpad book Crossbones by Kimberly Vale. We reached out to Agata shortly thereafter and commissioned our first piece. As soon as Agata sent back sketches we knew we had found the right artist for our book. Her blend of classical technique with contemporary comic style lends itself well to the story. It's awesome to see the world come to life visually. Each illustration rekindles the sense of wonder I felt as a child reading hundred year old illustrated editions of Hawthorne's Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales.

Elveloy: They certainly add a touch of magic to your story and I know they've attracted a lot of interest from readers. So, final question, where to from here?

Marzio: (laughs) Great question! We have sooooo many stories. For example, there is an epic tale we have wanted to write for a few years now, The Soulbinder's Covenant. It is a fantasy trilogy starring two characters who made brief appearances in The Tendrils of Fate. It is their story that actually started us upon this path.

Then there is Part 3 of The Tendrils of Fate. Silly us, we thought we had finished the tale of Jarle and Avaren. Then one day, not so long ago, Narcisse and I were enjoying one of our weird, wonderful 'what-if' conversations and inadvertently developed a killer follow-up. So now, there is that story to write. We also have this crazy cyberpunk novel set in future Earth that we have been writing off and on.

As if that is not enough work, we also realized that after all that effort building the world of Laremlis, we created a setting that lends itself to every fantasy story we have ever wanted to write – from sword & sorcery yarns to tales of erotic horror and everything in between.

Now to answer your question directly, as a writing duo will start writing the third part of The Tendrils of Fate very soon, then move on to our long-delayed epic fantasy. Individually, I have been trying to write a short story that has so far resisted me. I was forced to admit to myself that the story isn't ready to be told and set it aside (for now). Narcisse, on the other hand, is finishing one insanely intense novel set in Calantia.

Narcisse: The biggest thing on my radar is finishing up Daevil's Tears which I started during NaNoWriMo 2017. I wrote 50K words last November and since then put in an additional 32K. The book is one chapter away from completion.

Daevil's Tears forms the origin story of Lyssandra, who made an appearance in The Tendrils of Fate as the madam of the Grinding Wheel. Daevil's Tears significantly expands the fantasy world of Laremlis, specifically the area around Mencello in the nation of Calantia. But this is not a book for the youngsters as it's epic fantasy erotica. I will publish the first ten chapters on Wattpad once the editing is finished. The rest of the book will be available as an eBook in Amazon and other retailers.

Elveloy: Thank you so much for coming in today and sharing your experiences with us. Everyone here at Adultfiction wishes you best of luck for your publishing journey!