Darlings Must Die to Flourish

Paring things down to clarify concepts and plotlines is the way of the author who knows how to kill their darlings.

My rewrite of Numinous: The Golden Tunists is a clear sign that I’m learning to let things go even further. Cutting dialogue to the bone is one way to add punch. Real people have real dialects and conversation styles. Also, I realized Euthalia Chrysant would never say certain things or speak in a certain way. She curses rarely, although when riled up by a certain individual who had ruined her wedding, she lets loose.

I love my femme fatale characters, and she was a highlight of Auminous. The book has been pared down to focus mostly on her and Konner Lavi, with some sprinkles of Xantheus and Elisabel Lynn mixed in for good measure.

The flower on the cover is a chrysanthemum to stand for her, and her name means “flourishing golden flower” or “butterfly of golden flowers.”

Naming is important in my novels, with most names chosen carefully. I think of things like Dan Brown using the name of one of his characters to show he was a red herring by naming him red herring in another language.

That’s genius.

Euthalia’s character arc is grief resolution and learning to let things go—even though you’d think someone who has lived as long as she has would have learned this a while ago.

Grant was the one good man in her life, to the point she felt almost wrong for loving him because she had genuine and divine gratitude for him.

There is even a hint of her blossoming relationship with Elisabel in this story, but I won’t touch on this too much.

Here is the second chapter of Numinous: The Golden Tunists to show her introduction in this novel as one of the anchor characters of the POV. Elisabel chapters will be in first-person-limited, while every other viewpoint will be a third-person-limited viewpoint.