All About Iz*
*within reason
So, if you’ve followed my art for a hot minute, you’ll notice a recurring character. She’s in 99% of everything I’ve drawn and written for the last 17 years. She’s called Iz, and if you’re here you’ve noticed that, too.
I’m providing this little primer because I get asked about her every so often and I don’t have a succinct way of explaining what’s going on.
Nutshell version: Isabella “Iz” Fitzwilliam, née (sort of) Radcliffe, born Isibél, is the protagonist of a novel (planned series) I started in 2010, finished in 2011, and have been in deep revisions ever since because life, burnout, and life. Also because the first draft was like 250,000 words long and I knew it wouldn’t be a good debut, so I worked on another book instead.
I’ve been asked many times if there’s an Iz book people can buy, so there’s the answer. Not yet. But someday. Even if I have to serialize it online or self-pub it, you will get her story.
(I’ll answer more specific questions below, if you are still curious.)
For the people who want more backstory: Iz the character first appeared on a family tree for another character I created for an original roleplaying game on livejournal in 2004. Because she is a confluence of things I like, I became more interested in her than in the characters that led me to her. And, well, here we are, a thousand years later. (For those old timers who know who those other characters are, don’t worry, they’ll get their day in the sun, too. Well, at least one of them will.)
Commonly Asked Questions
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Currently, kind of nowhere.
In the olden days, I used to post short fics and novels (some canon—now retconned—some alternate universe) all over livejournal and deviantart. I saved every single one, but I’ve either deleted or privatized the public posts. I’m not very diligent about it, so there’s still stuff out there, probably, but the bulk is gone from public viewing.
Mostly this is because they’re not really canon anymore. The other reason is that if I want to turn this into a novel, I need to sop up some of the spoilers I’ve oozed all over the internet.
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I did, but now I’ve privatized that site, too. For now. I might move everything to Patreon (please stop booing me). If I make my Patreon public, anyway.
The fics I had posted on Olio Acts are as canon as current canon allows, which is another reason I pulled it down. Spoilers. Lack of context. Do I want suspense about her life or not? (It’s so hard to do this.)
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No.
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Probably not what you’re thinking.
In the unstable years after the Great War, the appearance of a so-called angel on an American circus squatting in England seems just what the world needs. The newly-named Isabella (call her Iz), however, is no angel at all, but a runaway determined to know the world that her mother concealed from her. Iz doesn’t speak English and doesn’t even know what a circus is until she’s on one.
Soon, Iz is the most famous person on the planet, but the spotlight that falls on her sweeps across everyone around her, revealing things long hoped forgotten, threatening to burn up anyone in the ring.
Which, for a circus, is everyone.
THE SPECTACULAR is a multi-POV novel set on the (fictional) Brooks Spectacular Circus between the years 1924 and 1926. I began developing the world in 2008, writing it in 2010, and am overhauling the whole thing now.
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They cover different periods of her life, usually two or three years at a time, depending on the thematic episodes going on.
Iz goes from circus to vaudeville to headlining solo shows to Broadway to radio and film and stage plays. She falls in, out, and around love and lust. Because of her wings, she lives her early life with incredible fame, Lucky Lindy on steroids, and endures all the ramifications that come with it. But because of her wings, sometimes those ramifications get really weird.
I wrote the second novel first, for NaNoWriMo 2008 (it will be completely rewritten), and have pretty thorough outlines for the third and fourth.
I know the course of her life, and the lives of other point-of-view characters, so who knows what’ll happen! While Iz is a protagonist, her story is an ensemble tale.
