Introducing my dark fantasy book series | Nightshade Academy Q&A

i have been working on this video for 200 days which is an exaggeration because it's been sort of an on and off thing but i did start filming this video exactly 200 days ago which is pretty cool to think about but that's besides the point let's talk about writing if you don't know who i am my name is maltoy franca i am the author of capsule and i'm currently working on a book trilogy called belladonna i've been making quite a bit of youtube content here documenting the behind the scenes process of working on this trilogy and as a result i've received a lot of questions so in today's video i along with my six past selves we'll be answering your most frequently asked questions so now let's rewind to march of 2022 exactly 200 days ago back when i had hair hi there i am mel from the past and today i'm going to be answering the question what is night shade academy about the first book in the belladonna trilogy follows the story of yashi kanya a boy selected into an elite academy where teenagers are trained in combat to defend the empire this is a very elite selective school and only five trainees will actually have the honor of graduating as highly respected and very well paid belladonna guardians however the work these guardians do is not as glamorous as it seems this story includes a variety of fight scenes as well as training scenes which i have very little experience in writing that's why i'm currently at wildcat muay thai gym here in chiang mai thailand this is my first month in muay thai training and i'm hoping that it will help me write better fight scenes in nitrate academy as well as in books two and three today i'm going to be answering the question what inspired you to write this book the belladonna trilogy is actually a rewrite of a book i wrote from the age of 10 to 13 called the sky weeps with us now that book i actually published at 13 and then later unpublished and just deleted wiped from the face of the earth because it was so bad but the concept was actually very intriguing it was just the execution that was poor after i published capsule in 2021 i was trying to think of what project to work on next and for some reason the sky weeps with us would not stop haunting me so i was just like you know i'm gonna rewrite this book i was planning it out and structuring out scenes and i realized that there was just too much to fit into one book so here we are i'm writing a trilogy hi going to hop in really quick here i actually posted a video recently about why i decided to rewrite the sky leaves with us as the belladonna trilogy it covers the full timeline in much more depth so if you're interested in learning more about that i'll have a link in the description below what challenged me a lot while writing this series was my lack of personal experience all of my other books so far have been relatively chill not really diving into too many topics that i'm unfamiliar with the belladonna trilogy is filled with so much culture and martial arts it's just a much bigger type of universe and it dives into a lot of topics that i just knew completely nothing about it's just been all around one of the best learning experiences for me in my lifetime it is june 22nd and i'm currently in the middle of a 24-hour writing challenge and today i will be answering the question who is your favorite character i realized while i was editing this video that i literally did not explain why i was holding a loaf of bread when i filmed this answer so just to clarify it has to do with the main character vel and her obsession with bread so it's not completely random i swear my favorite character is definitely vel petura out of the 20 trainees selected for belladonna guardian academy she's the only girl and i think i connect with her character so much because i grew up very exhausted with the overused trope of the brawny strong female lead that doesn't have to try and is just naturally good at fighting and i wanted to write a more empathetic character who naturally struggles with combat compared to her male peers she's just so mysterious and sleek and hardworking and i respect her so much fun fact my friend noen plays vel in a belladonna themed music video which was a collaboration with beisha for the song my world is on fire check it out that was so much fun to make speaking of the music video for my world is on fire i'm going to be posting a behind the scenes video on youtube for it soon so keep your eyes peeled for that but anyways let's move on to answering the question how is belladonna different from the sky weeps with us belladonna is almost completely different from the sky weeps with us and one of the biggest changes was adding in the martial arts element that's why i've been doing so much martial arts training this year the original story actually had guns so you can imagine the entire plot played out very differently however the societal structure and a few character personalities have mostly remained the same for example yashi has been here since the very beginning as well as pinto however pinto's name was originally linto horrible i know i'm so sorry overall i would say this is less of a rewrite and more than inspired by the original kind of situation and now we are up to question number six six months after starting this video i apologize for the sound quality in this clip i was actually in the philippines and there were like a lot of animals around me so i'll be sure to add subtitles to it but the question that i'm about to answer is did you ever expect that belladonna would have such a huge impact on your life definitely not i had absolutely no idea that working on the belladonna trilogy would change my life in so many crazy ways if it weren't for nitrate academy i don't think i would have reconnected with my old interest in martial arts i wouldn't have met so many cool interesting people it's also this project that inspired me to explore my filipino roots which is why i'm currently on a trip in the philippines with my mom alright welcome back you have returned to the original timeline it is september of 2022 and just for the heck of it i'm going to be answering one last question i think this is a really fun one i've briefly talked about this on instagram before but never on youtube and certainly never in depth the question is what books shows and songs have you drawn inspiration from one of my main inspirations was the anime assassination classroom which is honestly a really weird show i watched it practically every day from the age of like 13 to 14 ish i was really obsessed with it it's like an action dark comedy turned tragic romance and it's just very strange the whole plot and the teacher in this classroom is like an octopus man who blew up 70 of the moon 80 something like that another inspiration was ender's game both the book and the movie which i like for different reasons i also grew up as a huge avatar the last airbender fan i would watch the entire show every single summer i think there's one episode in season three where eng goes undercover in a fire nation school and that scene was a huge inspiration actually for the concept of night shade academy and having this story take place at a really fancy school the hunger games trilogy i read when i was quite young and that really inspired me to go in more of the dystopian direction i would also say i incorporated some similar themes from the animated show trollhunters which is an absolute masterpiece one of my favorite shows of all time as well as the musical movie the greatest showman in terms of music there are way too many songs that i could reference as inspiration for the belladonna trilogy i listen to everything from indie rock to pop to rap to cinematic battle music to instrumentals i had a lot of random stuff going on and if you're interested in checking out the chaos i will link my spotify playlist in the description i think my belladonna playlist has over 500 songs now and i'm adding to it every week i think that just about covers everything if you have any extra questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below and if you'd like to stay updated on the release of the belladonna trilogy please be sure to subscribe and sign up for my newsletter i'll have a link in the description i promise i won't spam you i send out like one email a year alright that's that's all for today so i'll see you next time you