The art of bridges in my MM fantasy books.
Why bridges are a central concept in my romantasy and how I came to draw them this way.
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Why this concept for my romantasy art?
Rotterdam.
The concept of bridges in drawing has fascinated me ever since I started living in Rotterdam. The three bridges that connect the two shores and the island in the middle are entirely different: one is beautiful and white; the other is simple, useful, and unusually colored—a deep, striking red; and the third, a monument to the old port era, is green and now defunct, combining both beauty and utility.
The books.
That fascination inspired the title of the second book in the Taj and Song Trilogy: Bridges. These are metaphorical bridges between the world of the first book (set a hundred years earlier) and what unfolds in the second and third books, where humanity has reached the stars, but human hearts have not fundamentally changed.
In the world of ACD, these bridges are also real structures, each one carrying the weight of an alliance:
In 141 ACD, the Swan Alliance between Unio and Shadows collapsed after the energy forms attacks.
In 168 ACD, the Red Bridge Alliance between Unio and Shadows was signed and collapsed after the fights between energy factions.
In 171 ACD, the Green Hef Alliance was signed. Why, and what happened, is part of Bridges. Check the timeline here.
The Red Bridge carries particular significance in the second book. It symbolizes the alliance tied to Luna and Si’s engagement, with politics simmering in the background and the envy of the Hal family, whose target is Luna and the entire Langhe family, rulers of the Shadows energy faction. The alliance that was supposed to spell disaster for the Shadows ended with a twist I thoroughly enjoyed writing.
Bridges also carry enormous emotional weight in the story of Taj and Song, two queer soulmates separated by time. It connects the world of the first book, a hundred years earlier, to the present, where Taj is alone and longs for Song with no hope of his return. Not letting go of the love of his life, Taj moves into the future, opens himself to new people, and starts taking action, only to discover there is a horizon ahead. That’s why book three is called Horizons.
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The MM fantasy art of bridges.
Back to the bridges themselves. Drawing them as illustrations for my MM romantasy was, in its own way, another kind of bridge: between the complexity of building a queer fantasy world and the reader’s way into it.
These images started as early sketches.
The final versions are where I wanted them to be, and the bridge on the blue background became the cover of book two.
And here it is as a complete cover, with Taj. Book Two: Bridges.
Read about my other MM fantasy art process here. For more, visit my blog, and for notifications of new reviews (I cover queer fantasy romance and MM romance regularly), follow me on Goodreads.