Aesthetics – Alcalá Project

I hope you liked my fourth aesthetics post, because I think it’s time to share another one.

This is the moodboard I made for the Alcalá project:

A collage with 9 different squares over a brown background.

First row, left to right:
A candle next to an open book.
A library of old books.
The medieval city of Toledo, Spain.

Second row, left to right:
Some sorted cast metal types, with a few forming a sample paragraph.
The central square has "ALCALÁ. Sol Vera" written in a fancy teal font on top of a square that's a darker shade of brown than the one in the background.
A lamb lying on the grass.

Third row, left to right:
Several wheels of cheese.
A black and white photo of the historical Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso.
Two boys holding hands in a Castillian field.

As you have seen in my latest Word Count Update, this is still my fourth project in number of words among those in the list, but Feathers and Fireflies are about to overcome it. Chronologically, I think this was the second project I started writing, so that’s why it’s still part of the top half on my word count posts. As you know, the Academy project was created as a knock-off of this project because I’d had an idea for a story and I’d been wondering whether it would be better to tend towards fantasy or historical romance. In the end, I said “Why not both?”.

So yes, the Alcalá project was the original Historical Romance version, but it now has some Fantasy elements too. Still, it has very little to do with the other project, so I don’t think they’re going to overlap.

I already have the main characters, a very rough idea of what the story is going to cover, and some books and documents for my research, which I’ve already started. However, since it’s a Historical Romance, it needs an enormous amount of research, and I don’t think it’s going to be done any time soon. Well, as I said on another post, you never really finish doing research for your book, but I have many questions I need an answer to before I start writing, like “have I chosen the correct time period?” or “how will these fantasy elements affect the historical setting?”.

As you already know, this story will be set centuries ago in the Spanish city of Alcalá de Henares, so I hope that will be interesting. I first came up with the idea during one of my many visits to the city, specifically during a guided tour at one of the university’s historical buildings. I had to stop and take notes several times! Just so you know, the university will play a huge role in the story, so I guess that’s what the Academy and Alcalá projects still have in common. The atmosphere will be very different, though!

Disclaimers:

I’ve made all of these collages using free stock photos (and a couple of personal photos) on Canva, so to my knowledge all of them were free to use. Please let me know if that’s not the case for any of the photos.

All of these WIPs are still in progress, so everything is tentative. Things may change as the stories and the characters develop. Also, the images I’ve chosen might not be 100% accurate, but they have some elements that might be important within the story.