Okay, so it's only a first draft completed. But as someone who usually struggles with just those, I'm pretty happy. I started drafting this in October/November, sitting next to my sister. She was playing the Les Miserables soundtrack and I'm pretty sure we were both supposed to be job-hunting. I played around with the opening sentence; I knew I wanted it to open with my younger sister character, Aritha. She was the part of the story that was the servant to the Empire so I wanted her to be central, already in the palace, to kick off the story. Immediately, I wanted to draw attention to the tattoo on her wrist and start of saying, "Hey, yeah, so this is an important thing she has." So, beside my sister, I wrote two lines of something about the steam of the pot making her face itch because she had to stir some sort of soup for the palace dinner that night. That turned out to be altered from hot to the feel of the cold of the stone floors making her flinch. Sensory, you see? I'm doing something right.
I called this story Imperial Infiltration. In the back of a taxi in Spain, driving back to the airport to come home, in mid-September last year, I began to have the tendrils of an idea about two sisters; one would be inside the palace and the other would pose as some princess or nobility figure for some reason. I didn't know what it was but I jotted it down on my phone and my mum asked what I was doing, and I just shrugged and said, "Another idea I probably won't use." Yet here I am this morning, writing about it and typing THE END to it. This all sounds very self-important for somebody who hasn't even got an agent or started editing this but I want to get my writing out there. I'd love for people to read this and gain interest, follow my news and updates. I don't know, but here's to trying! And here's to my sister for telling me to post and blog about my writing again properly to get it circulating, thank you! If anyone remembers, my earlier blog posts used to actually be about the last book I wrote so I may start that up again depending on how this one goes.
So Imperial Infiltration tortured my mind for a while. At the time, I was writing a story about two best friends in a gang of thieves, working for a man called Red. That story sucked quite spectacularly. It was fueled by pure anger and grudges and sadness and I'd never tried writing about thefts before but I persevered. But then I really, really couldn't help thinking that this new idea would be better; it would be the thing to break the spotting of creativity and I'd actually make good progress with it. So I began to write properly--each day, starting officially on this rule in January. And it's massively paid off for me. I've gotten a first draft completed in five months where my last full book took me a year and a bit. Yes, editing is to come next and I have my notes and my plans and the positivity still there in a waves, and this will be a lengthy process but I'm just enjoying my success here. My last post was dismal, angry, and I wanted a different tone.
This is the story of two sisters, only two years apart. When they lose both their parents, they're forced to duel out ownership of their house as they want to go their separate ways. Here, it doesn't matter who was born first; it just matters who wins. The eldest, Reya, wants to travel, train herself to become more like her father who served as the Emperor's general (this story is set in a big Empire called Zaari) and use the house as a constant base for when she returns. Aritha is the youngest and more logical. She just wants to live in the house, sell different furniture to buy her own things. But at the same time, she wants out completely. But their duel goes a little haywire and Reya gets injured, making her do that last step towards leaving. She travels to a place outside of the Empire called the Stones, a transformed battle safehouse, where she then trains with a different army general. Alone and surrounded by the house she originally wanted, Aritha can't bear the loneliness and memories so she leaves. But she leaves to go to the imperial palace. Her theory is that there, she'll have work without worrying that she'll have to return to an empty home, she'll be surrounded by people and she'll have a constant in her life again. So she becomes a servant. After a few choice events, Reya also makes her appearance in the palace, but posing as someone called Lady Revina and she's been sent there for some ulterior motive that even she didn't know.
Romance doesn't really take a high seat in this story. There is very much elements of it. For example, Aritha finds herself feeling for a lord's son within the palace and their journey assists in her own in her confidence. She's out of practice with feeling loved and second-guesses the reciprocated feelings quite a bit but she comes to realise Jackson, the son, does care about her. In the Stones, Reya and Eli, the general's nephew, come to have a certain arrangement of "hey, I'll kiss you and try to acknowledge that I like you but in reality and more sober, I'm too scared to admit it." But there's only make-believe feelings there. None of them really pursue it but they argue about it enough. It's more focused on the depth of the siblingship and the break in the past and how each of them deal with the loss of their parents and each other and what the memories and unfinished business does to them. Reya is a character who can get stroppy quite easily, someone easily scared. Aritha suffers from panic attacks and is timid, afraid in her own way, and is picked on within the palace. But she builds herself up each time because she only has herself. She falls the hardest out of everyone in the kitchen where she works but she's the first to get herself back up.
So this was originally planned to be a 420-page standalone. That was my goal when the idea began to take shape in my head. With each month, I counted up my daily wordcount and my monthly one and got better and better. Two days ago, I wrote a chapter ending and realised: oh, this is actually a pretty good, concluded ending. Followed by, wait! you have so much more to write. And I literally had an internal monologue/argument with myself over if I should leave it there and write a second book to couple with it because of how much further I wanted to go with this story, or if I should carry on writing, shorten my ideas and make it the standalone originally planned. So I took out my phone and talked and explained to my friend; she agreed that good fantasy usually comes as more than one book and it should be a duology. I asked others and they also agreed. So, after much deliberation, I'm now closing THE END on the first book standing at 340 pages (pre-edit) and beginning the editing process whilst planning out brief notes for the continuation. Me being me, I scrambled at the books on my shelves, somewhat disappointed as I don't feel like this is long enough but I've said all I want to in a now first book and tried to find others that had a 300-400 page count. And I did so I'm somewhat reassured this may be okay.
I have no idea what either one will be called now so I'll also be thinking up ideas for that and perhaps looking for critique partners again which never work out but heyho, timing is awful. In the second book, I plan for most things to come to light. The reason why Reya was sent to the palace, what the infiltration means, introducing characters into the off-limits part of the Empire called the Barian Desert rather than just have past legends being told. A lot more can go on with this story, especially given where I've ended it. I never thought I'd end a story with a kiss but that seemed right and nice for one of the character's partial conclusion.
I usually post updates on my personal Instagram account: reidandwriting, or I have a Twitter account @ShaneDReid where I post about my writing, if anyone's interested! Follow me or come chat to meeeee :D
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