Re-read 10/24/22: See below, except also I am no longer sure the romance works the way I wanted it to. If I could erase my memory of reading any book Re-read 10/24/22: See below, except also I am no longer sure the romance works the way I wanted it to. If I could erase my memory of reading any book so I could read it again for the first time, it would be this one, if only so I could tell if it works.
Read Sept. 25, 2020: I have a family tree for the House of North, rulers of Tremontane for 250 years. I'd written books at the end of that tree and I'd written books at the beginning of it, which left me a big chunk in the middle that was nothing but names and dates. When I wrote Ally of the Crown, it was the start of filling in that space. But writing Ally was enough of a challenge that I didn't give any thought to the names I'd put in there more or less at random.
In that space, I'd put two siblings, both of whom ruled Tremontane. I had no idea why that was the case or what had happened that the older brother didn't have children to pass the Crown to. But they were the next generation after Ally, something I had to deal with.
And as I ended Ally, the solution came to me. If they were cousins, not siblings, there was an easy way to explain what happened to bring Elspeth North, daughter of Fiona and Sebastian, to rule a country. Everything fell into place. I knew the story would focus on her becoming Queen unexpectedly and on her journey to finding a real place for herself in Tremontane. I even had the title, which is remarkable for me because I have a long history of not coming up with titles until it becomes imperative.
It took twelve days to write the book. 102,000 words in twelve days.
That number, too, is remarkable, but it's not about the word count--that's just representative of how the book tore out of me like white lightning. I think I stopped once for about half an hour to work out the details of the villain's plan. Everything else was just story.
And it fit together so well. What you read in this book is the first draft with very minor changes, mostly clarifications. That never happens. I can't express how marvelous this kind of writing feels.
I love this story. I love Elspeth, who intended to become a priestess and had her whole life upended by her cousin's death. I love her nemesis Duncan Faraday, sarcastic and irritable as he is. I love Elspeth's romance. I hope readers love the book, too, and that my exploration of the nature of faith (something I've thought about a lot in the last year, that made it into the as yet unpublished dragon books and the new series I just started) is interesting.
I have no idea if this experience will ever repeat itself, but I'm grateful to have had one book where writing was unalloyed joy....more
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