The Creation of My Upcoming Epic Fantasy Series
Heir to the Throne
Hello everyone, long time, no proper blogging! But the baby (well, he's a toddler now; he'll turn 2 in December) is napping, so I thought I'd write a quick 'story behind the story' post in relation to my upcoming novel, as I usually do when I introduce a new book/series to you. So, let's get into it :)
My next release is an epic high fantasy novel, coming out in February 2020. Its sequel will be out in March 2020. Both books are available for pre-order now at your favourite retailers. By signing up to my mailing list, you can read an extended preview of Heir to the Throne (sample comes in e-book format, and is approximately 30% of the full 118,000-word novel).
The cover and blurb for the first book are below, and then I'll talk about the inspiration behind it.
In the Kingdom of Adgar, the King or Queen's firstborn is not automatically named Heir to the throne; any of their children can become the next ruler.
If they are deemed worthy.
17-year-old Aaryana has competed against her siblings from a young age and is a firm favourite to take the Throne. However, just days before her father is expected to name her his Heir, a scheme is devised to not only take Aaryana out of the running, but also to ruin her reputation completely.
Will her enemies succeed in cheating her out of the throne that she was destined for or will Aaryana and her friends manage to save her from disgrace?
Heir to the Throne is a new epic high fantasy that’s perfect if you’re getting Game of Thrones withdrawal symptoms or missing the Throne of Glass series.
There were a number of factors that helped shape the premise and plot of this story. What put things into motion for me was the image of the girl in the Heir to the Throne book cover. I saw it on the Pixabay stock image site in March 2018 and fell in love with it. It was just a PNG of a girl with her sword and cloak, but I thought it was stunning and immediately downloaded it.
I really wanted her on a cover for one of my books, but she wasn’t appropriate for any of my contemporary romance novels, obviously, and as my fantasy books are in the urban fantasy sub-genre, she couldn’t go on the covers of my Poison Blood Series or Witch’s Blood Series, either.
“I’ll just have to write a book about her, then,” I thought to myself jokingly, but almost instantly, my brain came up with various ideas for how to go about it. Quickly, I asked and answered a bunch of questions—who and what is she? What does she do? Why is she holding a sword? Why is she dressed like that? Where and when exactly is she?—and built up a mini character profile for her in my head. I decided that she was a Princess, and came up with reasons as to why she was dressed for combat, rather than in a pretty gown. It was clear that she belonged in an alternative historical high fantasy-type setting, and the world-building began.
At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking about a story that my mum used to tell me when I was a kid, and I wondered if this Princess's story could be a retelling of that bedtime tale. Fairy tale retellings are in at the moment, aren't they?
“Once there was a very vain King,” my mum used to say. “And he would always ask his daughters how much they loved him and why. One day, when he asked his daughters this question and they started likening their love for him to sweet things—sugar, honey, syrup, molasses, and so on—one of the Princesses said that she loved him like she loved salt.” My mum always mentioned this daughter last—she used to say that this Princess was the King’s favourite child, too—so, I assumed that she was the youngest child. However, she could have had siblings that were younger than her; we just didn’t get around to hearing from them because the King threw a tantrum due to the salt comparison and banished her from the kingdom.
“She was taken in by a family in a faraway land,” mum would say, “and didn’t see her father until years later, when he visited the people that she lived with. The King didn’t know that the daughter he'd disowned years ago was a part of the household that had invited him for dinner, and the ex-Princess took the opportunity to teach her father a lesson. She cooked an inedible banquet using sweets like sugar, honey, syrup, etc. in the place of salt, and the only dish that the King was able to eat and enjoy was the last one brought to the table. It was the only one that used salt for seasoning and nothing sweet.
“He remembered the daughter that had loved him the way she loved salt and understood her point of view. The King told his hosts about the daughter that had obviously loved him just as much as his other children and openly regretted banishing her.” Which was the cue for the chef/Princess to reveal herself. Overjoyed, the King took her back with open arms.
As a child, I thought my mum had made up the story, or her mum had, or her mum’s mum. In my teens and young adult days, I came to the conclusion that it must be a classic bedtime story that Bangladeshi women have been telling their daughters for generations, to drill in the importance of seasoning our food: The amount of salt in a curry can make or break the dish.
It was only when I was contemplating doing a retelling of this bedtime story that I thought of Googling it. If I'm going to tell people that my next book is inspired by a classic Bangladeshi folk tale, I thought, I should do a fact check, shouldn’t I?
What I found was that this story is typically referred to as “The King and his Daughters”, and various cultures around the world have their own renditions of it. I’m glad I did the research, but it’s not because I can now say that Heir to the Throne is a retelling of The King and his Daughters. Technically, it’s not a retelling, but I have taken inspiration from certain elements from the story I grew up with (a King with quite a few daughters, the favourite Princess wrongly getting punished) and the stock image helped me make a few other decisions.
Anyway, within the space of a couple of days, I had a mental outline for the book and started fleshing it out on the MS Word app on my iPhone whenever I had an hour here or a half-hour there in-between running around after my baby. I can’t remember when I actually started writing the book (maybe September 2018, or end of August?), but the bulk of the drafting took place in October and November 2018 (my first NaNoWriMo!).
Because I was working on a novel, I couldn’t read Tower of Dawn and Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas (the last two books in the Throne of Glass series) until 2019, when the first draft of Heir to the Throne was done. I’d had the e-book of Tower of Dawn for a while but didn’t want to read it until the series finale was released on October 23, 2018. When it did come out, I was in the zone, writing my book, and I had to postpone reading those books back-to-back.
Now, some of you might be wondering, Why's she gone off on a tangent? Some of you Throne of Glass fans might be thinking that it’s about time that I mentioned my favourite high fantasy series. Clueless as to where I’m going with this? Let me explain. I’ve been wrongly accused of copying other authors’ stories enough times to feel that I have to say this: I read Tower of Dawn after finishing the first draft of Heir to the Throne. I didn’t copy one of the tiny elements in that book and put it in my own. It is possible that two writers can have similar ideas for their books.
And for you Throne of Glass fans, Heir to the Throne can be put into the same bucket as Throne of Glass because both of these series are set in alternate historical fantasy lands and revolve around Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses—hence the cover of Heir to the Throne was designed to say, “Yes, you’re right, this cover is reminiscent of the Throne of Glass covers, and that’s because this book might provide a similar experience to the Throne of Glass series. So, if you liked those books, you might enjoy this book, too.” My series has a completely different story line, though, different characters, and is not a re-hash of Sarah J Maas’s brilliant work. You'll see that very quickly if you sign up and read the sample.
Right. With that out of the way, let’s get back to business. As I said earlier, Heir to the Throne is not a retelling of The King and his Daughters, and even if it had started off as that, the novel would have ended up as something else entirely. Most of the books I write change and evolve into something much bigger than I expect, and this book was no exception. I’m working on the series finale now and it is going to be EPIC. So, watch this space.
Subscribe to my mailing list to receive an extended preview
(approx. 30% of the 118,000-word novel)
Releasing February 2020
Pre-order full book from:
