Who would have thought that 2020, the year of the global pandemic, would be the first year in which I published an entire series? I did it, though, and it’s still sinking in. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading, commenting, sharing, and retweeting my blogs and tweets this year (some of you have been doing so since 2012!). I really appreciate it. I don't always get to thank you all personally (I just RT you back, don't I?), but that doesn't mean that I’m not thankful. Thank you and good luck with your writing and publishing endeavours *hugs* :)
I almost delayed the launch of the Heir to the Throne series finale until next year, but I didn’t want the people that had pre-ordered Book 3 to wait that long. And I wanted it out of the way so I could truly move on. For some reason, a series doesn't feel complete until I've hit the publish button for the finale, so I'm glad I had enough incentive to release the final book in this high fantasy trilogy (came out Friday, July 3, 2020), and not sit with it for another year.
I still find myself surprised that it was a stock image that got me writing epic fantasy for the first time in my adult life. Of course, there were a number of other factors that helped shape the premise and plot of the Heir to the Throne Trilogy, but what put things into motion for me was the image of the girl on the original cover of Book 1, Heir to the Throne. I saw it on the Pixabay site in March 2018 and downloaded it immediately.
Obviously, the girl wasn’t appropriate for the covers of my contemporary romance novels or my urban fantasy books. “I’ll just have to write a book about her, then,” I’d joked to myself. Almost instantly, my brain came up with various ideas for how to go about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about a story that my mum used to tell me when I was a kid, and I wondered if I could do 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. The King threw a tantrum at that and banished her from the kingdom.
“She was taken in by a family in a faraway land 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 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.
Seen as I was contemplating doing a retelling of this bedtime story, I thought I should Google it. If I'm going to tell people that my 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.
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 when I wasn’t running around after The Baby (Toddler now). I can’t remember when I actually stopped outlining and 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!).
If Heir to the Throne had started off as a retelling of The King and his Daughters, the series would still have ended up as something else entirely. Most of the books I write change and evolve into something much more epic than I expect, and this trilogy was no exception.
I really hope that readers take to Aaryana like they have to Ellie, Mukti, and Shell from my other three series and that they enjoy a trilogy that was inspired by just a single image.
Get the series from your favourite ebook store (Book 1 free at selected retailers for a few more days):
Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, and Amazon.
Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, and Amazon.
