More of a hint on my mystery project.

Today, I decided to take a whack at NaNoWriMo. For those of you not quite aware of it, NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge where thousands of writers try to write 50k words in the thirty days of November.

It's pretty epic.

I actually wasn't going to do NaNo this year, but then I realized that I really really REALLY want to finish at least one more rough draft this year.

And yes, it's part of the War of Six Crowns series. This, for those of you who've been reading my goal posts on The Five Year Project, is the Mystery Project I've been working on for most of this year already.

Still not going to say more about it, because I know that once you've read the second book, you're going to get a serious buzz out of this one.

But for now, a song that very nicely sums up the story and the emotions in it:

 

A little taster from the War of Six Crowns Series...

So this morning I woke up with this song in my head. Which is interesting. See... I've heard it many times, but never really bothered to pay attention to the words.

Thing is... those words hooked somewhere in my subconscious and I woke up hearing: "And the walls came tumbling down on the city that we love." 

Now usually when a song's looping through my head, there's a reason for it. So I went around trying to try and find out why.

Now, it's an interesting fact that when I'm writing I have two muses. I have a general (female) one, that's kind of my creative mind going about inspiring me as if she were a separate person. And... well... it suits me to think of her as such. Because if I let ideas grow and expand organically and without conscious thought as I write, I generally write MUCH better.

So that's one muse. The other... Well.

The other is Darrion. Yup... as in one of the main characters from The War of Six Crowns. He kind of just started out as the first guy from the stories to show up in my head. Then he became their spokesperson in my head. And... Well... Now he tends to be the one to kick my butt into gear when I haven't been working on the series in a while.

And this, lovely people, was him kicking my butt into gear. Why? Well... I have book 1 to re-publish, book 2 to edit, book three to re-write and book four to start.

This song ties into book four on so many levels that it makes me emotional to think about it. But just in case you fear I'm posting a spoiler, nope. There's no volcano erupting and destroying everyone.

The words are all metaphorical, and deeply beautiful to me because I know the meaning. Sadly though, sharing the meaning will be spoiling, so instead I'll share the song and let you come to your own conclusions.

More on The War of Six Crowns: The Title

I've been thinking that this blog should have a bit more of a purpose, or else there's not really much of a point for it to exist. 

Since this is the War of Six Crowns blog, linked to the War of Six Crowns website, I thought I should maybe keep things relevant. 

So yes, I'll still be talking about me writing the series (and maybe some other stories), but I'm not really one for talking about me all the time. I thought writing about the story itself might be interesting, as long as I don't put spoilers out there, right? 

Right. 

So today, I thought I'd handle first things first and explain where the title came from. Well basically, it started back when I was still thinking of writing the story. In fact, I still thought I'd write the whole thing in a single book. 

I'd wanted to do things differently from what I'd been reading and thought I'd do a story about more than one hero in more than one country. Each country would have different cultures, power structures etc. and they'd all have some sort of conflict with each other. 

One of the countries would, for some reason, threaten all the others and they'd either stand together and fight or the one country would win and destroy the rest. 

As I wrote, I realized that the aggressor country would be Icaimerith. It used to be one huge nation rivaled only by the elves, but after one wise king, a succession of foolish ones lost bits on bits of the country in a variety of ways. (More on that later.) The last three kings have been looking to expand the realm to more than its former glory, no matter what the cost. 

The countries being immediately threatened are: 

Alfen Cairn: Land of the elves. In fact, the oldest realm in Tardith. They were the first line of defense able to stop the original Merithian expansion. But after decades (heck, centuries) of complacency, Alfen Cairn is now at the greatest risk. 

Ladrien: The country most recently split off from Icaimerith. Ruled by three kings, whose families used to be Merithian nobility. They'd split off in a rebellion, being the only area able to hold Icaimerith back for long enough for its king to "give up" and have been existing on a dagger point ever since. 

Then, there's Nordaine. It's not really being threatened. In fact, none of the others know it even exists, let alone where it is. But it's powerful, efficient and a huge power player outside of Tardith. It's the only country that could counter balance Icaimerith's strength. Problem is that it won't. All of the other countries leave people to die in Nordaine's wastes, which means that the majority of the population would feed the other five kings to wolves before actually helping them. 

But as the title suggests, Nordaine will be dragged into the conflict (willingly or not). I won't tell you how that happens, though. To find out, you need to read the books. *evil laugh* 

Any questions on the book or the series? Feel free to ask in the comments. I might not answer if there's a spoiler directly involved, but if not, I'll definitely get around to answering. Also, feel free to ask anything else. If you keep it clean, I'll answer that too.