The Queen's Pawn - Genesis
The Queen’s Pawn
The second novel I ever had published was “The Queen’s Pawn.” This came about when I was watching a documentary on the fall of Troy and started to think about how uncomfortable it would be to find yourself trapped inside a burning city. Without much more than that to go on I started to write. For some reason I started with a character who turned out to be an older student, fresh off the farm, whose parents had sent him off to the City to become a priest. He turned into someone who amused me and from then on I took great pains to give him a hard time. The other trait I added was to make him completely innocent, and attractive to women, young and old.
This is the first time I created a character who was this far on the out-of-his-depth side of life. Enjoyed abusing him immensely.
This was also the first time I had the experience where the characters took over complete control of the narrative. I started out with the queen in need of rescuing and appearing foolish. Boy, did she soon fool me and take over! Her daughter was a nasty piece of work, but then I had to look into her backstory and find out why.
At one busy Con I had a woman stop by our table, glance at the back of the book and snap, “Another helpless woman rescued by a male,” toss the book back and disappear into the crowd before I could open my mouth. Didn’t she notice the title, “The Queen’s PAWN?” I suppose she might have been unfamiliar with the word.
I had no idea who the villains were when I started this epic, or again, why. Once I uncovered them I had to discover their motivation. I had a lot of fun writing this piece.
Strange, and idea that started out based on a gloomy idea (burning city!) turned into a bit of a romp. You never can tell about these things when you wing it.
Such is the writing life of a "pantser!"
As I didn’t have a publisher at the time I wrote Pawn I created a reasonable ending for TQP. The book came out and the publisher said, “Don’t stop now.”
And so began my second adventure into the world of sequels.
The second novel I ever had published was “The Queen’s Pawn.” This came about when I was watching a documentary on the fall of Troy and started to think about how uncomfortable it would be to find yourself trapped inside a burning city. Without much more than that to go on I started to write. For some reason I started with a character who turned out to be an older student, fresh off the farm, whose parents had sent him off to the City to become a priest. He turned into someone who amused me and from then on I took great pains to give him a hard time. The other trait I added was to make him completely innocent, and attractive to women, young and old.
This is the first time I created a character who was this far on the out-of-his-depth side of life. Enjoyed abusing him immensely.
This was also the first time I had the experience where the characters took over complete control of the narrative. I started out with the queen in need of rescuing and appearing foolish. Boy, did she soon fool me and take over! Her daughter was a nasty piece of work, but then I had to look into her backstory and find out why.
At one busy Con I had a woman stop by our table, glance at the back of the book and snap, “Another helpless woman rescued by a male,” toss the book back and disappear into the crowd before I could open my mouth. Didn’t she notice the title, “The Queen’s PAWN?” I suppose she might have been unfamiliar with the word.
I had no idea who the villains were when I started this epic, or again, why. Once I uncovered them I had to discover their motivation. I had a lot of fun writing this piece.
Strange, and idea that started out based on a gloomy idea (burning city!) turned into a bit of a romp. You never can tell about these things when you wing it.
Such is the writing life of a "pantser!"
As I didn’t have a publisher at the time I wrote Pawn I created a reasonable ending for TQP. The book came out and the publisher said, “Don’t stop now.”
And so began my second adventure into the world of sequels.
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