What use is a blog about writing and getting exposure for a novel if the reader has no idea what the novel is about? The answer, dear friends, is there is no use to it. To keep this blog from being useless, I think I ought to start off with a brief (probably not that brief) summary of The Hand of Fate (THoF).
Firstly, The Hand of Fate is the first in what I hope will be a trilogy. If it happens to be longer than that, great. I'm really shooting for three in this first go around with the OtherWorld (explained later).
I have been working on the characters in THoF for almost eight years. By no means do I consider them "finished". But I digress. In working on these characters, I've shifted them from being in present time to being in the past and have found they work best in a fantasy version of the distant past. More on characters in another post.
THoF has been difficult to explain to people who ask what it's about. Due to my dissatisfaction with my lousy attempts at covering the plot and characters in the brief window of time before their attention drifted, I came up with a summary to quickfire at potential readers. After seeing glazed eyes and forced interest as reactions to the said summary, I've come to realize that a brief explanation simply will not do justice to this piece of work that has dominated my writing life.
Allow me to attempt to explain this chunk of my life.
You know that feeling you get when you'd give anything just to change one huge, horrible part of your life? Imagine if you could erase 9/11 or make it so the Holocaust never happened. All you had to do was change your lifestyle completely. And the change has to be instantaneous. Not to mention that after the change has occurred, there's still a chance those awful events could happen anyway. So you have to be extra good at this new lifestyle. Our protagonist, Aubrey, finds himself in this position on a smaller scale.
His family, the Silvers, have been feuding with the Delacroixes, a rival kingdom, almost since the creation of the OtherWorld. Aubrey, as the youngest of his family, has been convinced he'd never make it to be king only because he has five siblings ahead of him. All the while, he's been living it up and doing as he pleased. Responsibilities were lost on him. Aubrey did just enough to scrap by as a prince. Even as his siblings gave their lives to the bloody conflict, the youngest Silver continued to believe his lifestyle would never have to change. He could say that he wished the war would end all he wanted. Words were easy. Aubrey would probably never have to back up his laments.
As a side note, the Silvers were exiled from the Immortal Court by the Delacroixes. After being banished, the Silvers created a following of those opposed to the Delacroixes and moved north. When they settled, their leader founded the Court of Exiles. Not long after the founding of the Court of Exiles, the Immortal Court fell to internal civil war. At the conclusion of the civil war, the Delacroixes fled north as well, not realizing their rivals had settled there. They too founded a court known as Delacroix Manor. Since then, tensions have been the norm.
THoF opens with the sounds of a victorious night for the Exiles. Aubrey rushes downstairs, hoping to surprise everyone with the news. Having apperantly thrown a party the night before, it is not shocking to find out that the Prince of Exiles is the last one to find out about the success. In Battle Sanctum, the room used by his family for war preparations, the Prince finds his fate has taken a horrible turn.
It appears that the gods are further unkind to the Prince of Exiles as he moves about on his new thread of fate as misfortunes pile upon him. Perhaps it is penance for years of misdeeds. Or maybe, the gods would like to see some return on their blessings of sparing Aubrey from the horrors of war and clearing the path to the throne for him. Either way, Aubrey has a rough time of life up until the very end.
And that is just the Exile's view of things. THoF is formatted so you get a good view of different perspectives. More on that later. For now, we'll call this a blog.
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