The next few blog posts on my page are going to be about the story process. Just a disclaimer, this is how things went for me with Book 1. They've already changed for other projects since then, and will undoubtedly change again in the future. If these things are helpful to you, that is lovely, but please don't let any of it be a hindrance.
The Legionnaire almost came to me in a dream. Which probably sounds weird, but hear me out. I was almost asleep when my subconscious created a prisoner who had a story to tell. She wasn't loud, but she was determined, and I had questions.
For me, the first thing I wanted to know was why this woman was in prison. She looked horrible in the image that my mind had conjured, and it was obvious she had been in the prison for a long time. The answer to why she was in prison lead to so many more questions because she was there for trying to protect her daughter. How is that a prison-able offense? Because she was hiding her from authorities. Why?
I kept asking these questions until I had a beginning of what this world looks like—I'll go into my world-building process a little more in a future blog post—and that was how I developed the concept that would become The Blood-Cursed trilogy. The prisoner was my first character, but her "screen time" is also extremely limited. Yes, her words triggered the idea for the story, but it ended up being so much bigger than her.
I think one of the things that was most interesting to me about that idea is that our stories, all of ours, start with our parents. If Saiden's mother had made a different decision, The Legionnaire wouldn't be a story at all.
As I got further into developing the idea of The Legionnaire, I had to face a lot of struggles in all the characters about morality, and who really determines what is the right thing. I think a lot of people in the real world struggle with these choices on a daily basis, and I wanted to show three characters who are all trying, but each making a different choice.
Faced with those parameters, the conflict of the story started to brew because if they all made different choices about what they believed to be right, that meant the others had to be wrong.
All that is to say, The Legionnaire started out as a seed, just the smallest bit of information about one minor character, and then I picked at it until I could see the whole story. And now, you can preorder it, and decide for yourself which of the characters you think is in the right. I'd love to hear what you think.
As always, if you have anything you'd like to hear about on the blog, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter, or leave a comment on this post. Happy Reading!
Saiden, a Blood-Cursed legionnaire—blessed by both the God of Life and Goddess of Death—is a paradox. Called both “death-bringer” and “world-ender,” she is surprisingly careful about taking lives and proving herself to be a monster. Torn between her loyalty to her queen and the need to protect her people, Saiden struggles to decide who she is going to be in a world that has already cast her aside.
Queen Loralei is hiding the fact that she’s been blessed by the God of Life while navigating the manipulative and dangerous landscape of ruling a kingdom. When she discovers a mysterious prisoner in her dungeons, she begins to unravel a complicated plot that shadows her reign and would change the course of history.
Mozare, gifted by the Goddess of Death with the powers to control shadows, is hiding lots of secrets in the dark. As Saiden’s legionnaire partner, he would do everything to protect her—even if that means killing the queen she swore to protect to save her from a fate worse than death.
With friends and enemies becoming indistinguishable from each other, can these three individuals survive long enough to fulfill their destinies without losing those closest to them, or will their missions irreparably ruin them—and possibly the entire kingdom?