I write a lot of sexy books. You may have noticed.
2013 was one of my peaks of productivity for books. I wrote and released nearly two dozen of them. And nearly every single one of them was an erotic romance.
One can get awfully sick of describing sex after so many books, although I had no intention of stopping altogether. However, after 2013’s megadose and overwork, I started twitching about writing something completely different.
I’ve written short stories before. Novellas, too. Most of my books come in at the heavy end of the novel length scale. But I had never written something that can actually prop doors open, like the books that Stephen King writes, or some of the big fantasy novels like George R Martin’s.
And that’s where my mind started ticking things over.
What if I wrote a really big fantasy novel? I mean, really big.
Most of the classic fantasies that I’ve read seem to be faint imitations of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, so I haven’t read extremely widely in the fantasy genre. But urban fantasy I know quite well, and have read some fabulous novels by some great authors.
I’ve written urban fantasy novels myself, but all of them are erotic romance, and tended to focus much more on the romance itself, than the urban wars between fantasy creatures, which is what urban fantasy is supposed to be. I do have wars, but because of the length of novel that I was confining myself to, I had to keep the wars themselves either behind the scenes, or only shown in brief snatches.
What if I wrote a book where I could take all the room I needed to take to tell the story properly, with full scale wars, really interesting fantasy creatures, and an epic story that just doesn’t quit?
Just like my hero, JRR Tolkien, I turned to Norse mythology for the inspiration for what was to become The Branded Rose Prophecy. Again, like I do with many of my books, I started off with a question. What if the Einherjar and the Valykyrie had been dumped on earth hundreds of years ago? What if they have been living among humans all this time, in secret?
There were dozens, if not hundreds, of “what if…?” questions that followed after that, including “what if one of the immortal Einherjar fell in love with a very mortal, short-lived human?” But that was how the story started in my head.
In 2014, after a previous year of massive writing, I sat down and indulged in this big fantasy that I had been itching to write for such a long time. And, oh!, did my production drop that year! The Branded Rose Prophecy comes in at 250,000 words, which would give George Martin a run for him his money any day.
The print version does, indeed, prop a door open, even with a font so small that everyone has to wear glasses!
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The Branded Rose Prophecy is part of a six pack of books that is going on sale towards the end of November. Keep watching this space for more news about the discounts closer to November 23.