A Bit About My Book....

Okay, so this is the thing. I'm very reluctant to share too much about my story right at this stage. It's a very new idea, and at the moment I'm just poking at it to see what happens. This may sound silly, but I'm protective over my story just now, so I won't be sharing too many details for a while yet.

So what can I tell you?

The book is a YA potential trilogy about an all female crew of very badass pirates. This group of amazing kickass women literally walked into my brain and I just knew that I had to write about them. I barely knew them at first. I didn't know their names, their personalities. I didn't know what world they lived in or what they were doing. But I was determined to find out.

Why a trilogy? Because I honestly feel like the story could stretch that far. I can see a clear plot and arc for all three books and for a series overall. There may end up being even more than three - I honestly don't know, but I've got way too much to explore with these characters and their world and I'm definitely going to need more than one book to do it.

I'm currently almost done with brainstorming and researching, but I still don't feel ready to start outlining just yet. I have all of the characters down. I spent FOREVER coming up with their names, looking into cultural meanings and finding the perfect name for each person. I still want to do some more in-depth character profiles so that I can get to know them all better. I have quite a lot of characters so this might take me a while yet. I will be posting the template I use for character profiles soon. It's a sort of hodge-podge of lots of different templates and I go pretty in-depth with them because I really like to know my characters.

I've also been working on the world. I've decided that my book will be set in a fantasy world that is loosely based on our own. I'm not 100% decided, but I'm fairly sure that there will be no definite magic in this world, but there will be some supernatural aspects alluded to and sometimes shown. For instance, my characters believe in sea gods, goddesses and deities, and these aren't shown physically but sometimes things happen that might make you wonder if they really exist?

A lot of my book takes place at sea, so I've been coming up with lots of sea names, sea regions, cliffs, caves, coves, bays etc - all those pirate things. I've also been coming up with country, town and city names and other locations. I'm confident that I know my world pretty well right now, but I'm sure that I will explore it a lot more as this process goes on.

As for plot, I have a basic skeleton. I know most of the beginning, I'm almost sure on an ending, and have lots of scenes in between. I just have to put everything together and stitch it all up. But that will happen mostly in the outlining stage. To tell you the very bare bones of the story - it's a rescue story, with lots of action, romance, danger and twists. That's all I want to say right now.

I've been taking SO many notes in a notebook that I've dedicated to this project. Literally page after page of rambles, ideas and scribbles that are all making up the start of this process. I love taking notes with pen and paper, doing charts, lists, graphs and thought maps. I definitely find that this messy procedure lends itself well to this stage of the process. I even take the notebook to bed with me, because my brain is constantly churning up ideas and if I don't write them down I will forget them.

I still have quite a bit of research to do. I've never sailed a pirate ship, and I need to write like my characters are professionals at it - so I need to research that. I need to know the basics of sailing, the jobs on board a ship, general life on board etc. Of course, this is my world and I can create it how I want, but I want to base it realistically and to do that I need to make sure my facts are correct.

I've created lots of boards on Pinterest for inspiration on character, settings, scenes and costumes. I've kept them set as private for now, but I'll be making them public later in the process.

As for a title, I do have a working title, but I'm not completely set on it and it definitely could change. As of now, I think that I might call it 'The Prince of Blades'. I'm not entirely sure. This title definitely encapsulates the plot, but I'm not sure that it really signifies the characters. We will see.

I've honestly been having so much fun during this stage. Everything is so open and there are no constrictions. I'm just asking myself lots of questions. 'Why? How? What if? Who?' and answering them with lots of different possibilities. I have absolutely loved researching different sea gods, myths, legends and stories and then twisting them to apply them to my world. I feel like I'm chipping away at a block of marble and discovering what is lying underneath. Creating these characters, this world and this story is exciting and I'm really enjoying it. I'm feeling so excited about this project and very motivated to keep on with it.

I think that's it for now. That's where I'm at, still brainstorming and researching but getting a lot closer to being ready to outline. I'm really hoping to have everything completely outlined and finalised in time for November, because for the first time ever I'm hoping to participate in NaNoWriMo! That will be fun and very interesting if I could do that.

I'll update you again very soon and let you know some more about my book.

Lauren