Book Progress: Vol 1 Cover & Synopsis

Tentative Cover Image for Volume One

Last night, I had no words, so instead of beating my head against the wall, I created a cover I'm pretty happy with. Thoughts?

Writing almost every day both during my lunch breaks, in the evenings, and on weekends in addition to a hairy busy job... I'm weary. I was so thankful I could rest last weekend, but I'm still dragging so I'm glad it's Friday.

There's nothing quite like losing myself in creating the story, in editing what I've written and other such fun bits of writing; however, knowing writing a novel is time consuming, hard, and labor intensive versus actually living through it... well, you don't know what it's really like until you've done it yourself. I mean, I can't tell you guys how many versions I've gone through - versions meaning, drafts of things that include major changes/additions to the previous version.  I have certainly developed a respect for professional writers as I've been trying to develop a true habit of writing every day.

Anyhow, I've completed editing Curse of Royalty: Volume One and am very happy with the result. It is the absolute best I can do at this point. Thanks to my many beta readers who helped me to identify holes in my plot, to nix unrealistic situations, to get over myself and cut scenes I didn't need, and other such things - bless you guys!

I've been working mostly in volume two for the last three weeks once my beta readers returned their comments, but I hit a snag. Last week I began to question whether or not I needed to simplify my villain pool. Currently there's a daddy/son duo causing trouble. The son presents himself as a baddie throughout and so some of the scenes seem unrealistic now - I mean, who in their right mind would trust someone like that character? How could he possibly get close enough to the good guys to do anything terrible? Gotta get that sorted. In the meantime, I have been working on a few other writing projects to keep things flowing as I work out the problem.

Volume three is almost there but needs mega work. I'm holding off on some of it because I need to get details right and a lot of the setup for what happens in volume 3 gets set up in volume 2. I'm having a blast figuring all of this out and can't wait until I can share. I'm thinking it may be smarter to at least have the second volume ready to go before releasing volume one so in lieu of that, I may work on a side project to release first.

For those of you who are curious, here is the tentative back cover text for Volume One: 

Darkness surrounds the throne of Drayden – a curse threatens the life of each royal who sits upon it.

Follow the journey of this determined young royal as she refuses to submit to the curse and pushes back the veil of darkness to be warmed by the light of hope.

~

This volume: Peydra suffers as the curse claims both her parents, discovers how heavy the crown is, and experiences the surprising loyalty of a secretive attendant she calls First Boy.

Having decided to lead the court on an inaugural tour shortly after being crowned, she finds that she’s risked the safety of Drayden's whole ruling body as a northern kingdom invades to threaten them with war.