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Friday, January 31, 2014
Why THE TIGER QUEENS Almost Killed Me
I started writing THE TIGER QUEENS on February 4, 2012. (Yes, I'm a nerd and keep records like that.) Almost exactly two years later, the revised manuscript has been sent off to my marvelous, and very patient, editor. This is a very, very good thing, as there were many times I thought this book might be my undoing.
(That's a nice way of saying it reduced me to a sniveling, raging mess more times than I can count.)
Each book presents its own challenges, but this one was like a Tasmanian devil crossed with a charging Egyptian hippo being whipped by Genghis Khan.
(I'm done revising, therefore my similes don't have to make much sense.)
If I knew two years ago what feats of writing THE TIGER QUEENS would entail, I might have thought twice about writing a non-traditional narrative featuring four point of view characters spanning eighty years of Mongolian history. However, for the sake of applauding the fact that I'm not writing this from a rubber room, here's some stats from THE TIGER QUEENS. (Just thinking about all this makes me start twitching.)
Point of View characters: 4
Total number of characters: 33
Number of cultures researched: 4 (Mongolian, Chinese, Persian, & Uighur)
Total Pages: 546
All the Extra Stuff: Author's Notes, Character List, Bibliography, and a MAP!
Number of Books I Used for Research: 15
Number of Ice Cream Cakes Consumed During the Writing of the Novel: I lost count... Maybe 10?
How Many Times I Cursed Genghis Khan: I seriously lost count.
One day I'm going to write a nice contemporary novel set in Alaska, told from the POV of a high school history teacher. No one would ever want to read it, but it would be a heckuva lot easier to write!
Now I'm off to research Alexander the Great for Book #4, and you know... eat more ice cream cake.