Emperor's Assassin

OK, so I've only written another thousand words in the last week. I have cleaned my flat twice though, and even gone to the supermarket a couple of times. I rock at domesticity, clearly.

This story I'm writing is a fantasy story about an assassin, called Juri. (At least I think it's a fantasy story, we might change this as it actually gets written. But for now, a fantasy story.) It's set on a made-up world, with 3 moons. Which is great because it means I get to play with tides and all sorts of things. (Unless that gets to be too much of a hassle, then I'll just delete the idea.) Juri works for the Emperor of Ertia, who is engaged in a low-key civil war with his younger brother; they each go round killing each others supporters, and decrying these terrible crimes afterwards. Ertia has recently emerged from a proper civil war, and not everyone is happy with the way in which the Emperor has managed the aftermath; his brother isn't lacking in supporters.

The Emperor has a daughter, Taris, who Juri is assigned to guard from her uncle's own assassins. Taris and Juri fall in love, obviously, but their relationship is interrupted when Taris meets and falls in love with the Prince Kalim, of A-Land-I've-Not-Yet-Named, who she marries. When she goes to live with him, Juri accompanies her. The Emperor is slain, and his brother takes over the ruling of Ertia, declaring Taris to be a traitor to the nation.

Prophecy tells of a hero that will arise to save the nation. Juri, in addition to being an assassin, is also - unbeknownst to him - that hero. The hero has a magic weapon, as is so often the case, which is death to anyone else to touch. In this case, the whole story came from this knife, and it's based on a real knife I saw in Italy:

There are relationship twists for Taris, Kalim and Juri, and there are frequent flashbacks to Juri's youth in training as an assassin. (Brutal training, social services should be called...) And, of course, the climactic battle to save Ertia from its new increasingly tyrannical ruler.

So, that's pretty much the summary of my new story - now there just remains to flesh it out into a novel-length piece of work. Easy!

Progress: 9k words!

I've decided a weekly progress update will keep me actually doing something on this story, even if no one else is reading these posts ;-) (If you are reading this, do drop in and say hi in the comments...)

So far, I've got the rough structure for the first 7 chapters worked out, and I've got 9k words written - although a lot of those are just notes now for scenes I haven't got to, and half-started scenes like Taris' wedding. But they count!

I also have managed to work out some of the Lieroi storyline for Juri - Juri-as-hero - which is good; I know how that starts and how that ends, I just need some middle now. And I get to work out some different peace-keeping and post-conflict reconstruction scenarios - one of which (increasing authoritarianism and power vested in the army) doesn't work for Taris' uncle, one of which (as yet undetermined) does work for Taris. Or at least, will work, since the book isn't going to go long enough to see its success. I need to do some more research into successful post-conflict reconstruction theory and practice; I knew that MA degree would come in useful one day!