I loved the back cover of Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, so I
used that as a model to blurb my story, but even what I have below
is very rough. Though I’ve completed a draft of this novel, I’ve
decided to go back and use that draft as an outline for a complete
redraft. My outline is essentially a completed 130k word novel--I
think it’s for the best though to redraft rather than try to “fix”
or “polish” something I completed a couple of years back.
Vedrik Veldkamp: son of an influential man,
friends with lords, servant of a benevolent King, and betrayed by
one he loved during a war he’d like to forget. Now he drinks too
much, and has a score to settle with the Blest Church. To make
matters worse he’s a wary practitioner of what some call ‘The
Gift’, others curse it as ‘The Affliction’, could it be connected
to the Blest Church, the very church that banned its use or a more
ancient, primal magic?
Ruul: loyal friend or angry monk exiled from the
Blest Church? Is he a puppet for the church and powerful families
of the realm or will his own agenda win through?
Patriarch Gregory II: a leader of the Blest
Church, both opportunistic and ambitious, but bitter from the lies
of his childhood. He plots to overhaul the church and rid himself
of those who oppose him by any means possible, but will he see the
error of his ways before its too late?
Matriarch Catherine: a leader of the Blest Church,
born into and married into nobility, now old and impossibly vain,
but still trying to maintain her beauty and power. She too plots to
overhaul the church, but in a much, much different way than anyone
ever imagined.
Nobility: the van Houtens, Forsters and Morozovs
have vied for the throne of the Kingdom for hundreds of years. The
Morozovs have left the Kingdom and established their own, leaving
the van Houtens and Forsters struggling for the throne. Could the
Blest Church or the Morozovs be scheming to take over the
Kingdom?
