Where did the Ducal Detective come from?

Since The Ducal Detective's June 8th release, it's been pretty wild, and I'm only now just sitting down to reflect on it all.  

The initial reception to my book publishing announcement was quite staggering.  I'm not one for sappy posts on social media, but the kindness and encouragement I received from friends and family the day of the launch really filled me with warm fuzzies.  Waking up to texts of "Congrats" or "So proud of you" was lovely, and it gave me this spark of courage, believing that something big was about to happen.  And while I'm still waiting for that "big moment" (you know, when the world realizes this is the book they've been looking for and the movie/TV offers start piling up), I'd like to take the time to answer a question I've received a lot over the past few days: where on earth did the Ducal Detective even come from?

If you've been reading my past posts, you'll know that "The Ducal Detective" was a whirlwind project, mainly used as a distraction from my work-in-progress "Battleground Eden".  I'd been working on polishing up the trilogy since January, and I just got really frustrated with it.  But I'd quit my job to do writing full time, so I very well couldn't stop.  So, I found something else to do until I was back on speaking terms with my characters.

The itch to write something new started while I was listening to the audiobook "The Traitor Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson.  I was listening to it for the book club I'm in because I find listening to books allows me to multitask and read other physical books for pleasure.  This was one of the rare book club selections that I actually enjoyed, mainly because it was about a strong woman going to war to overthrow an oppressive Big Brother government.  As to how I got inspired to write the Ducal Detective, though? It all came from a single word: duchy.  

The narrator of the audiobook pronounced it "doo-she," which I COULD NOT STAND.  Every time she said it, I would cringe, mainly because I was always under the impression that is was pronounced "duh-chee".  Finally, I got fed up with this battle between my own belief and this narrator's and looked up the word on Google.  It is indeed pronounced "duh-chee," which was a victory for me.

You know how when you look up a word, it will give you the other forms it can come in? Well, "ducal" was listed bellow duchy and the definition was "of or related to a dukedom".  A dukedom, how cool of a concept is that?  I love anything to do with royalty, and so this really caught my eye.  Pair this all with the fact that I'd spent the previous few months (during my downtime from writing) slaving away at The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt video game, which happens to have an expansion game that takes place in a duchy (that's how I knew the word to begin with). 

So, out of these two experiences with dukedoms, I thought to myself, "How can I create something short and intriguing with this concept?"  My boyfriend reads murder mystery stories to me at night (yes, I get a bedtime story) and that's really the genre that I enjoy experiencing the most.  Let me explain: even though I've been working on a fantasy trilogy, it's really hard because the more I think about it, fantasy isn't my favorite genre of book.  Of course, my favorite series are fantasy (Harry Potter and Sword of Truth), but other than those, I find it hard to break into fantasy stories and keep engaged with them for an extended period of time.  I think it's because I can only fit so many worlds in my head that are not creations of my own, that I have a hard time accepting new information.

Hence why mysteries are ultimately my favorite type of book to read for pleasure.  So, why not write a mystery?  Yet, I also had to consider my image or brand as an author during this process.  I've been writing Battleground Eden for so long, how can this novella help bridge my audience from mystery to fantasy adventure (whenever the books get published)?  That's where the lightbulb went off and I took two of my favorite things and put them into one: a mystery set in a fantasy-created realm.  Once that decision was made, the story fell into place.  It was strange, as ifJax was waiting for me to put the pieces together and once I'd made the right connections, she was there waiting for me in her dukedom.  The story flowed so easily and within a few days, I had the tale I wanted to share with the world.  The proofreading and book cover creation process honestly took more time than pouring Jax's adventure out of my head.

Now that I'm writing a sequel, I definitely feel more restraint on the world I created because of the word I dread in my dreams: continuity.  Once you hit book two, you can no longer make up events or characters or places without first figuring out if it makes sense in the context of book one.  That's where my biggest struggle as a writer has always been, bridging the gaps and the story into subsequent books.  That's why it's taken me almost a decade to get Battleground Eden together because I'm meticulously combing them over and over again to make sure everything lines up.

Luckily, with the world I created in "The Ducal Detective," I was vague enough in the first novel to allow myself some wiggle room when it came to creating new adventures.  I have this whole new realm to play with, and I'm just getting started!

Shameless promotion: if you haven't grabbed your copy yet, make sure to check it out.

Arms around,

S.B.