How It All Started by Vivien Dean

Stories start in a hundred different ways. Sometimes, it's an image. Sometimes, there's a theme I want to explore. In the case of my story for the Knight Moves pax, it all began with the title.

But a story is a lot more than its title. I didn't even know it was going to be for this pax. Sometimes, a title will come to me, and it doesn't go with much of anything that I'm working on. When that happens, I pull out one of my trusty notebooks and write it down.

For the record, I have a lot of notebooks, each one for a different kind of thing. Titles. Story ideas. Scenes. Character sketches. My brainstorming is always best when I do it in longhand. Plus? I love, love, love notebooks. I ask for them for every birthday and Christmas. A hand-tooled leather notebook just might be the most perfect gift ever.

Anyway. Back to my title notebook. When I sat down to work on my knight story, I kept going around and around, unable to settle on a single idea. Did I want to go contemporary? Did I want to go historical? I could even go paranormal, I thought. Desperate, I went to my titles, and there it was.

Against a Wounded Landscape.

The image of a war-torn country stuck, and from there, the rest of the story unfolded as if it was just waiting for me to find it. I discovered Sir Tanash, the knight who would do anything for his king. I found Liseny, the sheltered prince eager to prove his worth. They welcomed me into their world, and I'm so excited about getting to share their world with you now.

Sir Tanash, the greatest knight Tasora has ever known, has one quest—to rescue his king’s only son. Fifteen years ago, Princy Liseny was kidnapped, and in the time since, Tasora has crumbled. By bringing the prince home, Tanash hopes to return the kingdom to its former glory.

As captive in a rival land, Liseny has spent most of his life locked away from the world, brought out as the ultimate prize while his real home is slowly destroyed. Escape is a godsend. So is Tanash, but neither is as simple as Liseny hopes. He has to learn to adjust in more ways than one. Though Tanash refuses to act on their mutual attraction, he does agree to help Liseny seek out an alliance to take back to Tasora.

What he doesn’t expect is to fall for the young prince along the way...

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Against a Wounded Landscape by Vivien Dean is now available at Amber Allure.

If you'd like the chance to win the entire pax collection, just leave a comment on today's post. On Saturday, a winner will be picked at random from all the comments made this week on the blog. Comment on all, and that's multiple chances to win!