The Queen's Pawn Commentary

I was watching a program on the discovery of the ruins of ancient Troy one night and thought, "It must be terrible being trapped inside of a burning city." Of course, this triggered the urge in me to write the tale. The plot was hijacked as soon as I started. The Queen's Pawn became more of a comedy inside my head than a serious drama. If one reads the back cover blurb some might be tempted to grumble: "Another of those tales of the heroic male rescuing the distressed damsel." Fortunately, nothing could be further from how the story actually turned out.

My tale of a farm lad, who has no idea of how to use a sword, and is sent to the city by his poor family to become a priest, turned into the adventures of a young man in way over his head, who finds himself forced with the task of getting the queen and her very annoying daughter to safety. This is the first time where I was faced by story characters who obviously kidnapped the plot. The queen refused to be muddled as I planned, but decided to take over, and her daughter, who I'd designed more for comic relief than anything else, suddenly developed a serious backstory.

Picked up by Champagne Publishing, "The Queen's Pawn" came out in 2013, and the publisher said: "Keep going!" "The Queen's Man" followed in 2015 and "The Queen's Game" in 2016. Lot's of wild adventures, nasty villains, and romance. You can tell the level of seriousness when in the final volume the princess is planning her wedding, and the hero doesn't realize it's to him.