I am thrilled that launch day is approaching for Book 4 in the Chronicles of Nadine. My characters and I had to learn some new skills together to get this book out. It was an enormous challenge trying to find an ancient and fantastical way of approaching something that I had only seen in modern adventure books.
Of course, my process always involves me writing myself into a corner and for book 4, I had to draw on all my problem-solving skills to get myself out of this hole.
When I think of what I have learned from the Uncovering Greatness team, I always think of one of their teachings, “What you know got you this far… What you want is on the other side of what you know.”
So far, many of the skills that my characters have had to learn are ones that there are existing tutors for, but I just needed to search for the most suitable teachers. To prepare for my epic fantasy books, I have watched many sword fighting, self-defence, and medieval medicine tutorials, but this particular book in my fantasy series took me into a world below the surface.
Some fans of Christian fantasy are opposed to magic in books and so I try to ensure as much as possible that my main characters use methods available in the real world to solve problems, even though in some cases I amplified the method. In this book, I needed to look at nature for solutions, which led me to a rather fascinating underwater discovery.
As The Tears of The Crystal Heart introduces my readers to the fourth dragon species in the series, the Crystal Water Dragon, I had to spend a lot of my research time watching diving videos and looking at underwater caves to imagine what my Crystal Water Dragon might see. As with all authors who are research fanatics, we spend hours and hours researching only to add just a few lines into a book, but I made sure that this book had some action scenes in and around water.
In my research, I discovered a species of Glass squid — called Chranchia scabra that have transparent bodies which help them blend in with their surroundings. There are several types of transparent creatures in the ocean and this discovery presented a significant breakthrough for me in a problem I had to solve in my story.
In Tears of a Crystal Hearts, I introduced diverse cultures with flavours and spices unique to their lands. Preparing for the passage to the afterlife led me to a world of rites and rituals that I never imagined.
I hope you will enjoy this book and that it invokes a sense of wonder in you that may lead you to solve a problem you may be wrestling with. Because what we want is just on the other side of what we know.
