It's still June. So there.

I love this book. It's brain candy and somewhat inane in parts, but I love it nonetheless. This was my very first NaNoWriMo novel, from 2008. I wrote it in three weeks, after having spent all of October dreaming up the plot and the characters. It has its faults, of course, but sometimes I'm still amazed that my brain could produce something like this at all, and in such a relatively small space of time.

I feel a need to say a word about the title. The country of Lenore is always referred to as a "kingdom" but because it's ruled by a prince I think technically it would be a principality. I always think of a principality as being subordinate to some other host nation though (whether this is universally true or not), and my Lenore is quite independent. Besides that, "Principality of Ruses" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, (nor does "the principality of Lenore" as opposed to "the kingdom of Lenore"), and I certainly wasn't going to call its ruler "the Eternal King," because that would have felt vaguely sacrilegious to me.

So the long and short of it is that we have a kingdom ruled by a prince. I apologize to any literalists out there that might have a problem with this, and I do hope that you don't mind that, in this case, my apology takes the form of a thumb to the nose.

(Where exactly does the term "thumb one's nose at something" come from, anyway? Add that to my list of Things to Google.)

I also feel the need to say a word about the format of this book. Originally I intended to write it in first person, but I ran into a slight snag when I realized that my intense loathing of first person would be an obstacle to the writing itself. (In my defense, I originally chose that point of view because I feel that I should at least partly understand anything I'm going to take the trouble to loathe.) There were certain events that I imagined from Viola's first-person perspective, and I didn't want to give up that perspective. However, the further I progressed in my plotting, the more I didn't want to be stuck in her head all the time.

And thus was born the Most Troublesome Format Ever. The originally intended first-person point of view has been preserved in journal entries, which begin every chapter. For the print version, this means a lot of italics. I justify this because I have a copy of Jane Austen's Emma published by Barnes & Noble, where all correspondences, including Frank Churchill's monstrosity at the end, are formatted entirely in italics; Frank's doesn't even use paragraphs, so if B&N can get away with such a magnificent Italicized Wall O' Text, this little indie author with her own formatting guide can do as she pleases. Nyah.

With those two caveats firmly in place, I present to you Kingdom of Ruses, my own little fairy tale of sorts.

To purchase at CreateSpace, click here.

For Amazon, click here.

The eBook is forthcoming. Just a few little formatting quirks to work out still.