Empty Vessel was not supposed to be my baby.
Empty Vessel was not supposed to be named.
Empty Vessel wasn’t even supposed to work out as well as it is!
So, I got a random email the other day, and the tagline was “Kill Your Darlings”. I deleted the email without reading it, but the tagline was stuck in my head. I actually misread it as “KIll All of Your Darlings”.
Kill all of your darlings. It sounded like someone telling another person to kill the people they slept with; like ‘darlings’ was another name for ‘partners’.
And then I got to thinking. What if there was a prince of kingdom, and he had to kill his darlings? Like what if he was a first-class manwhore?
So, I began to muse, and ponder. But in all of my stories in my fantasy kingdoms, there was no country that cared so little for women that a prince could be a manwhore and not get crap.
Avondella, women were equal. In Chinghon, women oversaw the tribes. Dreanis had no rulers, in Utonopia, everyone was equal. In Ronartion gypsy women roamed the streets, and everyone hated gypsies, so that wouldn’t work.
Then I realized I had Keshnitte, a country with no novel.
A highly religious, caste-system based country that ran on the prospects of beauty and obedience. (Literally the queen’s names are Haseki Mariam-Uzi Sulanta the Beautiful Soul of the Night Sky and Haseki Madeeha Oriona the One with Moon for Features)
It was the perfect story. But the religious got me thinking. What if the prince, the jubraj, was supposed to kill his darlings, because the divine voice of the gods told him so?
And then, the idea for Empty Vessel was born.
A manwhore jubraj of Keshnitte, a jubraj no one cares about, is chosen as the new vessel of their god, Iemberrit. He hears a voice in his head, telling him to “kill all of [his] darlings”. The priests say it is the voice of Iemberrit, but he does not believe in the gods, may they strike him down. So, what is in his head?
I have mood boards, I have research, I have a playlist… I have so, so much for this story.
I also have 3 chapters and 9,000 words of it finished.
I have Fragments of Time to edit, I have Chronicles of Salt and Blood Book 2 and My British Bear 2 to write. I’ve got a hundred thousand writing things to do and I…
Can’t.
Put.
It.
Down.
I’ve been researching ancient India, Turkey, and Buddhism nonstop. Festivals, clothing, everything. I’ve been listening to Indian music for days.
Also, something hilarious about the title.
I named it Empty Vessel because, like, that’s what he’s supposed to be and he may lose his mind? But I looked up Empty Vessel, like I do with all my novel titles, to see if it previously existed. It did not! But, I did find this fun piece of info.
Wild, I know.
So here’s some info about it!
Title: Empty Vessel
Genre: Pyschological Thriller, High Fantasy
Main Character: Jubraj Roanoke Asta
My Empty Vessel Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7sZwVJnZZHymaUrDcqaBmT?si=FMVT9fKpQsSfzs6YrAKqAQ (Oh, Anna by Mother Mother is definitely the most accurate of the songs, followed closely by Saint Bernard and Kitchen Fork.)
So, yeah!
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