Brandon's historical fantasy novel

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I designed the plotline for this using a cool piece of story-outlining software called Snowflake Pro. The story is set in ancient Egyptian times, but takes place in an alternate timeline, so all the events and characters are fictional.

Aisha, Scourge of Egypt

Aisha is a proud citizen of Kharga, a confederation of anarchically run villages built around an oasis west of the Egyptian Nile Valley. Kharga was originally an Egyptian colony, but revolted ~150 years ago, and now the Egyptian Pharaoh wants to reclaim it. When Aisha's mother is killed by the Pharaoh's forces in the first battle, Aisha simmers with a desire with revenge and continues a bloody guerrilla campaign against the Egyptians. However, Aisha is so vindictive that she treats the Egyptian soldiers she captures very cruelly, so she is voted out of her militia squad and exiles herself into the desert. She stumbles upon an Egyptian village, witnesses the repression the peasantry are subjected to, and decides she wants to liberate them. The revolution is about to begin...

I'll put up some concept art for the main characters later.

Sounds pretty cool. But is this alternate history? Or is this taking place in our space/time continuum? Because if it's the latter, your lead character's struggle for liberty unfortunately fails.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It's the former.

Anyway, I got 957 words written so far, and I'm not done with the day yet.

OK, first chapter completed and 1,467 words written overall.

The more I think about this idea, the less I like it. The idea of ancient Egyptians embracing anarchist principles in the modern sense is ridiculous, one woman cannot lead a revolution by herself, and the whole "rebels vs evil king" storyline is trite anyway. I want to keep the main character and the setting, but I'll either revise the plot beyond recognition or completely scrap it.

Why do almost all the plots I devise turn out so flawed?

Don't be hard on yourself. If you think this project is worthwhile, then stick with it, and revise it in later drafts. I'm also a writer, and I can tell you, I've wasted more time, and thrown away ideas that may have worked out with a little work, because I'm way too self critical. I'm trying to stick with a novel I've worked on, then discontinued way too many times to keep count of.
What ever you choose to do, good luck.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

OK, I've done a lot of tweaking with my novel's premise. Now it's an adaptation of the ancient Egyptian myth of Osiris's murder by his brother Set, but it's set in Mesolithic Sudan around 6500 BC. The novel's culture was inspired by the Khartoum Mesolithic, the oldest sedentary/semi-sedentary culture found along the Nile River and a possible early ancestor of the ancient Egyptian and Nubian civilizations. I've uploaded some concept art for the novel's world and characters in the Display Your Artwork thread, but I'll reproduce it here anyway:


Aset/Isis, the novel's heroine


Sutekh/Set, the antagonist


The main characters' village

I've also written this pseudo-ethnographic article about the Rometu, the culture from which the main characters come.

That is one hot woman!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer