this journey called life: it's WIP time

I have been wanting to share more about my current WIP and Camp NaNoWriMo, The Rose's Shadow, after doing #thewriterstag, and I'm so glad finally be doing so. I have never written a whole post about just one WIP before, so I hope that this one is enjoyable and not (too) long.

I have always liked the idea of fairytale retellings, and Beauty and the Beast was one of my absolute favorite fairytales of all time. So, I decided to give retellings a try and start planning for a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Now, you wouldn’t understand the title really well unless you read the whole book, but to keep it short, the book is called The Rose’s Shadow because Aaron (the Beast) feels like the Enchanted Rose is casting a shadow over his life (because it cursed him). Hmm…I guess you can understand the title without reading the book… :P

I don’t want to ramble on for too long, so I’ll give you the blurb/synopsis so you can get the whole feel of the book. I just wrote this one up in my notebook, so I don’t know if it will be the official blurb yet.

a rose. a beast. a curse.

Blaire is the first of twelve princesses and the heir to the throne of Celene. But, before she can become queen, she must find a co-heir, and that proves to be hard work. A selfish prince wants to claim her - and her crown - as his own, but Blaire’s not going to let that happen.

When Blaire’s second to youngest sister, Cora, falls into a unknown illnesses in the night, she and Colene - sister number two - must ride out into the stormy night to save her.

Blaire is separated from her sister in the woods when a lion attacks them, and she stumbls across a hidden castle and a prince beast who is cursed to be doomed as a beast all his life, unless he can fall in love with a maiden and gain hers in return before the last petal of the enchanted rose falls…

That wasn’t very good, but I’ll have to sit down for a while after I’m finished with the book and write out a good one. ;)

Now, I told you all that Blaire is the oldest of twelve sisters, right? Yeah, I know that’s a lot. A retelling of The 12 Dancing Princesses is a possibility in the future…

Any-who, I was thinking of having The Rose’s Shadow being second (the first will be a The 12 Dancing Princesses retelling) in a series of Chronicles with thirteen books in them, each one focusing on each girl. The first one (the 12 Dancing Princesses retelling) would focus on all of them, and then twelve more focusing mainly on one girl. Wouldn’t that be awesome?? I’m SO excited to write them all…

I’m actually thinking that I’ll write the first book after I write all of the other twelve books so that I can get to know the characters better. That would help a lot in character development and what-not. So, here I am, starting The Rose’s Shadow, which focuses on Blaire.

Okay, after all that talk about twelve princess, you are probably wondering all their names and what they look like, right? Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered.

Meet the twelve princesses of Celene (from oldest to youngest):

I found these beautiful girls on Pinterest and added some names and descriptions to them. (Here’s a link to my Pinterest board: LINK). I think that these girls are exactly how I envisioned the twelve princesses.

I also have a mock cover that I made for The Rose’s Shadow that I think is really cool. I just used Canva and Picmonkey for this one. It’s pretty simple, but I think it looks nice. :)

I will be doing another It’s WIP Time post in a little bit so that I can tell you guys a LOT more about The Rose’s Shadow, because this post IS getting a little long, isn’t it? I hope you all have a great day or night!