Shards of Ankh

Thank You

With the conclusion of this novel, in the past two years I've written four novellas and seven full-length novels. Which is insane; never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd write seven novels in my lifetime, let alone in a two-year span of time! I couldn't have done it without all you lovely people. Sappy/cliché? Yes, but also 100% true.

Back in October of 2020 (!) (I think), one of my readers reached out me to let me know they were holding a contest, the Golden Writers. I wasn't sure if I was going to participate; I was starting to question the validity of Wattpad-user run contests (no offense; I entered a bunch that never went anywhere, literally, and was getting pretty frustrated). Even so, I decided to take a gander.

Well, after reading the writing prompts, I knew that I had to. Prompts about an Ancient Egyptian story?! Oh, my God, you could not sign me up fast enough! Some of you may know this, but for awhile I was seriously thinking about pursuing Egyptology as a profession. I was majoring in Anthropology, with a focus on archeology, subset Egyptology. My minor was English. So, this contest was LITERALLY right up my alley.

I was still hesitant, because there was a romance aspect. At the time I didn't considered myself to be a romance writer (which is kind of funny looking back on it, because yeah, I write fiction, but there's ALWAYS a romantic slant to it), so I was worried it was going to be a challenge.

However, once I started getting concrete ideas for my story, I became really excited. The first scene that popped into my head for this story was the last handful of chapters. Originally, Thea was going to be trapped in the pyramid by herself. There was going to be a cobra. Originally a God and her lover were going to rescue her. Also originally, the room was going to be completely sealed. But the more I thought about it the less it made sense.

How could she not get bitten with a cobra all over her? How would she escape, sealed in a pyramid? Then I thought of it like a maze, perhaps (which was where my first idea came from, having Lapis guide Thea using the stars to find their way out).

I decided to shelf that mystery for later. In the meantime I created the core characters. As it's said up front within the story itself, I chose Thea's name with a very specific purpose. I think I spent an entire hour searching for the perfect name. I also made the conscious decision to not only reference an obscure Egyptian God, preferably one with little known information about so I could have artistic leeway, but I also wanted to throw a curve ball by having Ahmed/Aqen look hawk-like, to make people think of different Gods just to trip then up. I also wanted people to question if he were mortal early on, because I thought if I could make people question that they'd want to keep reading (which worked).

Originally I was going to have the story be a love-triangle between Thea, Aqen, and Ankh. However, for whatever reason, that just didn't sit right for me. It didn't seem dire enough, and it also felt too much like a soap opera to me. I was already writing by the time I got the idea of Ahmed being Aqen...it was actually a few chapters in where I had the idea of having Aqen fall in love with a straight male.

I've always loved mythology from all over the world. My first obsession (when I was little) was Greek Mythology, which I then began to realize was heavily influenced by Egyptian Mythology. One of my favorite aspects of all mythology are the relationships that the Gods share not only with each other, but with mortals. Especially the unrequited love stories, or love stories that end up going awry (Persephone, anyone?). Thus, Aqen falling for a mortal and wanting what's best for Ankh bloomed.

As with Aqen, I wanted to make up a Pharaoh. As someone who takes Egyptian Mythology seriously (for a time in my teenage years I literally worshiped Osiris, and I still like to think of him as my patron God), I was overly concerned with taking a historical figure and getting it *wrong*. I'm a failed Egyptologist. I didn't need comments from people correcting me on some historical inaccuracy. I wanted to take what knowledge I knew and make it shine.