The Whore of Babylon

Author's note: An open letter to my fans

Edit / Update: 5 years on

It's been a few years since I decided to just leave up the first part of the story and remove the rest so I could publish on Amazon. I'm back on Wattpad now and about to start a new project, so I figured why not republish Whore of Babylon now that it's been out in the world for a while?

It's still available to purchase on Amazon Kindle or in paperback, if you're interested in having a copy to keep :-)

...

That's it! Whore of Babylon is finished – Eliana's story is told and I can finally start going to bed at a decent time again instead of 2am every night!

Thanks
First off, I want to thank you – the readers – so, so much. It's your support and encouragement and enthusiasm for Eliana's story that has kept me going all this time, that persuaded me to write when I really didn't want to, and that got me to number one while I was still in the 'what's hot' chart.

Writing on Wattpad has been a whole new experience for me. I've been writing a novel about Jane Seymour (the third wife of the English King Henry VIII) for approximately seven years now, and there was not a lot of motivation to write when it would just sit and rot on my laptop. On Wattpad, suddenly I had an audience full of eager readers who always wanted more – it was great for my self-discipline, and I went from writing maybe once a month, to every single night.

Not only that, but your comments and suggestions have helped to direct the story. Although I had major parts of the plot planned out (I always knew that Samsu would die, for example), there were certain details that needed refining or were changeable, and you guys helped so much with that. Particularly when you seemed to be getting close to predicting what I had planned – it gave me the chance to change it up and throw in a new twist!

And talking of people who helped, I am forever indebted to @KatrinHollister for all her help and advice with this novel. She was an excellent sounding board, always willing to listen through my ideas for upcoming chapters, even when it meant I was spoiling the upcoming plot for her. When I was stuck, or had plot holes, she was always there to help out. Her thorough and honest critiques of each chapter are going to be invaluable when I come to redraft over the next few days.

Kat is an excellent writer in her own right, and her story The Windcaster is well worth a read – I've really enjoyed it, and I hope you'll check it out and let her know what you think! You may recognise some of the names etc, as Kat has completely coincidentally been using elements of Babylonian culture, such as god names, for her book too.

There are so many of you that I'd like to thank by name, the ones that have supported me and Eliana from the very beginning. @FionaLibby, @iluvfredandgeorge and @LCoyne999 are just a few that spring to mind, but there have been so many of you who have followed the story from beginning to end and either left me lovely comments or sent messages of encouragement. I'm grateful for each and every one, and I'm so sorry that I was no longer to reply to them all individually after Whore of Babylon got so popular. It got to the stage where replying was cutting into writing time – I do hope you don't think I was just being rude.

Thanks also to @JodiLindKuehn for her excellent critique and grammatical advice – I had no idea that I'd been punctuating dialogue incorrectly my entire writing life!

The inspiration and process
For those of you who have asked where I got my idea for Whore of Babylon and what my writing process is:

Eliana's story was initially inspired by a dream I had probably 6-8 months ago. It was a very strange dream, it really disturbed me, so I wrote it all down when I woke up. It seemed even weirder when I wrote it down. If you want to know which bit I dreamed, it was Chapter 2, Part 2.

Just over three months ago, I found the notebook that I'd written the dream down in, and read it through. It was still disturbing, but I started wondering about who the girl was in my dream, and how she fitted into a wider story. Next thing I knew, I'd been sat scribbling for four hours, and I had a half-decent plot planned out, and a suite of characters with no names.

Next I needed to do some research, so over the next few days I hit the internet. I knew that I needed an ancient culture in the east, an empire, and that my story was set in a city that had recently been taken over. After a while, I settled on Babylonia and Nippur – the story is set at the time that Babylon was really expanding its empire. Hammurabi and Samsuiluna were real kings of the era that I've written about, and Hammurabi really was a famous law-maker, but other than that, all the characters and their personalities are fictional, products of my own imagination. The character names largely came from other cities in ancient Sumeria (Susa, Mari, Isin, Kish, Eshnunna, etc.) and when I ran out of those, I turned to an ancient Akkadian dictionary to look up traits of the characters to help with their names.

I don't know where Eliana's name came from – I think she just whispered it in my ear one day!

I wrote a few character bios, figured out their backstories and did some research on ancient Sumeria, and then I was off.

Writing every night was a real challenge, and my poor boyfriend barely saw me (or got any sleep) for about three months while I was working on the novel, but it's all been worth it. Even when I had writer's block, I found that the best way to break through it is just to force the words out. Make your fingers move over those keys and you'll be surprised at what comes out.

What's next
For those of you who have been asking – I'm really sorry, but there won't be a sequel to Whore of Babylon. At least, I'm not planning one at the moment. I'll never say never, but at the moment, I don't feel like there's any more story to tell. If there is a sequel, it will probably focus on the children and their lives, but right now I don't have any particular ideas for a gripping plot with them.

I need to get on with the redrafting now. I've printed the whole novel out and will be getting to work on editing over the next few days. When I'm happy with my second draft, I'll be submitting to an agent, and including some of your lovely comments about how you felt about the book as part of my submission package. If I have no luck with agents or traditional publishers, I'll be self-publishing it as an ebook, so all those of you wonderful people who have said you'd like to buy it will have that opportunity at some point. But I really hope I can get an agent and a publisher and get it out in paperback. I have always wanted to see my name on the front of a novel – it's been my ambition since I was tiny.

After that, I'll need a few weeks' break, but I'll be back to work on a new project soon. Eliana's story is the first in a series I'm planning about Biblical and ancient women. Who would you like to see me write about next? The options are:

Bathsheba
Esther
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Herodias / Salome

Or if you have any other suggestions of ancient or biblical women (real or allegorical) I'd be fascinated to hear them.

Finis!
So, that's that – all done and dusted and wrapped up. I really hope you've enjoyed Eliana's story, and thanks so much for reading. Without you, it wouldn't have happened.

A few stats to finish off:

I wrote this novel in 92 days, beginning to end
It contains 115,500 words, give or take
At the time of writing this, it has 1,011,500 reads
Nearly 27,000 votes
Over 3,500 comments

Thanks again for your support, all! Please feel free to comment on here with anything that you think should be covered in the rewrites, what worked and didn't work for you, and what you think I should work on next - this won't be the last you hear from me! :)

All the very best

TudorPrincess
(Azaria)