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So, I’ve been teasing you guys with the Top Secret Project for a while (almost a year) as I flesh it out and learn more about the characters. I’m ready to start writing finally, so I’ve decided to make it this year’s NaNo Project. And its name is Book of Souls.
I still can’t tell you a whole lot about the story, because it’s high concept and I don’t want anyone stealing it, but I can give you a general idea of what the book is about. It’s set in a world where reincarnation is the main belief and soul-bonds are the strongest relationships. As I mentioned in my last post, there is no such thing as marriage in this world. There is the soul-bond, which is your relationship with the person you feel most connected to in life – whether that be your best friend, your sibling, your parent, or your mate – and there is your mate, who is there for the purpose of having children. You can dissolve a mating pair quite easily unless that person is your soul-bond (it wouldn’t do to tell your bond that you don’t want to mate with them anymore!), but it’s very difficult to dissolve a soul-bond, as the MCs soon figure out.
The technology is Renaissance and the Library is most important building in the center of the city, taking the place of the church. They do believe in God, but they believe in knowledge more. The city my characters start out in is Bruges, Belgium, with all of its canals and townhouses, and the city they end up in is Alethia (totally made up), on the banks of the Lethia River (also totally made up, but not by me). On the other side of the city is the Forgetter Territory, and the people on this side of the river are known as Rememberers. At 13 years old every Rememberer has their memories opened to them, and that’s where we’ll start off.
Neona and Sean are the POV characters (Neona would be considered the Main Character, but Sean gets his POV sometimes too, because halfway through Neona…well…let’s just say her POV turns into a jumbled mess and it would be un-readable). Nea’s best friend is Alicia, and she’ll be leaving her soul-bond behind to go on a crazy adventure to Alethia with the other two. And that’s about all I can tell you without giving away a good majority of the plot, and what makes this story so unique.
Rebecca Enzor 
That sounds super interesting, stickynotes ! I like the soul-bond idea, and it seems you have something intense prepared. 🙂
Sounds interesting. 🙂
Looking forward to reading more!
Color me intrigued! Sounds like a fascinating world. I also really like the idea of the Library being the most important building. 🙂
Foof – did I add you to the LJ for BoS? I trust you with more info than what I put above 🙂
Loved your summary! I’m partial to stories that deal with reincarnation–and I’m a sucker for Plato, so I like that you’re making use of the River Lethe.
I’m still intrigued by the fact that, in this story, you can be soul-bound to someone who isn’t your mate. That’s refreshing; sometimes there’s too much romantic , er, ‘soul-mate-ness’ when reincarnation is in the picture. The romantic aspects of soul-mates can be done very well, of course, but I love the idea that your relationship with your soul-mate might not be completely asexual and non-romantic instead.
JRosemary – I’m glad you like that aspect of it 🙂 It makes sense to me that if you were reincarnated it wouldn’t always be as the same sex. The whole point of reincarnation is to experience life differently each time (which, I might point out, is not so easy when you can remember your last life) so it would make no sense to always come back as the opposite sex of your soul-bond. In fact, siblings are one of the strongest soul-bonds known to this world, but you can’t mate with your sibling.
I’m really excited to start writing and flesh it out a bit! 🙂
Well, being the same sex as your soulmate is no bar to being romantically involved. (Not in this world, anyway. Is your story world thoroughly heterosexual? When I write romance, it’s almost invariably gay or lesbian, so we may be at opposite extremes.)
But, that said, I love the idea that your soulmate might be your sibling or your best friend with no romantic connotations. It’s refreshing!
Oh, no I meant as far as having children. You can’t be mated to a person of the same sex or family, because you can’t have children with them. But you could have a mate of the opposite sex for having children, and you could also have a romantic relationship with your soul-mate who is of the same sex as you. So Ali and her soul-mate would have a romantic relationship, but they are both females in this generation so they can’t have children together. One or both of them would find a mate to have children with, and they would probably all live together with the mate’s soul-bonds as well (hmmm, need to think on this more…).
Ah, I see! Now I like this even better, since, in some cases, it will apparently lead to an interesting composition of households!