The Sound Empress: Intro and Table of Contents
The Sound Empress is a novel that sprouted from an response to an image prompt posted to the Writing Prompts subreddit. This prompt was posted as preparations for the 2020 edition of National Novel Writing Month were gearing up. With a good amount of free time on my hands at that point (this was during the pandemic, after all) I figured, why not give it a shot?
My response to the prompt formed much of Chapter 1, albeit reworked a bit, as I had to get up to the first encounter with the Sound Dispenser. Beyond that, I didn't do much planning - in total, I had about 3 pages of notes with the main characters and key non-character things.
During the month of November 2020, I managed to write about 52000 words - which means I “won”. It wasn't done though - I wrote a bit more in December, but it wasn't complete until April of 2021, when I finished the plot. Some edits were made over the next couple of years.
A brief synopsis of the whole thing: Kari, owner of a cat hotel, was taking care of a cat and during her quest to feed the cat, she ran into a special vending machine that sells cans with grooves on them, not unlike a vinyl record. When played on a player, they have messages. Her first can told her to head to the National Diet building in Tokyo, which she did with her best friend, Nari. Upon doing so, they were informed that the emperor is being threatened by the Korean Origin Force, which claims the succession chain is invalid, and they want to overthrow the government. The emperor tasked them with eliminating the force. Lots of cans later, as well as a failed attempt to join the force and a fortunate typhoon led them to the location of the headquarters. Both of them went to the headquarters to confront the leader of the force, which would prove successful.
I hope you enjoy this story.
Chapters:
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six