The Guillotine | ONC 2022

Authors note

I guess one ONC wasn't enough, so here is my second shot at this contest.

Those, who know my work, are surely not surprised with my choice of the topic. Honestly, I was planning it for a very long time, it was only a matter of time till I'd write something about the French revolution.

So without further ado here are the prompts I used:

#18 There was something inside me that wouldn't stop until the whole world was covered in blood.

#54 What good can come from being tangled with a Duke, especially when you're  commoner without a noble status

Here I just changed the Duke to an important revolutionary ;)

#64 We live in fear of ghosts- but what if ghosts live in fear of us?

This one I used only slightly and with a symbolic meaning.

Now, before I let you start reading I feel the need to rant about, in how many ways writing this book feels weird to me.

Firstly, I decided to write it, made up the basics of the story, did loads of research and wrote the first 2000 words in under 24 hours. Normally I take ages to even make up my mind whether to write something or not.

Secondly, the lead character and narrator is a female. Despite being a woman, I usually prefer writing about men. Who knows why? I just feel more comfortable like that, but here I just decided to try something new.

Thirdly, I'm writing the book originally in english, so it could be grammatically better than my translations, but it might have a different feel to it for this reason. I don't know why, but the language somehow changes the character of what I write.

Fourthly (does this word even exist?), I am writing about a for me foreign country. Normally I try to write only about the places I know so that I can fully grasp their mood and so I don't mix up any facts about the country, but I read and researched so much on the French revolution, that I think it should be just fine.

Fifthly (I swear, this is the last thing), I tried to make it more historically accurate than my other novels with historical themes. But, although I really tried to stick to what happened, the real events are only a background for the stories of my characters. All the main characters are fictional, so please don't take it as a documentary, it's most importantly a very dramatic work of fiction. ;)

And sixthly (sorry, so this is the last thing), the main character will be even more of a psychopath than my usual protagonists and she will be narrating the story, so I warn you beforehand. She'll have weird opinions on things. Those are not my opinions, I meant it to be scandalous.

Well… after reading through my crazy thoughts, I think you deserve to read the actual story, so feel free to head over to the two 'pseudo prologues' of this book. :)