S. R. Hatcher

Assignment 1: A notorious thief must find and steal the heart of the princess’s late betrothed while navigating a debt to a fire-breathing dragon and the vicious politics of the black-market trade. Assignment 2: The dragon, Arnevir, is a red herring antagonist. He burns the protagonist, Odel, for pilfering his hoard and seals him to a debt that will end in Odel giving up the heart of his deceased beloved or falling slave to the dragon’s command. But the dragon is testing him, for he knows Odel is more than a thief, but the heir to the Old Kings before imperialism destroyed the throne. The true antagonists are Baron Vein and the Empress. The Baron is the cruel leader of the heart peddling guild who manipulates Odel into stealing the most valuable heart in the Empire and trading it for the heart of his love. Baron Vein is a womanizer, a crime boss, and motivated by his lust for flesh and coin. He is but a puppet to his chief benefactor, the Empress. She hoards the hearts the Baron collects and enslaves an army of half elves for their magic, which is fueled by said hearts. She herself is secretly half elf and is determined to reclaim the immortality generations of human oppression have taken from her race. But she wants all that power for herself, the rest of the half elves be damned. Assignment 3: The Heart Peddler Thief of Hearts The Heart Thief Assignment 4: The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty is my first comparison title. This fantasy is set around a talented thief who has magical abilities she does not understand. The thief embarks on a lengthy quest with someone of her ancestry who teaches her about the power she wields. The setting for the first half of my novel is quite similar to Chakraborty’s – a land of desert sand where religion and magic intertwine. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is my second comparable. It is a thieving fantasy centering around an impossible heist, morally grey protagonist, and multiple antagonistic forces at play. The utilization of flashbacks for character development is key to the storytelling. Also, those with magic are feared, hunted, and enslaved, treated as second-class citizens or worse. At the very end, there is a twist; a big reveal which unveils the true antagonist with a cliffhanger ending. Assignment 5: A desperate thief has been slave to the black-market heart trade for his entire life and seizes one final job which could grant him freedom. Assignment 6: Odel has a few drops of elven blood running through his veins. He is still considered a half elf and identifies as such with his pointed ears and dark hair. But he denies this part of his identity, hiding his ears like other half elves and disbelieving in the magical abilities his kind is rumored to possess. His circumstances are grim, having been plucked off the streets as a wayward orphan and forced into a life of crime, he is constantly chasing freedom in the form of “just one more job.” He must learn that chasing freedom is equivalent to running from it. Hypothetical Scenario: Inner Conflict Odel has taken “one more job” for the Imperial Princess and embarks on a journey with her to find and steal the heart of her late betrothed. The Princess reveals to him that the Imperial line is not purely human as mandated, but tainted with elven blood and the magical abilities which come with it. She is fully accepting of her identity as a half elf and attempts to teach Odel how to wield magic conjured from the memories held within the hearts he peddles. In the hope of buying himself the freedom he so desperately desires, Odel tries to conjure coins from the heart, but the spell goes terribly wrong as he never truly believed in magic, only the power of gold. He burns himself with the coins which turn to molten metal in his hand and must conjure another spell to heal himself. The emotional toll of conjuring a memory of his own hand from the heart of his deceased love is overwhelming. He angrily promises to never use heart magic ever again, the anxiety of coming face to face with the power he had denied his entire life and the shame of causing his true love’s death far too much to bear. It is easier to continue chasing a life of freedom and deny his ancestral powers. Hypothetical Scenario: Secondary Conflict Odel’s lifelong love was killed by Baron Vein, the leader of his black-market heart peddling syndicate, and he subconsciously takes responsibility for gambling her safety on a risky heist. Now he carries her preserved heart and is preparing to deliver it to the dragon to pay off his debt. But he was again enticed by a job offered by the Imperial Princess to steal back the golden heart of her late betrothed – the same heart he peddled to the Baron to get his true love’s heart back in the first place. He keeps this secret from the Princess and takes the job anyway. Now he must return his love’s heart to the dragon and re-steal the heart of the prince-to-be for the Princess. But Odel is falling in love… and of course denying it. When the Princess sits up with him at night after an arduous day of battling their enemies, Odel holds her hand. But in his pocket, he’s squeezing the heart of his love in the other. He is feeling guilty for loving the Princess not only because he is in mourning for his deceased partner, but because the Princess is enduring the same loss. Assignment 7: The Empire of Gladius is rich in history. Naervin, the continent to the North, is the ancestral land of the humans, who formed the Old Kingdom. A greedy king stretched the Old Kingdom to the Southern continent, Sorros, the ancestral land of the elves. With this imperial expansion, the Gladian Empire was born, and the power of the Old Kings lost to an undiscovered twin of the final King and first Emperor. Humans slaughtered elves for fear of their magical abilities, but stole their anatomical religion and the practice of embalming the heart after death. The Empress (or Emperor) rules Naervin and Sorros from Isle Meridi between the two continents, and the Imperial Princess lives in the Palace of Marion, Goddess of Women, in the farthest reaches of the South. The heart of the prince-to-be, who met an untimely demise before his marriage to the Princess, went missing on its guarded pilgrimage to the Tower of Trell, God of Men, in the farthest reaches of the North. The embalming of hearts makes them particularly valuable for collectors, jewelers, and criminals alike for the precious metals and gems which decorate them. The Hepatic Portal is the black-market heart peddling guild which controls the trade of these precious organs. Heart peddlers are skilled thieves who make it their occupation to hunt hearts, uncover details of their former masters in life, and trade them for ample amounts of coin. The Imperial Princess is abandoning her duties to employ and accompany Odel on a quest to recover the heart of her prince-to-be, the heart Odel had just peddled away. At every turn, Odel and the Princess are at risk of discovery not only by Imperial forces who would return the Princess to the shelter of her palace and execute Odel, but also from hired brutes enforcing The Hepatic Portal’s specific “no double dipping” policy. Odel could get in serious trouble if he is caught trying to peddle the same heart twice, not to mention that he is keeping this fact a secret from the very intelligent, but naïve, Princess. Odel is a Northern man with Northern customs, Naervin having been inspired by Anglo Saxon and Norse lands. But he is thrown into the mysterious sands of the South, where the Princess is most comfortable, but he is not, forcing him to adapt to a culture completely alien to him. It is a land inspired by Arabian myth and civilizations lost to war and time. Throughout their journey North through both continents, Odel and the Princess must challenge their cultural norms. All the while, an all-powerful dragon is breathing down Odel’s neck for fulfillment of a debt and the nomadic descendants of the Old Kings are rampaging lost adventurers for their supplies in the remote reaches of the Empire.