Hello fellow reader of books,

This week has been my first week of Spring Break, which means no school. Usually on breaks from school I would read a large stack of books, but relatives flew out to visit us and we have been travelling around and visiting places. 

I call it research!

Monday we visited a castle in a forested area of Germany which had an amazing weaponry full of all sorts of medieval weapons. Man, I would have loved to have taken a whole bunch of reference pictures for possible weapons for Hope to use, but no pictures were allowed to be taken inside of the castle. 
 
I still got a lot of information though. The Divine Leader’s  castle in my story is based off of a small sixth grade unit we did on castles.  That was seriously about all of the information I had besides typical fairy
  tales and what-nots that tell of Princes living in amazing Palaces. One of the projects had the class split in groups of some number around five and construct  a castle out of old toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, cereal boxes, and  whatever trash we could find. 

That castle that my group completed (finished with paint and  little statues inside of it) is the model of the one in my story. Now that I  have seen a few real castles I am able to describe more details about it besides the typical: Moat, Drawbridge, statues, and large doors. 
 
On one of my ‘research missions’ (my family would call them  vacations) we meandered about the Louvre. The place had amazing ceilings and
  one of the artworks on the roof had a picture of a fire breathing dog on it!
Writing this blog post has made me remember that I was going to look the dog up
to see if he had any special symbolism. Who knows, one of my upcoming stories
might mention a fire breathing dog.


Today we are heading out to one of my favorite local castles
  because it is unpopular and they let us touch everything! They have games set
  up in the courtyard that Medieval children would play and the experience is
  super neat. Hopefully on the next post I can add a bunch of pictures of
  randomly-not-so-random things!



Till next time,


Natasha Rayne

I am now published!!!

The excitement and happiness I feel can’t even begin to be put into words; and I have spent quite a while figuring out how to put a lot of different things into words. This week has been absolutely amazing and totally just, MY WEEK. I turned 16 Tuesday and the very next day my book was released for both paperback editions and e-book editions.

I know I have an acknowledgment section in my book and all that good stuff, but I wanted to say one more thank you. I want to thank everyone who helped me finish writing and tacking on such a huge project and stick with me. I need to thank my cover artist for listening to my rambles about what I wanted and helping me out with having cover art considering I am no artist (seriously, you should SEE my stick figures). I would also like to thank my Map artist. I have the big version framed and hung in my room!

I have to thank my lovely Aunt/Editor as well. I am not great at grammar or spelling actually. If I didn’t have word to back me up, my book would be very hard to understand. Everybody has a week point, mine happens to be commas and homophones.

What else is there for me to say? Thank you all of those that are supporting me by buying my book (either e version or paperback). If you bought the paperback version, I will sign it if you get it to me somehow.

Can you believe it? I am a published author at 16, albeit I did self-publish… but still. To join the rank of those I have always admired as I read books quickly and escaped to different worlds; I am happy to share my world with many readers!

Sorry for the shortness,

Natasha Rayne