This post is a testimony to my failed willpower. Because I had been determined to keep my NaNoWriMo project firmly on the back burner until I was done editing The Sword Unsheathed, but over the past few days it’s started furiously bubbling over, and finally today I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I gave in and wrote a blurb (and designed a cover, and spent most of this afternoon reading about Roman naming conventions for the fun of it, but I digress).

Wales, AD 94. The rebel leader Caradog is dead. Governor Frontinus’ long and bitter campaign to crush Silurian resistance has ended in victory for Rome, and the new capital city of Venta Silurum stands in shining testimony to that. But it’s the pride and blindness of Rome to think the trappings of civilization are enough to heal the old battle wounds.

17-year-old Marius Cassius Viator feels the tension between conqueror and conquered more keenly than most. The son of a Roman father and a Silurian mother, Marius has never quite belonged to either world. When his father, the hard-bitten veteran commander of the garrison at Isca Silurum, is nearly murdered, all the evidence points unmistakably to Marius, who finds himself on the run even as war clouds gather once more. Can he clear his name and find a place for himself in his father’s world? Does he even want to?

Aquae is a retelling of the fairy tale “The Water of Life.”

And here’s the cover I designed for it: