Hello and welcome to this Behind the Scene post, where today I’m welcoming author Melissa Blair to talk about her fantasy series The Halfling Saga, and in particular the first novel in the series. A Broken Blade is described as a “thrilling high-fantasy BookTok sensation about assassin Keera’s epic quest to bring down a tyrant king”. It’s the first instalment in the Halfling Saga, but intriguingly all four volumes in the series are being published at the same time – and are out now from Arcadia Books! Melissa has very kindly contributed an annotated excerpt from Chapter One of A Broken Blade, introducing the character of Keera and talking us through some of her aims for the chapter, and her decision making around what to include.
I always love getting glimpses like this of authors’ thought processes, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did! I think this excerpt gives a good sense of what A Broken Blade and The Halfling Saga are about, but at the end (to avoid spoiler risk) I’ve included the publishers’ blurbs (and covers) for all four books.
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I had seventeen blades concealed along my person, each one more than capable of killing the man in front of me.
MB: This line came from an acting exercise I did. I had never written anything in first person before this book. It was a struggle. No writing tips seemed to help so I YouTubed some acting exercises. I felt like I had to fully embody this bloodied, reluctant assassin to get the voice right. One exercise suggested writing a line that would help anchor the character for each scene. This is what I came up with early on, knowing that in my protagonist’s voice it was deadly, tired, but also detached. It became my way into her character every time I sat down to write the book. Then I realized it worked as the first line and I couldn’t help myself.
The slivers of steel tucked into my leathers would land a deadly strike before he even saw my arm move. The twin blades I had crossed against my back would be slower, but he was Mortal. Human. He couldn’t outrun me.
Any of my weapons would do, though I knew his life would end at the edge of the bloodred dagger holstered at my thigh. I only had to wrap my fingers around the bone hilt and levy the blow.
MB: This dagger was part of the initial vision I had for her character. I knew why she collected names, and I knew that she always had this dagger on her. I also knew the habit started out of vengeance but had slowly become her weapon of choice for killing innocents. I wanted to set up that motif early on so it was the only weapon I could use for this scene.
But I couldn’t kill him until I had what I needed.
“Please,” he whispered through swollen lips. A pleading look met my gaze, framed by the black eye I had given him the hour before. “I’ve told you everything I know!”
“You have been more obliging than most people I interrogate,” I said truthfully. Many of my targets waited until I spilled half their blood before they would spill their secrets. This man had caved after the third strike. He barely squirmed when I restrained him to the chair.
“I would do anything for the king! Anything! Just let me go. Please.” His last word came out as a pathetic whimper. I should have known this one was a crier.
“The king only requires one more thing of you before he extends his mercy,” I replied. My right hand rested on the white hilt of my dagger.
MB: This line is something the King has all his Shades (assassins) say when doling out lethal punishments. I wanted it to feel routine, almost scripted, but I also liked that mercy would be a major contradiction for the main character throughout the rest of the book and the series. What is mercy? Is there one definition for it or does the meaning change by the context? By what resources or options, one may have in specific instances? These are questions that echo through the main character’s mind frequently as the story goes on so I wanted this line to echo throughout the book in different contexts, forcing the reader to weigh the differences in the same way the protagonist did.
“Anything.” His voice cracked. Hot lines of tears poured down his cheeks as he rocked back and forth.
“A name.” I took a step toward him. He flinched. His wide brown eyes darted from my face to my hand and back again.
“I already told you. He called himself the Shadow. He hid behind the hood of his cloak. That’s all I know!” He leaned forward, fighting the ropes tied around his torso. Thick veins strained against his neck, pulsing almost as quickly as his breath. He knew what happened when the Blade was finished asking her questions.
MB: I had to make sure people knew we were dealing with a shadow wielder from the get-go.
“Not that name,” I whispered. I didn’t need any more information for the king. This name was just for me.
“What name? I’ll give you any name you want,” he said. Sweat pooled along the sparse hairs of his lip.
I needed to end this. I was being cruel.
“Your name,” I answered.
MB: Collecting names was the entire catalyst for her character. I had this idea floating around my head for months about a heartbroken woman who collected names and what she did with them (that’s intentionally vague and spoiler-free). When the inspiration for the Halfling Saga came to me and the foundational story of the protagonist, I knew that I’d found the perfect story for the depressed assassin who collects the names of her kills.
He still stared at me, but his eyes lost focus as he slumped against the back of the chair. He swallowed. “Why?”
I hated these moments most. When a person’s resolve melted away and they accepted their fate. Accepted that I would kill them. Surprise deaths were much easier.
MB: It was important to me that in this first scene the reader has the sense that this character is deadly and dangerous. Well-trained and well-equipped. But I wanted to add some hints that she struggled with it too. That she didn’t take joy in it, no matter how blood thirsty her reputation was to other characters in the book and how callous the first few lines sounded to readers.
I lifted a gentle hand to his chin and pulled his gaze back to mine. My brown braid fell forward and tickled his cheek.
“How about a name for a name? You give me yours and I’ll give you mine.” It was all I could offer him. A sense of control in his final moment.
His brows raised as he blinked back at me. He gave me a single, slow nod.
“Mathias,” he whispered. “My name is Mathias.” His eyes traced my face waiting for mine. A flicker of curiosity replaced his dread.
MB: This ending dynamic was one of the bigger challenges for me. It was my first time writing first person POV. My first time writing a fantasy romance. And my first time writing a character who had a title and didn’t have many friends or connections who would use her first name. (It’s much easier to slip a name in naturally when writing in third person.)
But as I wrote the draft of the book, I learned more about my main character. A huge part of her sense of self is trying to bring things into balance, trying to be fair whenever she can because so much is outside of her control.
The deal she makes here with Mathias works on a structural level but also sets up the protagonist as someone who is always toying with the scales of justice. Offering secret deals the king knows nothing about.
“Mathias…” I said, unsheathing my dagger in one quick motion.
“My name is Keera.” His throat was cut before the last word was said.
MB: And now you finally know her name! Strangely, this was the last line of the book that I wrote. I remember thinking it was a funny, full circle moment when I typed it out.
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A Broken Blade
As the King’s Blade, Keera is the most talented spy in the kingdom – and the king’s favourite assassin. When a mysterious figure moves against the crown, Keera is called upon to hunt down the so-called Shadow. But as she tracks her target, she’s shocked by what she learns and can’t help but wonder who her enemy truly is: the king that destroyed her people or the Shadow that threatens the peace?
A Shadow Crown
To the kingdom, Keera is the King’s Blade. But in secret, she works with Prince Killian and his Shadow – the dark, brooding Fae, Riven, who sets her blood on fire. Together, they plot to kill a tyrant king. But when a traitor is discovered in their midst, Keera is the top suspect. And now she has more to lose than she ever imagined…
A Vicious Game
A new king is on the throne and the rebellion lies in ruins. With new intelligence about the magical seals left behind by Keera’s ancient kin, the Light Fae, she rallies to face her demons and unleash the formidable powers she inherited from her people. But a shocking truth is hiding in plain sight, one with the power to unravel the entire rebellion…
An Honored Vow
Keera’s discovery of a staggering secret about her lover and the kidnapping of one of her closest allies threatens to tip her back into darkness, but she has no time to rest. Opening the kingdom’s magical seals has transformed Keera in ways no one could have anticipated, and now she and her allies must gather an army to meet Damien’s forces in a final confrontation of epic proportions.
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Melissa Blair is an Anishinaabe-kwe of mixed ancestry living in Turtle Island. She splits her time between Treaty 9 in Northern Ontario and the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Canada. She has a graduate degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies, loves movies, and hates spoons. Melissa has a BookTok account where she discusses her favourite kinds of books including Indigenous and queer fiction, feminist literature, and non-fiction.
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Many thanks to Melissa for contributing this excerpt and commentary, and also to Ayo from Arcadia Books for organising everything. Hopefully that’s given you a sense of what to expect from A Broken Blade (and The Halfling Saga as a whole), and whetted your appetite to get hold of a copy!
A Broken Blade is published by Arcadia in hardback, audio and ebook – check out the link below to order your copy*:
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