Almost three years ago, my father, architect Ken Tate, said he had a brilliant idea for a story about a New York architect who was kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire and taken blindfolded to some remote part of the world where the wealthy man ordered him to design an enormous palace. The architect refused. Angry, the wealthy man placed him against his will in a secluded library with a sole drafting table and some writing utensils, and instructed him to start drawing the building or he would never be allowed to leave the place.
I loved the idea. And as luck would have it, at the start of Covid, my writing and editing schedule cleared a bit, and I had some free time, so I sat down to write the first couple of pages of the manuscript.
By this point, Dad and I had changed the main character to a female architect instead of a male, which I liked better anyway.
A labor of love, I worked on the book for the next 6 to 8 months back and forth with Dad, who also drew over 40 drawings and sketches for it (we also hired Alabama architect, T. Scott Carlisle, and a Canadian renderer named Brandon Cesarone to help render the palace) and then it went to our editing team, Holly and Agustin, in the UK.
In the first draft, the main character was kidnapped, but Agustin said it made no sense that the eccentric man who kidnapped our architect, Meg Summers, could be a kind, good fellow and still take her against her will. Also, I had developed quite a romantic love story between her and the wealthy man and the kidnapping just felt awkward and out of place, so I wrote it out completely. I also developed a much better back story that I think really draws you into the land and the people. In the end, I love what we ended up with—a story about a frustrated, but successful Hamptons architect, who on the heels of a divorce is summoned by a man from her past to Hawaii with a mysterious note, to design a fantasy building that fulfills all her wildest dreams. I hope you love it as much as we loved writing it!
