The War Masters Daughter is a new novel by Elly Zupko, an alumni of North Harford.
    Zupko currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, but she grew up in the Pylesville area on a four-acre property. She graduated from Goucher College in 2003 with a degree in English and writing. Her first job out of college was at a small Baltimore publishing house, where she edited 11 novels that would go on to publication. This experience gave her an edge on navigating the rapidly changing publishing world, and she shares her experience and knowledge on her blog, Stuff Your Eyes with Wonder.
    She has had both fiction and non-fiction pieces published in a variety of outlets, such as Preface, The Eloquent Atheist, The Baltimore Writer's Project, Why Vandalism? and APMP's Executive Summary. Her short stories What It Means to Be Alone and Fixed are available to read online through their respective publications.
    Writing a book is a challenging endeavor for any aspiring author, and Zupko’s experience was no different. In April 2011 she submitted to 30 agents, over 20 of them returned some form of rejection. Zupko said, “If one person is going to decide the fate of my book, it is going to be me.” She did make it happen.
    The War Master’s Daughter is now available in paperback and e-book formats.  John Updike said, “I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds.”
    Zupko decided to live by this idea when she independently published her novel under the SMLX books imprint. What does this mean?
   According to her blog, Zupko said, “As an author, I make approximately six times the royalties if you purchase from the publisher instead of from Amazon. That means more money goes toward the independent artist instead of to one of the largest corporations in the world.” Independent publishing, like any independent art, functions best when there is an active conversation between the artist and the patrons,the author and the readers. There are many famous authors in history who also self- published their own work, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman,Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, TS Elliot, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf.
    According to Zupko, The War Master's Daughter tells the story of battles we all fight—those with each other and those we wage within ourselves. In the novel, the main character is Lady Aurora of Cavalcata – the daughter of a popular military strategist. She commits herself to an unlikely adventure that incubates doubts about her faith, her love of country, and her very purpose in the world.  The novel is less about the history, however, than it is the philosophy and the romance.  The philosophies of Descarte, Locke, and Socrates all make a small appearance as Aurora discovers that the world around her is stranger, more violent, and more unforgiving than she could have ever imagined. In the book, Zupko writes, "Countries do not fight each other. Men fight each other. And they only fight so that they can stop fighting and go home. It is the most horrific irony in the world.”