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I thought writing seven books was the hard part.
Turns out, that was the fun part. When I finished Realms of the Fallen, I had seven complete novels. Seven stories filled with angels and demons, Heaven and Hell, alternate realms, redemption, temptation, dragons, and characters who rarely did what I originally intended for them to do. Finished. What a lovely word. Except apparently, writers have a rather flexible definition of finished. First came the proofreading. Then formatting. Covers. Descriptions. Publishing. Audiobooks. Videos. Social media. A website. Marketing. And then comes the truly peculiar part: trying to persuade people who have never heard of you to take a chance on characters you've lived with for years. Somewhere in all of this, I remembered something. The Wildwood wasn't finished either. A fourth book began taking shape. Meanwhile, The Book of Watchers still has a third book waiting for me to finish it. Mara's story isn't over, and neither is mine with her and perhaps even Lucifer. And of course, Yeshu’a follows us everywhere. What a savior. Right? So naturally, with two unfinished series already occupying my imagination, I had another idea. Because apparently that's what writers need. Another idea. This one, however, refused to stay neatly inside one series. What if characters from Realms of the Fallen encountered characters from The Wildwood? At first, that sounded a little wild even to me. These are separate series with their own characters, histories, dangers, and worlds. Then I remembered Realm of Dragons. And suddenly the pieces began fitting together. Dragons already belong naturally within the mythology of Realms of the Fallen. They also fit beautifully within the world surrounding the Wildwood. A story built around the Realm of Dragons could become the bridge between them, bringing characters from both series into one adventure without forcing either world to become something it isn't. And now my imagination has become thoroughly uncooperative. Characters who were never supposed to meet can meet. Histories can overlap. Someone from one world can know something desperately needed by someone from the other. Old characters can return without simply repeating their previous stories. They enter unfamiliar territory, surrounded by people who don't know what they've survived or who they once were. And, of course, there are dragons. Lots of possibilities there. So what happens after you finish seven books? Apparently, you proofread them. Publish them. Turn them into audiobooks. Make videos. Build a website. Promote them. Wonder whether anyone is ever going to discover them. Then, while you're doing all that, you write another book. And another. And somewhere along the way, two separate fictional worlds look across the distance at one another and say: Why haven't we met? Maybe Realm of Dragons will answer that question. I thought I had finished Realms of the Fallen. I'm beginning to suspect the characters simply let me believe that for a while.
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Blood of Light and AshBlood of Light & Ash: Where the Story Goes Next
I haven't written Blood of Light & Ash yet. That's an odd thing for an author to admit on a page devoted to the book, but perhaps it's also the best time to tell you about it. When I began Blood of Starlight, I didn't know exactly where Mara's journey would take her. By Blood of the Bone-King, her world had become far more complicated than anything I originally imagined. And now there are four little girls missing. Two sets of twins. Mara's daughters. Finding them will be at the heart of Blood of Light & Ash, but it won't be the only battle Mara faces. Some of the people she once feared have become allies. Others she trusted have given her reasons not to. And perhaps most troubling of all, she is beginning to discover that the man she has every reason to hate may not be the man she believed him to be. Solomon has his own story to tell as does Samyeza. And Lucifer? Well, Lucifer has never been particularly good at staying out of other people's stories. What fascinates me most about this third book isn't another prison or another escape. Mara has already survived those. Except, this time the questions are harder.
Blood of Light & Ash: Book of Watchers • Book Three Mara escaped the Bone-King. Now she has to find her daughters. The story is coming. And apparently, Lucifer is coming with it. When a Character Becomes Someone You Never ExpectedBlood of the Bone-King, book 2, Book of the Watchers
September 2 I’m editing one of my novels, Blood of the Bone-King, second in Book of Watchers series, and reading about the MMC, Solomon, in these early chapters is quite something. Almost painful. You see, early Solomon was so different. Of course, when I first wrote him, I didn't know who he would become. Now I know where I’ve taken him. Or perhaps where he’s taken me, the writer. What makes Solomon interesting is that he doesn't start out as a straightforward villain. He saves Mara. He's curious about her, fascinated by what she can do, and there are glimpses of genuine concern. Yet even here, I'm beginning to see the seed of the flaw that will eventually become enormous: Solomon can care deeply about Mara while still believing his judgment about what is best for her outranks her right to choose for herself. Knowing what comes later makes these early scenes rather unsettling. At one point Mara asks him: “How could you be there and not... do anything?” When I first wrote those words, Mara was asking why Solomon had once stood by while someone else hurt her. Tortured her. Reading them now, however, they sound almost like an accusation against the man Solomon will eventually become. The question could just as easily become: How could you love me and still do this to me? And perhaps that's the tragedy of Solomon. His problem isn’t, he feels nothing. It's that love, possession, protection, fear of losing someone, and the belief that I know what's best for you can become tangled together until even he may no longer recognize where one ends and another begins. Then, while I'm thinking about Solomon, my mind wanders to his brother. Maelor. Uh-oh. Spoiler territory. Let's simply say that Maelor has quite a hold over his brother. Which started me thinking about siblings in general. Brothers and even sisters can have extraordinary influence over us. After all, those relationships begin before we're fully formed. A sibling can become our first rival, protector, accomplice, tormentor, or mirror. And with Solomon and Maelor, we're talking about identical twins. That raises an even more interesting question: Where does one brother's identity end and the other's begin? Whatever Maelor becomes, Solomon cannot simply stop loving his brother. And every compromise Solomon makes for that love makes the next compromise a little easier. I'm only protecting my brother. I'm only protecting Mara. She doesn't understand the danger. She'll understand eventually. I had no choice. I'm doing this because I love her. And somewhere along the way, the man who once might have been horrified by certain choices becomes capable of making them himself. That's what makes rereading early Solomon rather poignant. I can still see the man he might have remained. But this is the Book of Watchers, and I'm not quite finished with Solomon yet. There was something worth saving in him before he became the man Mara needed to escape from. The question is... Can he find his way back? |
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