A difficult decision...

I've been living in The Realm - the world of the trilogy and the current book - for years. I know these characters inside out and upside down. I have so many more of their stories to tell. But I've made the difficult decision that I will probably only be telling those stories to myself.

Why?

The law of diminishing returns. Of 100 people who read the first book of the trilogy, fewer than 100 will read the second. Perhaps all who read the second will go on to read the final part of the trilogy, but perhaps not. Ditto for a fourth book in the series. For a fifth book? Who knows how many will keep going with it. Quite probably only a small %. However, it still costs me a year of work (near enough) to write the book, plus the same costs for editing, cover design and so on, but with only a fraction of the return. It doesn't necessarily make commercial sense to keep going.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on UnsplashOn top of that, "book #10" is burning a hole in my brain. I started thinking about this book over two years ago, on a trip to visit my good friend Jackie McLean (read all about her here). I made notes - enough to plan out some stuff but not so many that I ended up writing the book. I've been adding to those notes on and off since then. More recently, the characters have started prodding me a bit more, asking when it will be their turn. "Soon, my darlings, soon," I keep promising them. Eventually they will make me keep my word.

It's not been an easy decision to make. I've been mulling it over for a while now. I still love Aeron and Faran and the world they live in. I can still see their lives ahead: their adventures; their successes; their defeats. I will no doubt keep writing about them - I already have a Scrivener file called "Aeron and Faran stories" and maybe in the future I will publish them as a stand-alone companion piece (or give it away to my newsletter readers). But another full-length novel? Probably not.

So what's happening in "book #10"? More magic. A cailleach figure. A haunted house. Some amazing stuff.

It will be your turn soon, my darlings. Soon.

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