Reader Question Day #10 – all about Caina Amalas and THE GHOSTS
As it happens, this week's Reader Question Day is almost all about Caina Amalas, elite spy and main character of THE GHOSTS series. So fair warning – spoilers for THE GHOSTS, along with the Caina stories in the SWORD & SORCERESS anthologies, follow bellow.
Katie asks:
In Sword and Sorceress 25 (I think) Caina is reunited with Ark, and he helps her out. However, at the end of Ghost in the Blood it sounds like he retires from an active ghost role to become more of a spy ghost. Is he still happily living with his family, or back to doing more active ghost work?
That will be a major plot point in the next book in the series, GHOST IN THE STORM, which I'm hoping to start writing this month. Ark will be one of the three point-of-view characters in GHOST IN THE STORM – I figure he's been in two novels and a short story now, so it's time he had some POV chapters of his own.
Basically, the discrepancy comes because Caina is twenty at the end of GHOST IN THE BLOOD, but she's closer to twenty-eight at the end of the short story SWORD & SORCERESS 25.
In Sword and Sorceress 23, Halfdan dies, and it seems so sudden and abrupt, especially after learning so much about him in your longer works. Was that story written before your longer works? I liked him as a character, and thus was saddened when I re-read the Sword and Sorceress story after your longer works.
Yes. I wrote the Caina stories in SWORD & SORCERESS 22 and SWORD & SORCERESS 23 in the spring of 2007 and the spring of 2008. Since people responded well to the character, I started writing the first novel in summer of 2008. I wrote the novels later, but in terms of the story's continuity, they predate all the SWORD & SORCERESS short stories. Halfdan started out as a fairly minor figure in the SWORD & SORCERESS 23 story, but as I fleshed out Caina's background in the novels, he became an increasingly important figure to Caina's life.
Eventually (if my health and finances enable me to keep writing) the novels will catch up to the continuity of the short stories, and flesh out some of the events around Halfdan's death and Caina's fight against Ryther – who was one of Maglarion's students.
Will you next story take place with Caina still as a ghost, or more after your short stories where she is working directly as the Emperors spy? If it is the former, do you ever plan to write more on the latter? It would be fascinating to learn how she built up her new reputation and gathered spies for herself.
GHOST IN THE STORM will take place about three weeks or so after the end of GHOST IN THE BLOOD, still in the city of Marsis. I plan to keep writing both THE GHOSTS novels and short stories as long as people keep buying them. 
Manwe asks:
Who would win in a fight, Mazael or Caina?
An interesting question. Mazael Cravenlock is the main character from my other series, DEMONSOULED.
In a straight physical fight, Mazael would win, quite quickly. Caina is younger than Mazael, and in excellent physical condition, and has had excellent combat training and experience. However, Mazael has sixty or seventy pounds of muscle on her, before his Demonsouled strength comes into play. He's also a knight, which in the context of the setting means he has lived and breathed warfare since he first held a sword at the age of seven. He's been in every sort of fight and every sort of battle, and knows all the tricks. In additional, he is Demonsouled, and quite accustomed to physical pain, which means he could heal from almost any wound Caina inflicted on him, and it is unlikely Caina could inflict enough pain to incapacitate him. Unless Caina managed to behead him or completely destroy his heart (pretty much the only way to kill a powerful Demonsouled), Mazael would win.
On the other hand, Caina is smarter and vastly more perceptive than Mazael. He's not intellectual the way Caina is – Mazael regards reading as a tool, like a hammer, and would no more read for pleasure than he would hammer nails for fun. Mazael is stronger than Caina, but Caina has defeated enemies much more powerful than Mazael by exploiting their weak points. If given time to prepare, Caina would come up with a plan capable of defeating Mazael, one that he would never see coming.
Still, Mazael may not be intellectual, but that's not the same thing as stupid. It's entirely possible he might realize Caina's plan and act to defuse it. So whether Caina or Mazael wins in a fight depends on how well Caina's plan works.
-JM
