O, deep sea

O more duboko

Sva moja radosti

Po tebi meni plovi

Cvite moje mladosti

I have been putting off my proof read of The Fatewreaker. Not the proofread proofread. The book is available for preorder. It is done. It is complete. What I mean is my manual read-through of the physical proof copy. I do so every time, with every book. It is a ritual of sorts, a formal finishing of the story in my mind, permission to start The Next Thing and archive my file folder of materials.

I’ve been putting it off because I already miss it. And if I close the file, if I put away the things that I used to put together this third book of the Bookminder trilogy . . . then it’s really over.

I already miss this story and its wizards. I miss its location and the meaning it holds for me. These books . . . they are personal in a way I never expected or anticipated.

That’s on me, of course. I should have seen it coming. Setting things in Istria, choosing to highlight Croatia as a place of wonder and mystery, desiring to put into print that vague sense of romance and magick that I had long felt when connecting to my heritage — that’s on me that I didn’t think it would hurt to type “The End” eventually.

Nagarath and Liara are my friends. And these make-believe friends have led to more friends, real people in the real world. Talented and lovely people from across the globe who, if I don’t have my Croatian wizards to connect us . . . will we stay in touch?

The books I can return to, sure. That physical paperback proof I am avoiding? It’ll wait for me on my office book shelf. But the time in which I wrote these stories, the person I was when the idea developed? That time is gone; that ‘me’ is a memory. You can read its shadow in a trilogy of fantasy books set in 17th century Istria.

And, I suppose, that’s alright. After all, I write stories set in a forgotten, fictionalized past. Which is all that present ‘us’ ever truly remembers.

And therein lies the beating heart of tradition, of the idea of ‘heritage’ really. Stories told and retold, reimagined, remixed, repurposed and enjoyed by the next generation . . . Impressions and memory, blended inside the soul and shared with love.

So maybe, in the end, I’m only avoiding finding the inevitable typo which somehow managed to sneak past multiple edit passes and many eyes. Or, maybe, I’m simply ducking the massive amount of work which the next book will require. Because the story, this story . . . it keeps going. Which was the point of the whole thing anyway.