About A Splintered Soul

A lot of people ask me why, when I say that my novel is Children of the Crescent Moon, is my first book called A Splintered Soul? Did I change the name of it? Well, not quite.

When I approached Red Cape Publishing with my Children of the Crescent Moon manuscript, and told them the length, of some 350,000 words, they told me it was too long (even though that's shorter than "A Game of Thrones" by George RR Martin, and comparable with the length of "Lord of the Rings") and asked me if I could perhaps split it in two or three. I didn't like the idea of that since Children of the Crescent Moon was itself a part of a trilogy, with Eyes of the Crescent Moon as the second novel and Hunters of the Crescent Moon the third. While I haven't finished either Eyes or Hunters, I have done first and second drafts of both, and they aren't far off publishable quality. Eyes probably is at that level now, but Hunters perhaps isn't quite there yet, but it's close.

So why would I split something that is already a part of a trilogy? I hated the idea. Would I have a trilogy within a trilogy? Well, I kind of already do, as the Crescent Moon trilogy is just one of four trilogies overall, though I have only written first drafts of the second trilogy and parts of the third, and loosely planned out the fourth. The second is Gods, followed by Dragons and then finally Stars. So if I had three books within three within four then I'd have 36 in total. It made my had spin a bit to think of that many.

The problem was trying to find a sensible spot to split it, a spot where the novel naturally ends.

There is a spot, but it is fairly early on, the first part that makes me cry when I read it. But then where is the half-way mark? There was one possible point, or a second, but they were both after half-way, which would mean that I'd have to add more content to the first half to make it balanced, and that'd mean either doing flashbacks or else starting at an earlier point in the story, but I'd already theorised both of them and people don't like that. The story starts where it wants to start.

So what about having a trilogy then? Where is the one-third mark?

And again I find myself drawn to that first tear-filled moment, but it's far too early to be the first of just three. Do I add more content before then? But no. That's constant action to that point. It wouldn't make sense, not unless I add some flashbacks or start earlier on. I could add some flashbacks though. There are a few that make sense.

So then I went through and isolated the important scenes, the moments where I could end the novel happily.

I counted seven.

There were seven spots where I could happily end the novel.

They weren't neatly at one-seventh spots in the novel's progression, as some were quite close to each other while others were a distance apart, but that was okay as I could add more content to fill them in. The more that I thought about it, the more that seven made sense.

As for the names, the first one I decided would be one of my alternate names for Children of the Crescent Moon as a whole.

The first name I had for the book, as many people know, was Star Children. The reason I called it Star Children was initially because they were marked with a birthmark on their foreheads of a star. But then I changed that birthmark to a moon and eventually a crescent moon, and then in later versions got rid of it entirely and just made it a sigil. I pretty quickly went from Star Children to Children of the Crescent Moon. It was Star Children for all of 6 months, it was Moon Children and Children of the Moon for a day, and Children of the Crescent Moon for more than 30 years now.

But I had considered other names.

At one point I was going to call it Assassins of the Gods, or Assassins of the Crescent Moon, and then there was one weird one that I considered, of A Splintered Soul.

A Splintered Soul was because of Sarah, one of my two main characters, being a bit romantic and wanting to find her true love. She is in love with her tutor but he doesn't like her back, so when she finds George she decides that he is her soulmate, and she knows about the story of the splintered soul, two lovers who dive into a volcano and their souls merge so that when they are reincarnated a bit of each other's souls lives in the other body, making it physically painful to be apart.

So A Splintered Soul is kind of Sarah's idea of who Sarah and George are, because she wants to be in love, and wants this to be special. Nobody else agrees with her, and she's wrong, but that's what she thinks.

It's a poor title for the book as a whole because this is not a romance book, but it is good in terms of thinking that it is or might be. It's based on Sarah's hope that everything will work out in the end. But then it doesn't.

So this title is really aimed at tricking the reader into thinking that everything is going to be okay in the end.

And when it isn't, you realise that the book title is a lie.

You've got yourself an unreliable narrator, someone who thinks things are one way but they're not.

And finally, the readers, like Sarah herself, are left disappointed, because this is not just a fun little book that you can read safely. This is not a safe book where little bad things happen at different points but then it all works out in the end. This is not a book where main characters have plot armour and nothing bad can happen to them.

This is a dangerous book where bad things can happen, even to the main characters, even to the point where main characters who you grow to know and love, can die, and not come back.

The story of the splintered soul is a lie, imagined by some foolish romantic, and it doesn't apply to Sarah and George anyway.

If you believe that this is truly the story of a splintered soul then you, dear reader, are a fool.

This is the story of the Children of the Crescent Moon, the assassins of the Gods, who have incredible powers when they hold hands, and who must use those powers to kill the greatest hero the world has ever known before he enslaves humanity.