Reader Question Day #50 – the new series
A few people have asked what I intend to do for my next series after DEMONSOULED is finished. This seems like an excellent topic for the first Reader Question Day of the new year!
I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do for the new series. It will be sword-and-sorcery/epic fantasy series, and so far I’ve cautiously titled it FROSTBORN. (This might change, though.) I haven’t set anything in stone yet, but here are some things I want to include in the series:
-The main character will be male, since when I want to write a book with a female protagonist, I have THE GHOSTS and Caina Amalas.
-The books will be shorter, around 60,000 words each. So the books will be more episodic, but connected by an overall plot arc. I’m thinking several shorter books, and then a few DEMONSOULED-sized ones to wrap up the series at the end.
-I want the world for the series to be connected to the real world in some way. Basically, I’m thinking about going with a “humans go through portal to magical world” plotline.
-I would like the books also to have real religions in them in some way, since I’m tired of Crystal Dragon Jesus. Real religions are more interesting than fake ones. And if humans go through a portal to a magical world, they’ll bring their religion with them. Christian missionaries evangelizing the orcish tribes would make for a fascinating plotline.
-I’d like the books to have the epic feel of a really well-run RPG campaign. If you’ve ever done a really good tabletop RPG (or one of the better computer ones, like BALDUR’S GATE or DRAGON AGE ORIGINS), you know what I mean. A long, immersive story, with characters you get to know and like and remember for years after (like Minsc the ranger or Morrigan the witch), and then a satisfying, appropriately epic conclusion.
-Finally, I would also like to plan the series a bit better. I wrote DEMONSOULED in 2001, SOUL OF TYRANTS in 2005, and then gave up on the series for six years. I had planned to write a sequel to SOUL OF TYRANTS at some point, but since I never got the book published, I completely forgot what I intended to do. So when I started SOUL OF SERPENTS in 2011, I had to improvise quite a bit.
THE GHOSTS were much the same way. I wrote GHOST IN THE FLAMES in 2008, and then GHOST IN THE BLOOD in 2009. When I couldn’t sell those, I wrote CHILD OF THE GHOSTS as a prequel in 2010. So when I continued that series with GHOST IN THE STORM and GHOST IN THE STONE in 2012, I had to do a bit more improvising.
The point is that I’ve learned a lot of lessons about writing since starting DEMONSOULED in 2001, and I would like to apply those lessons to the new series.
So those are the things I would like to do in a new series. I won’t start on it in earnest until I finish SOUL OF SWORDS (the final DEMONSOULED book) and whatever the seventh GHOSTS book turns out to be…but I am going to start working on it in 2013.
-JM
