Island of Fog Book IV: Lake of Spirits

I've started work on the fourth book in the Island of Fog trilogy (?) and, as usual, have given it a title and cover well before it's anywhere near finished.

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Lake of Spirits deals with "one of the lost," as Simone calls them -- shapeshifters who transformed at a very early age and were unable to shift back. Poor Jolie was just a one-year-old baby, part of an experimental shapeshifter program in Simone's world, when she turned into a jengu water spirit and stuck in that form.

This is why shapeshifters have to be born and raised in our world, to delay that first transformation; something in the air, perhaps the lower oxygen content, delays the process. Heck, it's hard enough for older children to will themselves back to normality, never mind those still in diapers! Faced with raising a creature they knew little about, the scientists had no choice but to hand Jolie over to others of her kind, the mysterious people of the lake. They never saw her again.

Simone was just a teenager when all this happened. Now Jolie herself is a teenager, and Simone is busy introducing Hal and his friends to their new home. It occurs to Simone that with the help of Abigail's little glass faerie ball, which unlocks deep-seated memories and abilities, she might be able to bring Jolie back into the human world.

This is a tale of paranoia, betrayal, and impending doom. Think of sirens luring ships onto rocks; Jolie may seem sweet-natured, but she's incredibly dangerous, as Hal and his friends slowly discover. Can they figure her out before the proverbial ship smashes itself to bits?

Woven into this story is a minor subplot, barely a mention here and there, of something that will become the focus of Book 5. Oh, I get excited thinking about it! But that's a way off yet. :-)

Some have asked how you can have four books in a trilogy. Well, you can't, but you can have a trilogy within a series. Books 1-3 are a trilogy, a three-part story that ends with loose threads tied up (for the most part). But for those who want to continue reading, Book 4 continues on directly and forms what might be considered the first part of a second trilogy. For some reason, multiples of three works for me. Look at the Star Wars saga -- you have the original three movies, which were parts 4, 5 and 6, and then you have the more recent prequel movies, which were parts 1, 2 and 3. They work as trilogies within a series. Will George Lucas do parts 7, 8 and 9? Well, in any case, I can easily see the Island of Fog series spreading over 6-9 novels, in groups of three. Or maybe I'll abandon the trilogy idea and just do one-off stories... I don't know. Hey, as the author, I reserve the right to change my mind as I go. Let's see where the story takes me.