Honesty

You may have noticed that January is half over and no Book 8 has emerged.

I promise I’m not trying to be coy, or build suspense, and I’m not going to be that Thrones fella who never finishes his series. The final Shadow World book is coming, but I cannot at this time give you a firm release date. Again I apologize. I fully intended to finish the book in the last months of 2023. That was the plan and I believed I could do it, but it turns out I couldn’t.

I’m going to level with you here, and I am not in any way trying to draw sympathy. I just want you to know what’s been going on so hopefully you can forgive my flakiness and continue to humor me.

Honestly I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write. The last few years have been hell on my creativity and confidence. I am working to regain those things. To write like I do, I really have to be deeply involved in my characters and feel the hot flush of my work. I need to cry when something sad happens and feel the prickles up and down my arms that I feel when I’ve “caught” a scene. It’s a feeling of rightness; it’s not always pleasant, but it’s right. When I feel that I know I’m doing what I’m made to do.

Let me tell you, disillusionment and unremitting major depressive disorder were not in my plan when I was young and knew, just KNEW, I’d be a “famous author” one day. (Whatever that even means.) I’m good at what I do. I know that. But being a good writer is meaningless if you don’t, well, WRITE.

I finished Shadow Rising by the skin of my teeth in terms of the emotional energy I had to work with. The last few years have wrung me out.

I have put so much of myself into these novels–I poured my heart into Queen of Shadows, and throughout the series I have fed my despair, sadness, hope, and belief into the characters. Nothing that Miranda feels is something I have not felt. I hope that it shows! I’ve always believed emotional honesty is key to characters that feel “alive.” The problem is, I only have so much fuel. I have had very little to give my beloved world in the last few years. It’s all been devoted to, and this is not an exaggeration, staying alive, and to some extent functional.

It’s also possible that I’m afraid. Once the last book is written, the Shadow World series is over. Not to say that I’d never revisit it, especially in short story form like Met by Midnight, but a whole era of my life would be concluded, for better or for worse. It may turn out to be the end of me as a writer.

I know that’s not true, or at least it doesn’t have to be. Neither does my fear that having given so much to the SW series I won’t ever be able to do it again. How do you invest so much in a world and the people in it and just…move on? I have no idea. I don’t know how other authors do it. Think of any fictional world that you’ve truly loved and think about what the author did next. I bet it wasn’t all that great, and if they came up with something else just as immersive that affected people as strongly as the first one…how the hell did they do it? I have no idea. I’m scared to find out. I’m sure part of my psyche was like, “well…let’s just never finish!”

Like I said, I’m working on all of this. My Word of the Year for 2024 is “rekindle,” specifically bringing life back to those parts of me that seem to have died out. Wish me luck. More than that, wish me a spark.