Book 4 of the Island of Fog Legacies just about finished

Posted on June 11, 2017 (Subscribe to Blog)

I reached the end of my latest project, Haunted Fortress (Island of Fog Legacies #4), and just need to write an epilogue to wrap things up and then go back and write a chapter and a half to slide into place in the first half of the book. Then it's time for a complete read-thru and edit.

HAUNTED FORTRESS
(Island of Fog Legacies #4

Young shapeshifters Travis and Melinda are tasked with visiting the infamous Haunted Fortress to uncover its dark secrets. The residents of Hemlock, a small seaside village, have been seeing a phantom figure on and off for the past two hundred years. The phantom has many names -- Screeching Witch, Fiery Goddess, Ghoulish Ghost, and Mechanical Lady for starters -- but she's mostly known as the Snake Lady, a naga who appears out of thin air and then vanishes again.

The fortress is something to behold, floating above the sea just off the coast. And what's with the block of ice in the main chamber? Not only does it refuse to melt despite repeated attempts at thawing, the naga folk in the nearby woods suggest it contains a perfectly preserved corpse and should be left well alone.

Miss Simone disagrees. With Travis as a super-heated cherufe and Melinda as a naga girl, their two-pronged mission is to melt the ice and debunk the phantom...

I fully expect to publish this book next month, July 2017.

As usual, reaching the end of the book means I've already started thinking about the next one. The main protagonist will be someone new who tags along with Travis and Melinda. This "someone new" will have an extraordinary power, and the adventure they get embroiled in will be epic! It's an idea I had a few books ago, and it's still there, gnawing at me, so clearly it needs to be written.

I'm having a ball with the Legacies books. I'm often asked why I stopped at nine books for the original series, and there are a few reasons. One was because I'd finished with Hal's story, although to be honest I could easily pick up and carry on with new adventures. Mainly, I felt like I'd learned a lot from writing Hal's books, and I wanted to start over with a fresh series where I could expand in story and also writing style. I'm no longer locked in to a single person's point of view; being able to write from alternative or multiple perspectives is liberating. I couldn't suddenly do that with the original series after nine books in Hal's head. It would have been weird. Also, the Legacies books give me the opportunity to try different shapeshifter talents instead of being stuck with the same ones.

I'm nowhere near finished with this Legacies series. I'm certainly aiming to match the original Fog series with nine books, but at this point it's too early to say whether I'll go beyond that or not. I'd like to. The books are independent enough to be read as standalone adventures, so new readers can pick up at any point in the series. And I don't seem to be short of ideas. Whether those ideas are any good is up to the reader! But until I'm told to pack it in, I plan to keep going for years to come.

Ultimately, I would love to surpass the original series in terms of sales... though that will likely take a good few more years yet! At the current rate of two Legacies books per year, it'll be 2020 before I reach Book 9. Only then will the playing field be level enough to call it a fair game.

But in the meantime, I can't wait to publish Haunted Fortress and get started on the next installment later in the year... after a brief hiatus where I publish the third Chronicles book, Tales of a Shapeshifter, around September.

Show/hide all posts