Book Number Four

I am now working on my fourth novel in The Book Of Lost Doors series. Writing these books has been a lot of fun, both for me and (I think) for my readers.  I think I’m getting better, in a lot of different ways.  I’m not tired of the world and my characters yet, and I think after Gingerbread Wolves there will be at least two more.

Each book has a little different feel, as an author.  In Catskinner’s Book I concentrated on building the world and setting up the cosmological rules.  Cannibal Hearts let me play more with characters, the altered people and the relationships between them. By the time I wrote The Worms Of Heaven I felt that I had the stage set and the actors in place so that I could spend more time digging into the long term storyline–the nature of the relationship between the Outsiders and the humans, and how James and Agony fit uneasily in the middle.

Now, with Gingerbread Wolves I am feeling that I have both the freedom and responsibility to go deeper into both the characters and the world. I am still doing my capsule descriptions of what the different types of demi-humans, but I don’t have to spend a lot of time justifying their existence.  If you’ve been with me this far, you know what you’re getting into.

This one is going to be a bigger story.  Agony has been working hard on building her empire and needs foes worthy of her steel.  James & Catskinner, as usual, are going to get sucked into Agony’s war with some really cosmic bad guys that I am having fun designing. The rest of the cast are naturally along for the ride, some old characters, a couple of new ones.  We got a glimpse of the Minraudim in the last book, I’ll play with them some more in this one.

I still think my best book is the one I’m working on now.  If I ever stop feeling that way, I’ll probably stop writing.

Onward.

Fortune Favors The Bold!