I’m proud to announce the conclusion of the first trilogy of Moonsong books, Shadow and Smoke, which is available for pre-order in ebook form. The physical (8×5 paperback) will go live several days before the ebook to allow for shipping time from Amazon’s print-on-demand facilities.
Yes, I said the first trilogy. As I mentioned when I released the first book, City of Silver, this series was something I had already written 5-6 books worth of material for. So, why aren’t they all out? The short answer, which is also the answer to why this third volume took so long to release, is that they suck. These were books that I wrote very early in my endeavors as a writer, having only written one (bad) book and several screenplays (which are a different medium) prior. The first time you try something, chances are that you’re going to stink at it. You’ll probably be bad the second time around, too. It takes practice and time to develop skills.
And so, to bring these stories to life at the quality I desire, I have to do lots of editing, or in the case of this book, lots of re-writing. This was probably the most arduous manuscript edit of my career and looking back, I would have had a much easier go of things had I just decided to re-write the book (with more or less the same plot) from page 1, but the life of an artist is often about self-torture. So instead I sifted through my early work, saving the few great bits, tossing lots of superfluous crap that I thought was clever in 2014, and re-writing sections that were right in terms of the plot and characters but were poorly executed.
I attempted this several times, each time being interrupted by either real-life concerns that stopped all focused work, or by time-limited career work that took the focus I needed to really see the story for what it was and to understand how to fix it. That certainly made the process more difficult and aggravating, but I’m glad I buckled down last month and finished it.
The end result is a book that I’m pleased with and proud to add to my catalog. It’s the conclusion to the story I wanted to write almost 10 years ago. And rest assured that though there are certainly more tales with these characters (as you shall see), Shadow and Smoke does represent the close of a trilogy. The main conflict introduced in the first pages of the first book is resolved. Characters have their growth and their arrival points, and things come to a resting point optimistically, if not perfectly, which is how I often choose to end my stories.
My biggest regret, by far, is that I didn’t do this work earlier, being annoyed with it, because my mother-in-law, who read my books, died before I could deliver the conclusion of this tale.
What can you expect from this thrilling conclusion? Well, more action, more intrigue, more romance, and of course more filthy pirates, plus drug deals gone wrong and some interesting revelations about my little imaginary world.
You can, of course, start with the first book if you haven’t yet read it. It’s action-packed!