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POINT OF VIEW: Relief and Sadness at the Finish Line

Scott GRL prep

Hey all,

It’s a strange juxtaposition of events for me this week.

Tomorrow my latest novel, “The Rising Tide,” comes out, the long-awaited sequel to last year’s “The Stark Divide.” Forever is evolving, both the world and its people, and at the same time leaving Old Earth far behind. And trouble is brewing…

Just three days before this new book’s release, I finished the first draft of “The Shoreless Sea,” the third and final book in the Liminal Sky trilogy. Shoreless Sea is my second trilogy-ending book this year, after the Oberon Cycle’s “Ithani,” which comes out in February.

And yeah, I’m not done with it yet. There’s still the second draft, beta reads, third draft, and all the later editing passes to go. But in a real way, I have now finished the work I set myself to more than three long years ago.

I don’t know why I decided to write two trilogies at once. They were both just such compelling stories for me as a writer that I didn’t want to let either one go. I was coming off the success of my first NaNoWriMo, and it felt like I could do anything. Plus, Dreamspinner loved both stories. And I always liked alternating between works, so it seemed like a great plan at the time.

I don’t think I will ever do it again. Ask my friend Rory about getting locked into a long series of books.

Still, I learned a lot during the process, and I loved immersing myself into these worlds for months at a time and then switching hears and letting them lay fallow while my subconscious worked on the next part of the story.

Now that I am near the end of this journey, I find myself both relieved – OMG I actually did it! – and saddened that these stories are over. While the last one is still a year from publication, the bulk of the creative work is done, and I will never tell these exact stories again.

So yeah. There’s a bit of sadness mixed in there too.

It’s tempered by the now wide-open vista ahead of me – that exciting tingling in my writer soul that I haven’t had for three years. What will come next?  I has ideas, and soon I’ll have room to roam.

It’s a good place to be.

So my question for my author friends… how do you feel when you finish a trilogy or series? Do you celebrate? And how do you move on to your next thing?

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