Yes it’s true: Freefall, the sequel to The High Road, will be out early next year. What’s more, the conclusion of the series is in revision and will follow soon as well.
It’s been too long since I’ve shared my thoughts in this blog. I’ve been getting myself all turned around in revisions, re-envisions, rewrites, and simple stalling. But now, I’ve worked out the whole path to the story’s end.
And since the Spellkeeper Flight books are the first I’ve written in a series since I was an eager kid, the story has introduced me to a few things I didn’t know about my writing.
My mission is still the same: to build storylines that lead into moments that simply maximize a reader’s thrill at “being there” and the drive to know what happens next.
I’ve rediscovered how many ways I can put pressure on poor Mark. He’s had a little time now to practice with gravity magic, but he has everything from trying to hold onto a life to keeping his friends safe, while every night he’s searching the city for his enemies and the magic that could bring back what he’s lost… or that he hopes can.
I’ve found that one villain simply isn’t enough. Toward the end of The High Road, Mark looked around a gathering battlefield and spotted “a gang-banger, a force of nature, an assassin, and an owl” (and then he added “walk into a bar” because he’d been too worn out to avoid the absurd thought). Freefall has even enemies more in play, and it’s been a pleasure watching how their different goals keep clashing with each other, and evolving.
I keep discovering more about Mark’s allies. His cousin Henry (reluctant big brother, never really able to play a father role to him) had been trying to stay just far enough outside Mark’s struggle; that begins to change. Joe Dennard, Angie’s father, is firmly in it but trying to find his own place when Mark and his newer allies rush into most of the danger first. Other characters that couldn’t even appear until the second book bring the story into the phases I’d been planning for… and yet, what had originally been a throwaway thought as part of killing off one character has pulled itself free and created someone completely new and stolen a few scenes.
My Spellkeepers magic… I’ve seen more and more about how many ways these people can use it. The question of what it really is more complicated—Kate is all too aware of how little her parents were able to tell her when they could, and the whole struggle is at heart the search for secrets of power, from finding the enemy’s to preventing discovery to stopping one villain from seizing their own secrets first. (Of course, another villain already has.)
And first and last, I’ve learned about Angie, and how she and Mark keep changing each other. She’s been the biggest inspiration on his life since they were children, long before (he thought) magic blew into their world. Now she’s the one cause he’s risking everything for, and yet he has so much to learn about what she’s become. Simply bringing her into a scene changes everything from Mark’s attitude to the unique sense of a fight that she’s had since her first scene. But that too keeps changing.
It’s been a wild ride with these two. And after more blind alleys than flying characters should have to worry about, I can finally see the whole path to how their story ends. That’s made it all the harder to write my way toward saying goodbye to them, though it’s also been a joy to bring them to life.
(PS: for more of the lessons I’ve been learning about suspense, take a look at my guest post on the RWA’s Fantasy Science Fiction and Paranormal blog: https://ffprwa.com/blog/)