Reader Question Day #58 – the Tower of Endless Worlds, TV drama, and Soul of Swords

Ciphas asks:

Will there be a new book/series for the Tower of Endless Worlds series?

I don’t know. I have a couple of ideas, but I haven’t really fixed on them. The thing is that the world of Carlisan will be very different, because Marugon brought so much stuff over from Earth, and technology can be reverse-engineered. So I think Ally, Lithon, and Arran will return to find that people have figured out at least an early industrial level of technology – steam engines, single-shot rifles, locomotives, and so forth. And I’ve always found the idea of technological change coming to a fantasy world to be an interesting one (hence the Tower of Endless World series), especially since you have supernatural creatures like the winged demons that can use the technology effectively. For that matter, Marugon’s soldiers could have brought ideas back with them from Earth – democracy or fascism or Marxism or whatever, and those could show up as well.

So there are any number of potential plots, but I need to think up a overarching plot to link them together first.

Aaaaaaaand…as I was typing this, I figured out how I could return to the series. So I might do that at some point, but probably not until 2014. I am in the happy position of having more writing to do than I actually have time to do it. 🙂

Manwe asks:

If you could have another tv drama set in a past setting, what would it be?
And the same goes for a fantasy series (including those based off books)? It can be more than one of course.

For a historical setting, I would choose either the Roman civil war in the Year of the Four Emperors (69 AD) or the Battle of Adrianople (378 AD). The Year of the Four Emperors had an quantity of skulduggery, battles, and intrigues that would make GAME OF THRONES look positively tame. The Battle of Adrianople, I think, would make for a more epic story, and some of the details are sketchy enough that there’s room for fictional embellishment without historical inaccuracy.

Quentin asks:

Hi there. I’m addicted to the Demonsouled series. When will Soul of swords be released on kindle? Finished all the rest.

Thanks for the kind words about the books! I’m glad you liked them.

I’m going to start writing Soul of Swords in April, after I finish up a few other things (specifically, more books in THE THIRD SOUL series, see below). So if all goes well, the book should be out in mid-summer or so.

Edward asks:

So when is your next book coming out (of any series)? Obviously, I am a little impatient. Also, I understand that there are short stories about Caina. How can I go about reading those?

I’m having one THE THIRD SOUL novella and two short novels coming out towards the end of March or the beginning of April. I thought about releasing them sequentially every month, but after I read this blog post pointing out that most people binge on digital content (whether ebooks or TV shows or whatever), I realized there would be no good reason not to release them all at once. So those will be coming soon.

As for the Caina short stories, they are in the SWORD & SORCERESS anthologies – specifically, SWORD & SORCERESS 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 & 27. I actually wrote most of the short stories before I began writing the novels, so there’s a bit of a continuity shift. At the end of GHOST IN THE FORGE, the latest Caina novel, she’s only twenty-one, but by the end of the last short story, she’s almost thirty. Eventually the novels will catch up to the short stories and they’ll harmonize, but we’re not quite there yet. 🙂

-JM