Reader Question Day #67 – Side Quests and Differences of Opinion
DG asks, concerning the DEMONSOULED series:
However, I must say that I am dumbfounded that Timothy did not have a larger part in the later books. He seemed like he was being built up to have a larger role in the first couple books and then he all but disappeared with hardly any mention at all.
What’s interesting is that people have said the same thing about Adalar and Sir Nathan, or Rhodemar Greenshield and Ardanna the High Druid, or some of the other characters in the DEMONSOULED series. I think different people see different things in the books.
In the end, though, I think at some point a writer has to say “stop”. The story must come to a conclusion, and that will be that. One of the big dangers of writing fantasy series is that they tend to grow in the telling. We can all think of a fantasy series that was supposed to be a trilogy, but then turned into six books, or twelve, or expanded infinitely with new characters and new settings and new plots, while the main plot completely stalls out. I didn’t want that to happen to DEMONSOULED.
(Tom Simon has an insightful essay on the topic here.)
So I wanted to avoid prequelitis or the Infinitely Recursive Side Quest, and decided that DEMONSOULED would go seven books, and that would be that. (Though I do plan to do more short stories, and return to the setting in the future.)
That said, I do intend for THE GHOSTS to go on for some time yet, and I think the books will bear up under that. Part of that is THE GHOSTS is structured differently than DEMONSOULED, more episodically than the long epic arc of DEMONSOULED. And I do plan for FROSTBORN to be between fourteen and sixteen books.
We’ll see if I can pull it off. 🙂
Ari asks:
What do you think of this review of GHOST IN THE FLAMES (link redacted)? It seems like the reviewer completely missed the point of the book.
Eh. Well. It’s the Internet, and anyone can say anything they like on the Internet. 🙂
More seriously, the bald fact is that a writer cannot expect everyone to like his work. I have friends and family who have never read a word I have written (unless it was a text message telling them when to meet me at Subway for lunch), who don’t even know I am a writer, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would not like my books. This isn’t “woe-is-me-I’m-a-bad-writer” complaining, but a simple observation of fact – some of my friends and family don’t read, or only read books about the American Civil War, or would read one of my books out of a sense of obligation and be horrified the first time Mazael cuts off someone’s head. And I have a relative who is eagerly working his way through the entire DEMONSOULED series.
The general reading public is like that, except times a billion.
I know criticism rankles, but if you write long enough it rankles less. When you’re a new writer you’re sensitive, but as you do it longer you get harder. I started writing DEMONSOULED twelve years ago, and since then I’ve written something like twenty novels and a bajillion short stories.
At this point, if someone likes my books, I’m glad of it and a little surprised…but if someone doesn’t, well, no hard feelings. 🙂
-JM