Reader Question – are DEMONSOULED and THE GHOSTS set in the same world?

Michael emails to ask if DEMONSOULED and THE GHOSTS are set in the same world:

I have a few questions about the demonsouled books, are they set in the same world as the ghost series? They both mention malrags and seem to have similar world rules.

They are not. I started writing DEMONSOULED in 2001, the GHOSTS in 2006, and back then the only way to publish anything was through traditional publishing. Because I never managed to sell SOUL OF TYRANTS to a traditional publisher, I figured that the series was dead and forgotten and I could safely reuse some of the concepts in THE GHOSTS. I did have this vague idea that Mazael and Caina were on different continents on the same world.

But! Jump ahead to 2011, and I discovered self-publishing. I decided then that DEMONSOULED and THE GHOSTS would be in different worlds. In hindsight, it might have been good for marketing to have the series take place in the same world, but that would have been hard, because Mazael and Caina come from very different kinds of civilizations.

Mazael’s world is more medieval, while Caina’s is more Early Modern than anything else. There’s nothing on the scale of political organization like the Empire or the Magisterium in Mazael’s world, and while Barellion is the largest city Mazael visits in DEMONSOULED, it would be at best a mid-sized provincial city in Caina’s Empire. Also, the way the world works is different – I don’t think I’ve ever actually used the word “magic” in the GHOSTS. Mazael’s world also has many different non-human races – Elderborn and San-keth and soliphages and dragons and so on, while Caina’s world has only humans (albeit some humans have been mutated or altered through sorcery).

But the early books in THE GHOSTS series do share some ideas with DEMONSOULED, since when I wrote those books I figured that DEMONSOULED was out of print and SOUL OF TYRANTS would never be published, so I could safely recycle some ideas.

Michael also asks if we will see more DEMONSOULED books:

Final question, Will we see more of the demonsouled world or is that group of books done?

Yes. Eventually. I think maybe after CLOAK GAMES is done in 2018? I definitely have lots of ideas for new DEMONSOULED books, but the trick is to find the time to write them. So many ideas, to little time! 🙂