I Wrote Myself Into a Corner!

So, I wrote myself all the way into a corner, and didn’t realize it until just a few days ago.

If you’ve been following my stories for a while, you might be familiar with the Magorian and Jones series, or the Harley Firebird series, or both.

They’re both set in the same fantasy world, with a single crossover character.

Originally, my intention in writing the Harley Firebird series this way (as that came after Magorian and Jones had already started) was to weave in a different perspective to a very different contemporary Earth. I had super fun with it.

I wrote the latest book, The Shield of Falconer, with a few world events mentioned in it that match events that happen in the Magorian and Jones series, so readers who read both can fit each story into a continuing timeline of events.

And that caused a problem I only just figured out.

I’m going to try to explain this in a way that doesn’t lay down spoilers.

The Divine and Deadly is the last book in the Magorian and Jones series. It was always going to be the last book. I had the whole series figured out before I started writing the first book.

I had no such plans for the Harley Firebird series.

But.

Now that I’ve written The Divine and Deadly, I’ve left myself nowhere to go with the Harley Firebird series. In The Divine and Deadly, the world as we know it is well and truly trashed. I won’t say why, or how.

But, as the Harley Firebird series is following the same timeline as the Magorian and Jones series, that means that the next book in the Harley Firebird series must show that same junked, barely survivable world.

The Harley Firebird series is not a post-apocalyptic series. Putting Harley and her friends, and the residents of Falconer into a survival situation might be interesting, but that’s not what the series is about at all. It would completely change the series and, in my mind, take away a lot of its charm (all the foibles of Falconer folk, and the interesting things they do to get by).

I tussled with this for a while. I could have continued the series, and tried to ignore the world events outside Falconer and let the folk in Falconer really dig in, isolate themselves, and carry on. But that seemed contrived and awkward.

Or I could squeeze in a book in the few days between the end of The Shield of Falconer and the start of the events in The Divine and Deadly. Or even more than one book. Each book would have to take place only days after the last one, if I wanted to keep writing this series as it was.

That also seems really awkward and untenable.

Plus, I had neatly wrapped up a lot of series arc storylines in Shield. To write another book, I would have to set up a whole new set of series questions and arcs, which would require more than one book to answer.

It was the neat wrapping up of storylines that brought me to the final conclusion that I simply can’t continue the Harley Firebird series any longer. I can stop where the series is now, and nothing is left dangling.

So I will, with some regrets, because I really like Harley and her friends.

I will talk about what I will be writing now over the next few weeks. But I am entertaining the idea of a spin-off series to Magorian and Jones, set a long time after the series ends, which will make a series like this feel like a second world fantasy, even though it’s set here on Earth. That’s intriguing, and I’m playing around with different ideas about how a series like that might flow.

And I’m also world building for an epic fantasy. Details about that coming soon.

Taylen.