The end of an Era
It’s finished.
121k words.
The final book in The Veiled Earth Trilogy is in the can. The journey I began with Magician, and continued in Martyr, has ended in Savior, and it didn’t turn out ANYTHING like I envisioned. Villains became heroes, heroes became citizens, and the world was saved, sort of. It’s the way everything works, I suppose. Life, I mean. You can never tell what’s going to happen, and people will always surprise you. And it’s finished.
I feel kinda… weird.
I’ve spent a decade with these characters, and they taught me new things about themselves right up to the very last minute. Even today, finishing the last three paragraphs, I found out new and interesting things about these people I put through the fucking ringer.
How can you not feel good about that?
But I feel strange. Almost anticlimactic, really. It was satisfying, finally writing The End, and meaning it. The first draft I thought I finished had all the plots I envisioned, all the characters I’d created, and all the high points and low I’d planned. And it kinda sucked. a lot. So I ditched the last part of the middle and the entire end, and let the characters grow and stretch and tell me what they wanted to do about the world they lived in. And they did. And it was amazing, writing THE END, and really meaning it. Loving it. Knowing I did the best job I could.
And it hurt.
And it’s sad. And happy. and all kinds of things.
But… it’s why I do what I do. Because I can’t do anything else.