Hello everyone and I hope you're all having a good day! I apologize for the late post, but I decided that since I am at home celebrating my birthday by not being at work, that I could sleep in and be lazy a little. I have tried my best to be as productive as possible after completing Phase 2, and it has worked marginally well. Right now I am waiting for someone to read through the new and improved 'The Light Rises' to let me know where little fixes need to be made and then it will be all ready for the world!
I have become disappointed with my ability to get 'Daughter of the Shackled King' moved to a digital format, so that is what I have been working on since finishing Phase 2. Now the story itself I'm hoping to release after the sequel to 'The Light Rises' is done, mostly because I don't want to risk confusing people with a timeline, but then I have to ask myself, since that story takes place in modern New York, is that really an issue? Which is why I wanted to bring that up for today's topic.
Now technically, the books I'm working on are all set in the same universe, they are just broken up into two trilogies: 'Rending the Seal', 'The Light Rises' and 'Through the Broken Mirror' are all set in London between 1887 - 1907, while 'Daughter of the Shackled King', 'Feathers of the Dead', and 'War of the Pantheons' will be between 2012 - ??? (likely 2013 but that will depend on how I feel and publishing dates.) Sense they are the same universe there need to be consistencies between them, which there are, but because there's so much time in between the first and last stories, is release order really so important? They won't have the same characters or same conflicts, so does that mean if I finish 'Daughter of the Shackled King' that I can release it without any problems? I've seen many discussions regarding release order before, and I can understand why it would be preferred to do everything in chronological succession, though in this circumstance I'm curious about whether or not it will be fine as long as the set trilogies are together.
Let's say you're writing a series, and it is going to be five books long, and each book is supposed to be the events that happened in one year. The Harry Potter series is a good example of this. Now in that case having the books released in order was a very good idea. It helped the reader connect and grow with the characters, and also with the intended audience for those books being children it was a wonderful way for the readers to literally grow up with the characters. If you take your series and decide to write book 1 and the next book you release is taking place five years later, but then the next one is taking place three years after the first (so technically you went 1, 5, and 3) that has a high probability of confusing a lot of people. This is also going to lead you as the author to doing a lot of continuity checks before releasing anything. I'm not saying this doesn't work, I've seen where it has worked out wonderfully, but my thinking is that if your stories are less than a year apart, maybe releasing them in order is a good idea.
I'll admit that I'm not doing that with 'The Light Rises' and it's pairing stories. Part of that is because I got the idea for the other two after 'The Light Rises' was about to be published, the other side is that each story, while connected, is more than a year apart from the other and in the case of 'Through the Broken Mirror' will be roughly 16 or 17 years after 'The Light Rises'. They are also going to be fairly obvious that one is a prequel, the other is a sequel and will reference each other accordingly. Now then, with 'Daughter of the Shackled King' and it's successive stories, those will be released in chronological order because the amount of time that will pass between the three will likely be a year and a half (at the most). It's less confusing for the reader (and author!) to do it that way, and also more believable for the characters as well. In the end though, do what you feel is right in terms of your release order. If it makes sense for the world and the characters, then I'm certain you can make it all work out for the best.
I appreciate everyone stopping by today! I hope my ramblings made some kind of sense as well. I will be back on Friday for my normal review and will the enjoy my weekend filled with Magic and friends. Have a good rest of your week, see you on Friday!
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