Only four days until the release of Ashes Remain! Everything is set up for the eBook to be released on the 28th, so get your pre-orders in now if you want to make sure the book will be ready-steady and in your eBook on the day. 🙂 I’m itching to press the ‘publish’ button for the paperback, but I’ve got to wait until tomorrow for that. (Within 72 hours after hitting ‘publish’, the book will be available. I don’t want to be too eager and have the book out earlier than planned.)

Since I finished Ashes Remain, I’ve been going back-and-forth over what I want to write next. I have a rough plan for another Viking/Norse historical fiction trilogy, a fantasy-historical fiction standalone, a couple of fantasy-romance standalones, and a plan for a six-book fantasy series. At this point, rather than focussing on just one, I’ve been writing a little here and there on each, but I need to calm myself and figure out which one to concentrate on.

Realistically, I think I want to write a couple of standalones. I think having a few 200-page novels a reader can pick up, read, then be done with would be good, rather than making them wait twelve months or more for the next novel in the series. Not to mention, it would be a quicker way to boost my catalogue of work.

Of course, because my brain wants to write a standalone or two, my heart is screaming at me to write another series – I’m particularly leaning towards the six-book fantasy series.

Ashes Remain was supposed to be published in early 2020. I had most of the book written in 2019, but, after a few read throughs, I wasn’t happy with where the book was going and threw out almost everything I had written, beginning again from scratch.

Unfortunately, after making that decision, there were a lot of setbacks and losses in my personal life that affected me mentally and emotionally and I wasn’t in the right headspace to write. Then the pandemic began. Between that chaos, learning to homeschool my kids (who handled the craziness of the pandemic like champions), and trying to navigate the new way of life, there wasn’t a moment I could spare to write.

Even though the book is being released two years later than originally planned, it’s finally finished, the Danethrall Trilogy is complete, and I’m content with where it’s ending. I look over the trilogy and I’m surprised to see where it all begin and how it’s ending – in a good way, of course. Even though Aveline was a character of my imagination, I feel like I watched her grow from a child to an incredible woman and mother, and I’m proud of her. She was dealt a rough hand, life wasn’t fair nor was it easy, but she struggled through adversity and overcame every obstacle she faced. It’s sad to say goodbye to her, but I’m happy her arc is complete.

Aveline might just be an imaginary person I conjured up at my desktop, but I was attached to her – as crazy as that might make me sound. It’s strange to try to move on to a new person, a new world, a new story, but I’m excited to see what the future holds.

If you’ve already pre-ordered Ashes Remain, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. To everyone waiting for the paperback to be out, I appreciate you, too. When you’ve finished the book, please let me know what you thought, either by posting a review on Amazon or Goodreads, or sending me a comment/message here, on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

– GSKT