Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

This book had so many title changes that it was ridiculous.  I don’t even know how I ended up on Ritual of the Lost Lamb.  The strangest part is that there wasn’t a ritual until after I wrote the title.  It was just a wandering hunt by the heroes who stayed together during one version and split up during another.  Needless to say, things were all over the place for a while.

Part of the reason for the craziness was that the previous volumes all changed enough that this book got altered.  I removed some areas and people who were going to be a part of it, but added new ones.  Some characters were set to be killed and lived while others were the opposite.  Even when writing this book, I found that concepts I came up with earlier simply didn’t work.  The biggest one was having an enemy defeated by a character while another one died, which put a sour taste in my mouth. I had to change things around, which required one of the few full rewrites of a section that I’ve ever done.  This is where I learned not to push through on an idea that feels wrong.

Ritual of the Lost Lamb also continues the trend of Luke Callindor needing rescuing, which wasn’t supposed to be a trend.  This was originally the only book that centered on the other heroes trying to figure out where Luke went after the last adventure.  They knew he was in trouble and were trying to find him before the final battle.  Not a spoiler, so I can say he spends nearly all of this book being brutally tortured by Baron Kernaghan.  I really messed Luke up here, which I still feel bad about.  Don’t think any of the other champions got worse than him.  Kira Grasdon and Alyssa Goldheart come in close seconds, especially after this book.  I really began questioning my habit of torturing my characters after this one.

This volume was also the start of the final battle arc.  I needed to get everyone in position for the ending.  This included villains, heroes, supporting cast, kingdoms, and all of the set pieces I knew I needed.  The champions needed to get knocked down several pegs as well to make sure they realized it wasn’t going to be a cake walk.  Pain was doled out even when they gained something new.  I can’t think of anything that a character got in Ritual of the Lost Lamb without them having to take a heavy loss.  It was hard killing off certain characters too, but it had to be done.

Would I change anything?  Part of me wants to reduce the torture on Luke, but I know that wouldn’t have set things up very well.  I think I would have liked to use a certain villain more often before their demise.  Then again, I was always having trouble with my supporting villains outside of Trinity, the Lich, Stephen Kernaghan, and Baron Kernaghan.  The others were definitely more flunky, which was a shame for the one I’m thinking about.  So, I guess I would probably do some cosmetic tweaks, which might not improve the story.  Maybe I shouldn’t even bother questioning if I should redo these books since there’s no point in it.

Actually, I almost forgot about one thing that I’m still scratching my head on: Walter.  I won’t go into details about this character, but he was one that had been wandering the background for a few books.  He was never really planned, but showed up in a few scenes and I kept him going.  Similar to Melanie and Raksha, who were a metal girl and demon cat that the Baron ended up gathering over the course of a few stories.  Guess those two were less planned than Walter because he filled a need at one point in this book since I needed a specialized enemy.  Poor kid never, and will never, get his own origin post too because of what he is.

Let’s enjoy some questions:

1. How far would you go to save a friend in trouble?
2. What would be a bittersweet victory for you?
3. If your family was hurting your friends, which side would you choose and why?