Cover Art by Alison Hunt

Here we have the penultimate volume of War of Nytefall.  You can tell from the title that things are going to go wrong.  The overall story ending up becoming more complicated than I originally planned too.  Lost took a more central role too because of one of the new characters.  Maybe Anarchy is a good word for this since it was chaos in my mind while juggling everything.

With Xavier and Clyde becoming more active against each other, the vampire civil war is actually moving along.  At the same time, someone is going around killing priests of different temples, which is why a paladin army is being formed.  Clyde is off to solve another mystery and stop the murderers before the Dawn Fangs are exposed before mortal-kind is ready.  Two new recruits don’t make his job any easier since one is a fangirl of his and the other is her boyfriend.  A tale of mystery, intricate plots, boastful paladins, jealousy, and vampires.

Seriously though, Anarchy was going to be a story about youthful energy and impetuousness causing disaster.  That didn’t work very well because it resulted in a bunch of characters coming off as stupid.  So, I had to create a more sinister and intentional underbelly.  This is one of the reasons Lost took a bigger role since I noticed she would be the only one to sense a problem.  Her getting drawn into a rivalry with Luna the Clyde fangirl was a bonus, which helped both characters stand out.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t do the same for Joran (Luna’s boyfriend) who was just too sulky and easily annoyed to get him to be friendly.  So, he kept the youthful arrogance even when he was being taught lessons by his elders.

I can’t really explain a lot about Anarchy without revealing most of the twists.  So, I want to talk about the paladin leader who was going to be a nameless warrior.  I was only going to have him show up a few times to scare off the vampires until he finally faces Clyde and is killed.  There was no personality to him until I reached his first scene and needed to do something.  A friend at work had been asking me to put him in a book, so I came up with Sir Adam of Crego.  It was going to be a purely comical character.  In fact, I wrote a location wrong when he was talking and kept it to give him a habit of saying places incorrectly.  Of course, I couldn’t be mean to the guy, so he did turn out to be a physical threat and a cunning warrior.  I was happy with how he came out since he was another last minute addition like Eighty and Kira Grasdon.

Would I change anything?  As I said, I really wish I could have done more with Joran since I needed him for the plot to work.  He simply couldn’t establish a decent personality.  Part of it could have been that he was supposed to be mild compared to Luna’s energy and excitement.  Having Lost around him didn’t help since that’s another character who claims attention in every scene.  Yet, he couldn’t even overshadow Titus for a moment when they shared a scene.  Guess there are always some characters who get put in these situations since such people exist in real life.  At least I gave Joran a few good fight scenes, which I guess was his main purpose.

Question time!

1. Is it natural for leaders to have doubts?
2. Do you think immortals should stay hidden or reveal themselves to the world?
3. What do you look for in a penultimate volume of a series?