This afternoon, at about 2:18pm, I finished writing book fourteen, which is currently titled The Final War. It clocked in at 201 pages and 116,777 words. In spite of a couple of hiatuses I managed to finish it in less than the standard two months – I began it at the end of June, and it is now mid-August.

Now I can take a break – conveniently, Book Week starts next week so I’ll be busy visiting schools – and start preparing for one final work. Book fifteen, The Darkest Hour, is almost ready to begin.

As for The Final War, I must say that it’s the most Game of Thrones book I’ve written in a series that already had a few GoT-esque elements to it. I never actually set out to write something similar to Game of Thrones – when I said G.R.R.Martin inspired me, what I meant by that was that his work showed me that fantasy doesn’t have to be about quests and orphans and magic stones – it can be whatever the hell you want it to be, and it doesn’t have to have overblown villains, or indeed any villains at all. In fact, a book without a clear villain or hero is often far more interesting.

In any case, Final War features multiple viewpoints – more of them than in any previous book. I don’t even know how many there are, but at a rough estimate there are at least seven major characters, spread out in different locations through the world (which has, let me tell you, expanded considerably since the first two trilogies). There are multiple conflicts, multiple political situations, and many different cultures portrayed. It was a challenge, but a fun one. Since this is the final trilogy, I wanted it to be bigger and grander than anything that has come before it in the series. I am not a person with any talent for half-measures, so perhaps it would be harder for me to write something subtle and restrained. But I don’t care. I may be trying to write unconventional fantasy, but it is still epic fantasy, and epic means big.

~KJT, about to go off and have some damn lunch at last.