This launch is open to the public – anyone can come. Just be sure to RSVP!
That’s it. It’s done. The series is finished.
A couple of minutes ago I wrote the final words of the final book. It came in at 195 pages – slightly short, but I write my books to be as long as they need to be.
I don’t really know what to say now. I know hardly anyone bothers to read this website any more, which makes me wonder if it’s worth saying anything at all. But what I do say now, I shall say for myself – just as, in the end, I wrote for myself first of all. It’s the only way to write truly, when all’s said and done.
I’ve been writing this series since about 2006, so it took me eight years to get to this point. That’s not much time to write fifteen books, at least by most people’s standards, but eight years is still a long time. The story of Cymria has been with me for so long – essentially, since I was barely into my twenties when I started it, it grew up with me. I’ll be honest and say that, in the last week or so I suffered a couple of panic attacks seemingly for no reason. I eventually realised that the reason I was feeling panicky is because the end of the series was so close, and I think a part of me felt I would be lost without it. Even now I’m not sure exactly how to feel.
I do generally feel drained after finishing a book, and not just because that last push tends to wear me out. It’s emotional drainage as well. That’s how I feel now, but there’s a little more to it, because this isn’t the exhaustion of finishing just one book – it’s the exhaustion of finishing a huge project which took up so much of my life. Without it, everything would have been different.
I hope that one day people will get to read the entire series – not just the first six, which are the only ones published now, but all fifteen. Each trilogy is its own self-contained story, but each one tells another portion of the overarching story which finally reaches its climax in book fifteen, The Darkest Hour. To see that story through you have to read every trilogy – a labour that I hope most people would enjoy. I put so much of myself into it.
And now, as they say – finish on a song. This is one of my favourites, and if the final book was a movie, this would play over the credits. Enjoy.
Heart Full of Black, by The Burning Brides
~KJT, determined not to say anything about “journeys”
Man, characters in The Walking Dead are idiots. Lucky most of ’em will wind up as zombie food anyway.
Up to page 190 now.
~KJT, ready to re-watch Firefly now
Today I hit page 187. The end will come this week.
~KJT, utterly exhausted
Today I’m off to my writing place to get back to work on the final book. It’s now almost up to page 160, and a couple more good sessions should see it finished. I’ve been a bit tense and uncertain about how I’m going to feel about actually seeing the end of the series, but now I have something to look forward to: a major project which I’m going to launch once the book is done. And it’s not necessarily something I’m going to write – it’ll be more immediate than that. Details to come!
For now there’s the final code to win, and here’s a link to some rather good reviews I found while searching for a new backdrop.
~KJT, who recently started watching The Walking Dead. Verdict: not bad.
Well, it’s official. My birthday was yesterday, and I’m now 28 years old. The big 30, and the end of the series, loom ahead. Not menacingly, though; I’m more or less indifferent to the first, and excited about the second.
For now, it’s time to put up the final set of questions for the final code! Answer them all correctly and you could be the last lucky winner!
- What country did diplomat Lord Vander come from?
- What is the name of the Amorani prince Laela married in The Shadow’s Heir?
- Name all the capital cities in Cymria
~KJT, back from her holiday and now the proud owner of an actual drinking horn – and some mead to go in it!