The Story Continues

Soon my new book The Last Minotaur will be available.  It is exciting to finally be able to have a second story in the Unafraid Series.  However, the book is different from the first in many ways.  To begin it is a prequel to Leon's Son taking place years earlier in the beginnings of the kingdom of what would become New Normandy.  It ties many loose ends together and answers some questions that readers of the first book may have wanted to know.  Far less episodic than Leon's Son, The Last Minotaur does not take place over a course of years as the first book, but in a few months.  After finishing Leon's Son, I intended to work on publishing my next book, a sequel.  However, as the early drafts were modified, it became clear it needed a major rewrite.  I then thought of the possibility of using another rough draft of a prequel titled The Knight Who Saved Goodwood.  That too was not to be as the story along with its contemporary, Shamar's War both went far beyond young adult fiction, and read more like a Gawain and the Green Knight, type story, full of moral conflict and dark plots.  I was pouring so much of my own brokenness into the stories that I was beginning to dive deeper into a pit of sadness.  Something that was supposed to be fun, was now a deep outpouring of my struggles.  

Wishing for something more adventuring and lighter, I dug deep in my imagination, and over the Christmas season, I wrote a short story, Christmas in Densmark, a rom-com that I found absolutely great.  It was funny, original, and something entirely new for me.  Most importantly is reinstalled my love for writing.  Now I was ready to work on another Unafraid book, although I wanted to start something entirely from scratch.  Taking more inspiration from high fantasy, I wanted something truly epic and mythical.  On a cold, snowy, November day while hunting deer with my brother, the idea came to my head, of a book, that was to become the Last Minotaur.  As the plot formed, I did something that I had never done before, and that is make an organized plan.  That winter, I was often called upon to push carts in the parking lot of the department store I worked.  Often the wind chill was below zero, with several inches of snow, making the wheels of the carts stick in the snow.  Often alone, in horrible conditions, I would run over in my head the concept for the book, keeping to a small, but tight outline that I wrote.  The book took two years to write and edit and overall went fairly smooth, without any major rewrites.  The Last Minotaur begins nearly sixty years before Leon's Son and chronicles the story of the life of a young man, who becomes an apprentice to a mighty guardian of the planet.  At the same time, the first king of Goodwood faces a nearly impossible challenge to save his tiny kingdom from a massive invasion of ruthless enemies.