The Relics of War and how the series came to be

A long time ago, in a high school not so far away…

Okay, I’ll stop with the Star Wars theme, because it has nothing to do with the rest of this post. I’ve been packing my collection of Star Wars art as we begin to move into our new place, and it seemed a fitting start. This post is about the series that became known as The Relics of War.

It all began when I was fourteen, during my freshman year in high school. I started writing about a character, Arianna Janis, who was the wielder of a fantastic, magical sword meant to save the world from destruction. The stories began during one of my classes—I know it was not my English class, because we rarely had time for “side projects” there. I often wrote during math class, because writing was far more interesting than calculations, so it’s likely it began there. I don’t remember for certain. It was 1997, so as I said, “a long time ago.”

Keep in mind the dates. We didn’t have a Windows computer at home, and I rarely was granted access to the computer lab at school. The entirety of my writing was done on notebook paper, by hand, for both Arianna’s story, and the subsequent trilogy I wrote to completion later on. I have done so much of my writing via PC for many years now, that I doubt I could revert back to those early days of keeping a hand-written manuscript. My fingers ache with the very thought.

Arianna’s story grew and morphed over time. I filled a notebook with details on the places of her world, the magic, the relics, the people. I worked on it consistently for some time, but eventually I felt the story wasn’t going where I’d planned, and I set it aside. I couldn’t forget the world I’d created, however, and quickly began to write another story set in the same place.

It was more than a year after I started Arianna’s story before I made the decision to set it aside. A couple of my friends had been reading passages from it, and I know one was quite disappointed with my decision. She later read much of both The Moon’s Eye and The Talisman of Delucha as they were being written, which seemed to assuage her previous disappointment.

When I began writing The Moon’s Eye, I had no idea where the story would take me. That plan came much later. Those who have read the first edition will probably agree that the first part of the book had very little direction, and was sometimes difficult to follow (a major part of my decision to rewrite it). I did eventually bring the plot in line, and early during my first year of college I completed the first draft (it was the week after September 11, 2001, and I can remember the timing very clearly because of that event). I was elated; I’d finished my first book! Weirdly, though, I don’t recall telling anyone that I had.

I spent some of my free time typing up the manuscript from my hand-written pages over the next couple of weeks. By that time, I had my own PC—a Dell, with 5G of hard drive space. I still laugh about that first computer now. Technology has come a long way since 2001.

By the time I’d finished The Moon’s Eye, I had something of a plan for the second book. The Talisman of Delucha was written largely between classes while I worked my way through college. I believe I finished that draft in early 2004. Laptops weren’t yet commonplace, so I still did most of my writing by hand, and would type up the pages later once I was home. I upgraded the Dell somewhere during that time to a PC my roommate and I built ourselves. I remember being excited about the colored lights on the fan, and the window on the side of the CPU that allowed us to look inside—both newer features at the time.

As with the first book, I finished The Talisman of Delucha, but didn’t make much noise about it. A select few people were allowed to read it, but I was very self-conscious about my writing and didn’t like the idea of others reading my words.

Then March 2004 came around, and it proved to be the month that changed my life in many ways. My parents and my younger brother took a trip to Ireland, but due to my midterm schedule, I remained behind. It worked out for them; they had a puppy that needed looking after, so I took up the job of house-sitting while they were away.

One of the friends who had read my first book called me randomly the first weekend I was house-sitting. He’d heard I was in town from someone else, and wanted to know if I’d like to go to his workplace to look at some “animations” he’d been working on related to my book. At the time, he had the dream of making my book into a movie—that never happened, but I’m perfectly okay with how the day turned out anyway. We scheduled a time to meet up, and when we did, I learned that he worked for a young entrepreneur that ran a prototyping business. That entrepreneur and I quickly became friends, and within three weeks, we were dating. We’ve now been married for fifteen years. To make this side-story short, without my writing, we would never have met.

By the time I made that fateful journey to view the animations, I’d begun writing the last book in the series, War of the Nameless. Progress was slow, and even though I had a reasonable outline made up, I had little time to write. I was in my final year of college, and for my degree path, that meant high level science classes with accompanying labs, senior seminar, and too many meetings with my appointed counselor to ensure I was on track for graduation. I also worked about thirty hours a week to pay for rent on my apartment, food, and utilities. And then there was the once- or twice-a-week dates on top of it all. I still found some time to write, but not as much as I’d previously enjoyed.

The War of the Nameless was not completed until late 2007. By then I was finished with college, but working full-time. Between 2004 and 2007, I got engaged, graduated from school, got married, started my microbiology career, bought a house… There was a lot that happened in what now seems like a very short amount of time. But I continued to write, albeit slowly.

My husband was the first to encourage me to pursue publishing. He was the one who found the publisher we ultimately used to print the first edition paperbacks. If not for his support and encouragement, those books (and later, Hunted) would never have seen print. If you enjoy my writing—even if it’s just these blog posts I write—you ought to thank him for being able to read it. Without him, none of this would have happened, and no one would know that I’ve written ten books to completion. So, thank you, Joshua.

That number, ten, might come as a surprise to some people, so here’s the breakdown:

• The Moon’s Eye (book 1 of The Relics of War, first published in 2008 and now undergoing extensive revision/rewrite)
• The Talisman of Delucha (book 2 of The Relics of War, first published in 2009 and undergoing extensive revision/rewrite)
• The War of the Nameless (book 3 of The Relics of War, first published in 2010 and now undergoing extensive revision/rewrite)
• Hunted (standalone urban fantasy, draft completed in 2011. Edited, revised, and published in 2020)
• Exile (book 1 of The Caein Legacy. I am currently—still—querying, final draft completed in 2019)
• Guardian (book 2 of The Caein Legacy, final draft completed in 2020)
• Harbinger (book 3 of The Caein Legacy, final draft completed in 2020)
• Legend (book 4 of The Caein Legacy, final draft completed in 2020)
• The Triad Murders (book 1 of The Mage War Chronicles, final draft completed in 2021)
• Oracle (book 2 of The Mage War Chronicles, first draft completed 2021. I still need to do my final revisions, but the rewrite project is taking precedence right now)

If the querying for The Caein Legacy doesn’t pan out by a certain date, I do have something of a contingency plan in place. All of my books will one day see print, one way or another.

Keep checking back to my home page for up-to-date information on the rewrite of The Relics of War. I’ll update the numbers and graphic periodically.

Thanks for reading this relatively long post, and thank you for your continued support.