I have written almost every day of my life since I was fourteen years old. But since I sent the last Merry Gentry novel, A Ghost of Daylight, off to my editor I haven’t really written. I’ve done a couple of small blogs, but even those have been a struggle. I’ve gotten lots of new ideas for short stories, blogs, even novels, but after the glorious rush of inspiration fades the urge to write down more than the idea itself fades. I have even tried to start the next novel that I know will be next once this strange hiatus is over, but other than reading through notes and a bit of plotting I’ve done nothing, because anxiety or exhaustion or some combination of both washes over me. Usually, I get anxious from not writing, and that is happening, but this other anxiety is different. So, I stand between the different anxieties like being trapped between Scylla and Charybdis, a monster on either side of me.
Maybe when A Glimmer of Death hits the shelves on November 3rd some of this odd anxiety will ease and that other familiar anxiety will spur me on to writing the next novel, and yes, it’s Anita Blake, though Zaniel Havelock and his world has been whispering in my ear, too. Or maybe Scylla will keep chewing on me until the eleventh and last Merry Gentry novel, A Ghost of Daylight, is published in April 2027. I’ve never ended a series before, could this shaking, occasionally tearful wave of emotions be about the ending of twenty-seven years of storytelling with one main character, her world, the people she loves, and the people she fears and hates? She was born Princess Meredith NicEssus, the first faerie princess born on American soil. She’s 33 when the first book, A Kiss of Shadows, was published in 2000. She was hiding from assassins as Private Detective Merry Gentry pretending to be just another human with fey heritage that had given her enough magic to work for the Grey Detective Agency, their motto was, supernatural problems, magical solutions. Then the dark court of faerie, the Unseelie Court, found her and there was no more hiding. It was a fight for survival and for Merry to find her place in faerie with the Darkness, the Killing Frost, Rhys the White Knight, the Storm Lord Mistral, King Sholto the Lord of that Which Passes Between, and Galen Green Knight. (If you are caught up with the published books, please no spoilers in the comments.)
I think that’s it. I’m mourning my series. I’m already missing the characters and their world. There were so many subplots I never got to explore, so much research into Celtic myth and folklore that I never got to use on stage. What will I do with the shelves of research books that have grown over the years? How do I stop getting ideas in this world I created? But Merry made me promise that I would give her a truly happy-ever-after ending. The only way to do that is to write the last book, which I did, and walk away so her happiness is complete and permanent.
