Book Number Seven.

This morning, at 01:26 a.m., I finished writing my seventh novel. The ending wasn’t what I had planned, or what I had expected, it just came to me from nowhere.

I always say that I think best in the early hours of the morning, but now I think that I don’t think better, I just think differently. An example of this being that I suddenly wondered why the dirt on Earth was called earth, yet the ground on the Moon wasn’t called moon. These are not things that I think at normal times of day. (Or maybe they are…)

When I finish a book, I tie up the loose ends; I work towards the happy ending, or tragic ending; whatever ending I’m looking for. For the first time, I left a book open ended.

I wasn’t sure why I chose to do this, especially seeing as the way I ended it may mean that nobody will want to publish it, but it was an ending that felt right. I didn’t say whether the world ended, or whether good defeated evil, because that wasn’t what the story was about.

What it was about was humans, and emotions, and the psychology of people, and how that tied in to the element/star sign that they were born under.

I think the underlying theme of all the books I write is: what does it mean to be human? In CONSEQUENCE, the theme was explored in terms of the definition of human. Persephone was SPOILER ALERT a robot, yet she was more human than a lot of the human characters.

In the book I finished last night, the theme was more about humanity; about the strengths and weaknesses of people. And also about the fine line between ordinary and extraordinary. These were people with magical powers, yet they were ordinary people in the deepest sense.

But the strangest thing about this ending was how easy it was to let it go. It’s been months since I finished the first draft of TRANSCEND, yet the characters from the trilogy aren’t quite gone from my head. The slightest thing can trigger their presence in my mind; can make them share their opinions.

Yet the characters from my last book are already gone. They weren’t in my head that much at all; perhaps that was why they were so quick to leave. Either way, it’s strange to have no characters in my mind. It’s also strange not knowing what to write next. All I know is….book number eight, here I come!