My Inspiration, Witherheart, and the Third Book

I just did a four day free promo out of the flipping blue. That's because I had been waiting for two or three months to put Witherheart out and set up an email signup on my blog. It was so funny, because I never checked how many days I had left in the KDP Select. It turns out, I ONLY had four days left, and exactly FOUR days of free promo available. I did what I had to do.

I got over a thousand downloads for those four days, so I'm not complaining, but I simply wish it was more. I'm so very happy to finally have Witherheart out, by the way. I reread the whole thing two days ago and fixed a number of mistakes, and then re-uploaded it to Amazon, Smashwords, and Createspace. I was reading Dracula last night and got so inspired! I love that book. Beautifully written, intelligent, and engrossing. But I get lost sometimes reading it. That's why I like simple books. What I care most is that my writing is not pretty, but super easy to understand. So much, in fact, that the reader forgets they are reading words. That should ultimately be the goal of any writer, I believe.

In Witherheart, one vampire dominates the entire book. His name is Cane. Well, I wouldn't say he dominates the book in screen time. What I mean is that he's the main villain. He was inspired somewhat by Dracula and another character called Nicholas in Anya Seton's Dragonwyck. Now don't get me wrong. Cane comes close to neither character in terms of development or intelligence. I'm not good enough a writer to capture the feeling of those characters, however I do like Cane. I like him a lot. There's so much back story in Witherheart I didn't get to put in the book, not to cheat the reader out of background, but because I just didn't see a place for it without having to force it in there. I'm loosely thinking about making a second book, but right now the main thing I care about is Dragons of Witchcraft.

The third book is long overdue, and for the first time in months I find myself getting super excited about the outcome of the story. I'm compelled by my characters again. So many seeds were planted in the first and second book, hints of things that were given no explanation. All those things come to fruition in the third book, including bits of things that appeared in the first book that the reader probably thought had no meaning at all.