DO YOU HESITATE TO PICK UP A BOOK IN THE MIDDLE OF A SERIES?

Is it going to be worth it? 

How do we, as avid readers, decide we’re willing to take on a new series? 

If it’s every bit as good as promised, it’s going to end up on the auto-buy list. You’ll devour the next and the next.

 Really, you’re starting a relationship with the author. Are you ready to make a commitment to stick with these characters for a few months?

 If you decide to jump in and take the gamble, most like you will then groan about how you're so behind on your to-read pile.

 Perhaps the truth here is if you’re really a reader, you’re always going to be behind on your reading list.

 There will never be a time when there aren’t new books you need to devour, when there isn’t something you just must read.

What’s the last series you got addicted to?

This train of thought got me to thinking of that reluctance to start a series with several books already published.

I decided that Victor needed a stand-alone book: 

An introduction to his world, his enemies, and the fantasy realms that breathe in the haunted French Quarter shadows.

What better story for that than Victor showing a dangerous ally around Meilori's and the surrounding streets? 

So Coyote (the Native American Trickster) shows up to court young Becca!  

Talk about an April/December relationship!!  

What is Victor to do?  

To make Victor jealous, the foolhardy Becca encourages the entity from beyond Time itself. 

And all the while, Victor's and Samuel's enemies hover in the darkness, ready to pounce.

So I have my next book to start writing: 

MORE THAN A NAME

FIRST PAGE

CHAPTER ONE

COYOTE COMES A’COURTING

“Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.”

–G. K. Chesterton

The End of Days was just the beginning.

It is a cold world – which is a good thing.  It drives people closer for warmth.  There are many kinds of warmth, just like there are many kinds of cold.  The worst kind of cold is loneliness; the second worst is fear.   

 You might think it would be the other way around.  But it is not.  If you have someone who loves you, then you can survive fear.  Usually though the two, loneliness and fear, go together – it’s just the way of this cold world.

I have survived eight years on the streets, starting when I was seven years old.  I know all about fear and loneliness.   They’re old traveling companions.  But don’t think my life has been controlled by fear.  

 I refused to let its cold fingers take the reins of my life.  I decided the building blocks of your life were your thoughts – shitty thoughts equaled a shitty life.  And I insisted I was going to have an … interesting life. 

And I have.  Just like I have a simple philosophy:

“No one's life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be burned by the beauty of this world, to hunger for truth and meaning, to hunt for wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.  No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.”

I sighed low, ““This world, which has the promise of Eden, is instead the hell before Hell. In our greed and conceit, we have made it so.”

Alice, sitting beside me at Captain Sam’s table in Meilori’s, frowned, “What did you say, Victor?”

My ghoul friend sat up straighter, her face going paler than usual.  “Oh, my!  It is Toomey Starks, Trish, and … Coyote!”

Alice said that last name in two syllables.  I shook my head.  It wasn’t that I had bad luck.  I just had strange luck.

And strange luck was what Coyote, the Trickster of Native American myth, always brought with him.  But then, since he had helped me postpone the End of Days, I could hardly begrudge him a visit to Captain Sam’s haunted jazz club.  

 But there would be trouble.  That was something else Coyote always brought with him.

And for some laughs: