Joshua P. Simon - The Accidental Author

Last week I published the final volume in both the Blood and Tears Trilogy and the series as a whole, which included several shorter works. All six releases (3 books, 2 novellas, and 1 short story) total around 510,000 published words.

Wow! Pretty crazy considering I hated creative writing in school, and didn’t start writing fiction until a few years ago.

Having concluded the series, it’s surprising that I don’t feel how I expected I would. I’ve heard authors say they feel upset or even depressed about leaving characters or worlds they created. I don’t have any of those feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely happy/proud of the way everything turned out, especially the ending which is exactly how I imagined it would be when I first started writing Rise and Fall.

Maybe that’s why I feel more a sense of relief. I set out to tell a particular story with these characters I love and did it pretty well in my mind. That’s probably why all I was thinking about while wrapping up Trial and Glory was that I couldn’t wait to focus on the “next thing.”

I’m doing that now, furiously writing and looking ahead. As usual, I have a crazy word count goal to reach by Memorial Day that I don’t want to miss (why do I keep doing these things to myself).

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on two series right now and I’d like to release at least one more book before this year is done. However, that may not be possible due to timing and the marketing strategies I’m thinking of for each series.

If I don’t manage to get another book out this year, it will mean releasing 3-4 books next year instead.

Regardless of what I work on in the future, the Blood and Tears series will probably always be up there as one of my favorites as it paved the way for hopefully bigger and better things down the road.