I’ve just finished the first draft of the final Auckland Allies book.

At the moment, it’s not quite 47,000 words, but I always expand when revising. And now that I check, that’s about halfway between the length of the second and third books. (The first is a bit longer, almost 55k, and the draft of the fourth book is sitting at 59k.) The total for the five-book series, in other words, will be in the region of a quarter of a million words.

They’re short; they’re pacy. I’d rather have people complain there’s not enough than too much (though so far nobody has, for the record, at least not that I’ve seen).

I’m happy with where the resolution ended up, and how I got there; I didn’t have to use any big coincidences, but drove it all with character agency. There are some cool moments along the way.

And, as I said a couple of posts ago, the door is left ajar for a follow-up series focused on the new set of characters I’ve introduced in this last book. My main characters have all had their arcs of growth and resolution, so there’s not as much potential in them anymore, but these new ones still have places they can go, if I think of any stories for them.

Plans, for what plans are ever worth: I’d like to spend my Christmas/New Year break revising the fourth and fifth books, hopefully get some beta readers (volunteers are welcome), and publish sometime in 2022.

After that… well, I’ve been thinking about the kind of books I like to write (and read). This is what I’ve come up with so far:

• Fantasy – high magic, wizards
• Motivated protagonist in a dynamic situation
• BUT plot that doesn’t depend on action/violence
• Sensawunda in the setting
• Social change through technological change
• Courageous, competent women
• Kind, reliable men
• Good intimate relationships
• Adaptive coping
• Ensemble casts
• Protagonists without a lot of power in society (at least initially)
• Humour
• Some depth of reflection on human condition/society
• Complex and evolving relationships

I don’t see myself writing something completely different from that. Don’t look for a dark, unrelentingly serious post-apocalyptic dystopian story of toxic relationships, maladaptive coping, and alienated slackers, set among the backstabbing nobility of a bad photocopy of Renaissance Europe, with a predictable steamy romance between repellent people, ending in inevitable tragedy, in a plot helped generously along by coincidence, convenient eavesdrops, and a prophecy in bad verse.

But I do want to lean more into the elements I’ve bolded in the list above for my future work.

Those are the parts I find hardest, of course.