Last month marked the two year anniversary of The Shadow Regent. To celebrate I thought to share a bit about the process and title in this month’s post. For those who don’t know, The Shadow Regent was the fourth installment in the world of Tralodren, which took us into the greater cosmos and the realm of the gods as they dealt with the aftermath of The Wizard King Trilogy.

It originally had started out as a short story idea—something that I played with as some extra scenes similar to a DVD extra collection of clips that told what took place after the trilogy. It had its roots, I suppose, in the format used at the end of the trilogy with those closing scenes that helped to wrap up any lingering threads. Overtime, however, those scenes kept growing until finally it became a full fledged novella—eventually being expanded into a novel.

Along the way I was able to flesh out and develop things that took the story into new directions and even set up elements of the story universe and even future stories I got to use in the present and even future works. So it was a rather interesting process and production, to say the least. It also helped tie things tighter together for the trilogy as I got to experience just how much of the tale I was able to connect to and even build upon for a greater part of the mythos.

Would I ever think about adding more to the storyline? Perhaps, though I think much of it will further intertwine itself into upcoming works—whether short stories, novels, and the like. I’m finding that some of these things are better revealed that way as when dealing with gods and beings who live for long spans of time it seems to work best in that more “organic” revealing, as it were.

I will say I did learn a lot about the inner working of the pantheon and the dynamics of those relationships. While I had a strong understanding before, getting to work with them so up close and personal really helped to refine their character even more. And I even found myself adding in elements that initially weren’t going to be included as they fit not just the story but the individual god and their personality/character arc so well. So that was equal parts surprising and refreshing.

If you’d like to hear more on the topic, I addressed it more fully in a podcast, which you can listen to here. It goes into some more of the history of the project among other things—some of which we touched on already.

If you’ve been able to take a read or listen to it thus far, thank you. It never gets old learning that others have read something with your name on it. Even better when they share how much they enjoyed it. And if you haven’t been able to check it out feel free to explore the book page on this website for some sample text and audio...

Have a wonderful rest of your April and we’ll catch you next month.