On Barren
Posted by Peat
Hi Everyone!
Long time, no post. Sorry about that. Karen has been doing a stellar job keeping the blog going, but I haven’t had as much time as I would like to write blogs personally.
But today is a special day. Today my new Demon Cycle novella, Barren, goes on sale in the UK from Harper Voyager. The US version releases next Tuesday, Sept. 25! If you have a moment, I’d like to tell you a bit about the history of the book.
Eleven years ago, I created a character named Selia, Town Speaker for Tibbet’s Brook, where the story of Arlen Bales first begins in The Warded Man.
Tibbet’s Brook is a small, isolated town with not much more than a thousand inhabitants. Demons cull folk every year, and as a matter of sheer survival, it’s considered the duty of every citizen to marry young and produce as many children as they are able.
Widowed in middle age without having borne children, folk took to calling Selia “barren”—a word whispered with horror, pity, and sometimes derision. But over the years, as she stood time and again as a rock of support in times of trouble, folk began to depend on her, and started to capitalize the b—at least when Selia was not around. They called her Selia Barren, the woman who made the whole town her children.
Many of the characters I created to populate Tibbet’s Brook had secrets. Hidden facets hinted at in the first chapters of The Warded Man to give a sense of dimension to the town. Folk from Southwatch and Soggy Marsh didn’t like their kids coming to Town Square. Coline Trigg was a passable Herb Gatherer, but she was shit at treating demon wounds. Jeph Bales was a coward. Stam Tailor was a drunk. Rusco “Hog” had been driven out of the Free Cities for some reason, forced to settle in the Brook. Harl Tanner had a strange and secretive family.
And Selia wasn’t barren.
I talk a lot about my original five book pitch for the Demon Cycle series, boasting that I KNEW ALL ALONG how everything would turn out, and how the books ended up just like I envisioned. It’s mostly true.
Mostly.
Tolkien famously said of The Lord of the Rings, “This tale grew in the telling,” and better authors than I can speak to the truth of those words. The original five book plan was:
- The Warded Man
- The Desert Spear
- The Daylight War
- Tibbet’s Brook
- The Core
It was so clever. So cruel. I would reel the reader in with this epic story, leading up to a massive cliffhanger at the end of Daylight War. Then, when everyone was waiting with bated breath, I would AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT book 4 and take the reader back to the Brook to learn Selia’s secret and the adventure that went alongside it.
LOL! There has always been a small but vocal group of readers who only wanted to read Arlen’s POV. I relished fantasies about their endless indignant reviews, followed by grudging admission that Tibbet’s Brook was still a great novel.
But the Demon Cycle kept growing. Arlen was supposed to revisit Miln in The Warded Man, forcing him to leave dejected and at a low point in his life before finding Leesha and Rojer on the road to Cutter’s Hollow. But it didn’t fit, so I pushed that reunion into The Desert Spear. Jardir was supposed to invade Lakton in Desert Spear, but it didn’t fit and was pushed into Daylight War, which was supposed to encompass the events of Skull Throne as well. Daylight War was also supposed to introduce Briar Damaj by telling his life story in addition to that of his cousin Inevera.
The overflow became so great I had no choice but to cut Briar’s origin story from the novel. Even then, it was too much, and Daylight War was split early on in the process, pushing the invasion of Lakton into Skull Throne and essentially swallowing Tibbet’s Brook in the process.
TBH, I also came to my senses and realized what a dick move it would have been to shift focus mid-series away from the “main” story for a small town novel full of side characters, however awesome that tale might be. You thought it was bad waiting 2 years to find out what happened at the end of Daylight War? IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH WORSE.
The Demon Cycle novellas have always been the steam valve for literary pressure building in the novels. The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold are tales of Arlen as a Messenger that I plotted but couldn’t fit into the flow of The Warded Man. The origin of Briar Damaj cut from Daylight War grew into the novella Messenger’s Legacy.
And the stepsheet for Tibbet’s Brook, started all those years ago, has at long last become Barren, telling the tale of Selia that I have held close all these years, waiting for the right time to share it. It is very special to me, and I hope it will be to you, as well.
Odds are good Selia is about to become one of your favorite Demon Cycle characters.
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