When I set out to write Circlets and Seekers, I toyed with the idea of writing that book (as well as books V and VI) at the same time. It was how I had written the first three books, after all. However, my most invested readers, that is, those who live in the same house as I do voiced their desired veto of such a strategy.

“People want the next book as soon as possible!” they said. “We want the next book as soon as possible!”

It’s a sweet sentiment, and I’m glad that I took their advice. I love how Circlets and Seekers turned out, and I feel like it has a certain self-contained-from-the-start quality that the other books lack, especially the break between Fragments and The Elf and the Arrow.

Which brings us to Book V.

Yes, Book V is still in progress. Yes, I have joined that illustrious crew of authors of a certain gender of a certain age range who seem to take forever to get that next book to you (please don’t come at me with your Sandersons and Paolini’s, trust me, I see them). But I thought that despite that, you might want to hear an update.

Well, without spoiling anything, or telling you details that might change in the editing phase, I can say that Askon and friends are all still kicking around, pursuing all those unanswered questions and incomplete plot threads. Each scene and new turn grows what I’ve come to think of as the old tree of Alora’s Tear. When that tree was young, it grew fast, with new branches all the time. Sometimes those branches fell away and were forgotten. Now the tree is vast and full of memory. It grows, slowly, carefully now, checking and cross checking everything that has come before many times before reaching its branches wider.

For those of you reading this, thank you for sticking with me through this time. I originally meant to talk about the state of the world these last few years, and how it has affected my work, but you’ve lived it too. You know. So instead, thanks for being here. Thanks for reading and enjoying Askon’s story (and now Alora’s, and Líana’s and Elise’s and John’s and…).

I’ve recently had to re-learn something they all learned long ago in my notes, before many of the characters ever even had their first appearance on a page. That lesson: “Seek it, and it will find you.”

And so I go on seeking.