King's Warrior Read-Along: Epilogue
And here we are, dear Readers, on the final day of the read-along. I want to thank you all so much for your questions, comments, and conversation. I know I’ve said this a lot, but I’ve had so much fun discussing my little debut novel with all of you and hearing your reactions to the story! It is sad to see the story come to an end, but it's that good kind of sad, if you know what I mean.
I know I’ve been hyping up books 3 & 4 a bit, and I do hope to have Yorien’s Hand available to you in the very near future, so keep an eye out after Christmas for some information on that. I’m going to try to do a “real” online book launch party with this one, and I’ll tell you all how you can be involved in spreading the word.
All right. On to the Epilogue. I like epilogues, they’re like that extra scene at the end of the credits, that tiny little bit of, “Hey! The story’s not over just yet!” They always make me feel warm and cozy inside.
I had two main reasons for this epilogue. The first was to show how close our characters had become, and how much they had all grown to love Brant over the course of their journeys.
The second reason was to show what was going on with Brant in the near future: he was not leaving Aom-igh just yet, had handed the throne of Llycaelon over to his nephew, and that he does have a sort of quiet sense of humor... letting them all believe that he was leaving without saying good-bye.
In the original version, my story ended with these lines:
“Brant had much to explain about his past, for the others had many questions to ask of him. And eventually, he did tell them his tale in full. But that’s another tale.”
Of course, that was practically blatant plagiarism from the ending of the movie “The Neverending Story” - so in the rewrite I changed it. Although I did like the way the original ending alluded to what was coming next in Second Son, I also like the way the new ending lets us leave our characters: walking together, laughing, and ready for whatever comes next. I feel that this ending sets the reader up better for both Second Son AND Yorien’s Hand.
And that’s the end of the story, and the read-along. If you’re a first-time reader, the next book in the series is titled SECOND SON. It’s actually a prequel to KING’S WARRIOR and goes back in time to tell the story about Brant’s history. You can read more about that book HERE, and even get your own copy HERE! (shameless, I know, but hey!)
The events of YORIEN’S HAND will begin three years after the end of KING’S WARRIOR...
Q&A
Abbey wants to know: Does this mean that Oraeyn and Kamarie are related? Hopefully not too close, or their Ship might sink! Haha.
Um... sort of. In the same way that we're all related because we're all descended from Noah. Oraeyn is descended from King Llian himself, while Arnaud (and, therefore, Kamarie) are descended from Llian's brother, Veli. Keeping in mind that Llian and Veli were alive approximately 600 years before the beginning of King's Warrior, Oraeyn and Kamarie can't possibly be all that closely related... so, no worries about their "ship" sinking on account of that! hee hee
Jack wants to know: How did you come up with the characters names?
That is such a difficult question to answer, mostly because it's a long answer... and because it involves something kind of sad. Firstly, I used to use a site called babynamesworld... but I discovered a few weeks ago that that site is gone, which is very sad, because many good characters found their names there. It had a lovely advanced search where you could enter all sorts of criteria such as origin, meaning, star-rating, and country, and it had one of the largest databases of names I've found. I am very sad that this tool has been removed.
For The Minstrel's Song series, most of the human names came from a combination of what the name meant and what the name sounded like. If I liked a meaning, but didn't like the name itself, I would often combine it with another name that had a meaning I did like - Kamarie, Dylanna, and Calyssia were all combo names (for example: Kamarie was a combination of Kamara + Marie). Every human character has a name whose meaning reflects or describes something about that character. For example: Rena means "song bearer" or "melody."
Dragon and gryphon names... they just popped into my head. I can't even explain where they come from, they just sort of arrive. The trick is figuring out how to spell them, really.
Countries are totally different. For Aom-igh, I literally swiped my hands across the keyboard without looking and then pulled the most interesting combination of letters/characters out of the garble. Llycaelon/aethalons I used my handy thesaurus and combined a bunch of enormous words for "wolf, eagle, and snake."
Discussion Questions:
- How do you feel about the end of King’s Warrior? Is it satisfying? Disastisfying? Why?
- I tried very hard with each of these books to write something that would stand alone well, do you feel I succeeded with this book? Why or why not?
- Any final questions, comments, smart remarks?
I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!