It’s a well-known fact in indie publishing that it’s easier to sell books in a series. Once a reader enjoys the first book, they’re more likely to pick up the next, rather than move on to another author. The challenge I’ve always had is that I get bored easily. Three or four books with the same characters is really my maximum, and even then, each volume will usually be set in a different city or locale.
So a thirteen books series was never going to suit me – but I realised a few years ago that I could link individual books or series together, by setting them in the same world.
Enter The Eternal World, by far the most ambitious writing project I’ve ever attempted. What started as a means of connecting a few disparate series – ones which had enough in common to plausibly take place on adjacent continents, say – has expanded to encompass every single one of my high fantasy works-in-progress. To incorporate so many different settings, characters, and plots, it has continued to grow, and now covers something like fifteen thousand years of history, multiple continents, and a dozen connected realms.
It’s impossible for me to put into words how I’ve gone about this. The whole process has been remarkably organic, and started from very humble seeds. Perhaps these two books could take place in the same city – and perhaps this one is in the same country, a few hundred years before. But then what’s happening on the other side of the ocean? Where did this culture they keep mentioning spring up? Where does their magic come from?
I’ve answered questions like these, and hundreds more, repeatedly over the last few years. It’s been a monumental task to bring so many different stories into one world, without their inclusion feeling forced. Many are yet to be written, and none are yet published; I’m finding new connections between them all the time.
And that’s been the most interesting part of this whole process. My initial plans for one large world, full of stories that only tangentially overlapped, have instead become more complex. Every time I dive into another of these books, I start noticing the possible connections with other stories – characters who might appear elsewhere, histories that affect other places, intricacies of the magic or technology that have an impact on other series. Suddenly, those disconnected books have built themselves into a vast, highly connected web. There are links between them that readers might never notice, but I know they’re there.
This sounds, I know, both overwhelming and intimidating. There are times when it’s both, and I find myself drowning under the sheer weight of complexity this world has engendered. Ultimately, though, it’s been exhilarating. Each new connection inspires me to pursue a different story, or develop a different part of the world. Seeing grand arcs develop is thrilling; most of all, I’ve been continually surprised by what my brain can come up with, when pushed to put pieces together that don’t immediately seem to fit.
I’ve debated several times whether The Eternal World has reached its limits. There are books that don’t seem to have a place there, and ideas that just don’t belong. It’s the complexity and challenge of this project that keeps me coming back to it, though – and I hope to share more of both in the weeks to come.