Meredith Mansfield, Author

Now that WAR OF MAGIC is launched into the world,

it’s time to move on to the new series I’ve been working on.

I haven’t settled on a series title yet, but the first book in the series will be BECOME.

It’s loosely based on the Greek legend of Hercules (not Disney’s version) turned on its head (son of the earth goddess rather than the sky god, etc.). What fascinated me most about Hercules’s story is that while he was very good at dealing with monsters and certain other sticky situations, his personal life was a shambles. That was Hera’s fault, true. But when Hercules becomes a god at the end of the legendary cycle, what exactly about his life prepared him for that? And that’s the central problem of my series.

But, like Hercules, my hero has a half brother born at nearly the same time. And, unlike Hercules, their relationship as sometime rivals turned trusted friends (but maybe that early rivalry isn’t completely forgotten–on one side, anyway) is going to be a big part of the story. Which requires that some of what would normally be backstory–stuff that happened in their childhoods that affects that relationship–has to be shown.

Starting with the childhood history doesn’t work, though. It takes too long to get to the main story that way. So this will be an interesting experiment in telling a non-linear story. A story that sometimes (hopefully not too often) has to take a detour into the past.

In order not to interrupt the main story too often, I need to be careful in choosing which events really are important. I just deleted one entire chapter earlier this week.

Maybe I’ll use it on the blog when it comes closer to time to release this story.