Shadowdance 01 - A Dance of Cloaks

little strange for me. For the first time I get to write a note from the author for a book I already released, and with its own note from the author. But like anyone who has read both the earlier work and this one, I think it’s safe to say this is a new book, and therefore deserving of a new note from me to you, dear readers. Oh, and my editor said she loved these little notes I’ve written for all my books, and encouraged me to write another. So prepare for what will probably be my longest one of these yet.
    Where to begin? About two years ago I self-published
A Dance of Cloaks
, with all its warts and in all its glory. It was a significant departure from my earlier works, in both tone and writing style. I feel safe in saying it was a nice step up in terms of quality. Well, that book found an audience, and then found itself a publisher. A real one, I mean. Trust me when I say I didn’t quite expect either. Now, I’ve heard authors say they hate returning to old works (Stephen King refers to it as eating a week-old sandwich, if my memory serves me right). But this was something I’d been wanting to do for a while. That first book had what I’ll kindly call growing pains. It was written at a feverish pace, with a complete anything-goes mentality. If I didn’t know why a character was doing whatever they were doing, screw it, I’d tie it in later. If plotlines were balls, I was throwing dozens and dozens into the air just to see if I could juggle them all. And the second I thought I was doing all right, I flung one more in for fun.
    Well, I’m a bit more under control now, and my wonderful editor Devi can also attest to that (I could probably have convinced her the second book of this series was by a different writer, so great was the improvement). But still this book, which for so many of my readers was a favorite, I wanted another crack at. I wanted to smooth over all those plotlines, to get the timeline firmly under control, to remove the dangling threads I’d left frayed instead of nicely and neatly tying them back into the main story line. With this Orbit release, those growing pains should be gone. The balls should stay nice and high in the air while I’m juggling them.
    Have I succeeded? I believe so. This book is better, of that I have no doubt. But if you disagree, and you feel I somehow ruined that original frenetic masterpiece … well, hopefully you’ll at least not begrudge me the attempt, right?
    Of course, none of this matters to you new readers who have stuck through my ramble thus far. So I’ll take yet another step back. Before writing
A Dance of Cloaks
I was busy with my Half-Orcs series. In the second book I introduced Haern the Watcher, who was easily the most popular new character in that book. My father, who spent hours of his time going over it in a hopeless attempt to weed out all my spelling errors and overall stupidity, mentioned to me that of all my characters, the Watcher begged for a novel of his own. My first thought was: uh, but I have no idea what his backstory is. Haern was just supposed to be mysterious, deadly, and basically my ace in the hole if I ever threw the characters into a situation a bit over their heads. My Hermione, if you will. Only male. Wielding swords. And killing people. So not like Hermione at all, but you (hopefully) get my point.
    So what story did he have? Well, he was the son of Thren Felhorn, who didn’t know his son was still alive … or at least pretended not to. With that beginning I started building, started adding. I took heavy inspiration from Brent Weeks’s Night Angel Trilogy, and also read
A Game of Thrones
by George R. R. Martin and felt thoroughly humbled. The world I was building, it was so … empty compared to theirs. I had no important families, no real nobles, no deadly crisscrossing of families.
A Dance of Cloaks
was my chance to change that. My chance to take a tentative step toward learning how to world-build, all while giving a past to a favorite character. Did I have growing pains? Sure. Did I perhaps mistake who was at what mansion during the Bloody Kensgold? Oh yes, yes I did. But I held faith that despite all my faults I was still telling a freaking awesome story people would want to read.
    And, thank God, they did.
    Obligatory thanks time. Thank you, Dad, for that first spark. Thank you, Michael, for being the most awesome agent a guy like me could ever hope to get. Thank you, Devi, for being as awesome an editor as