Hello there.

Now, I know most of you come here because you are enjoying The Faerie Path series, but there are also some of you who enjoy Warrior Princess - and I’m kind of hoping that my Faerie Path fans like my stuff enough to give Warrior Princess a try, especially as the first book is now out in paperback

As you probably already know, the 2nd book in the Warrior Princess series is due out at the end of October - and for me, its with this book that the series really takes off. It introduces one of my very favourite characters - Blodwedd the owl-girl. Acdtually she isn’t really an “owl-girl” - she’s an owl who happens to have been magically put inside a girl’s shape - but everything else about her is pure, 100% owl!

Anyway, I wasn’t writing this to tell you about book two, but to let fans know that on Friday I visited with my UK editor friend and colleague James, and (by phone) with the New York based editor Clare, to discuss the plotlines for Warrior Princess book four.

We call these “brainstorm” meetings. I had already given James and Clare a six page document of ideas and thoughts and “wish-lists” for the book, and this was where we’d work out what we liked and what we didn’t like, what made sense and what didn’t make sense and so on.

James is a really great guy to bounce ideas off - and in only a few hours we had split the book into four parts and had more or less worked out a story-arc for each part. The first three books take place in summer, but for this book we’re skipping ahead six months and setting it in the coldest and snowiest and blizzardiest winter ever.

I’ve been looking forward to writing about a snowy landscape ever since I started this series - I think this is probably because I like The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe so much - and that’s set in midwinter. Also, the book that got me hooked on fantasy in the first place - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner - has a climax in the snow after a ferocious blizzard.

Anyhow, James wrote up the notes of the meeting (I’m way to lazy to do that kind of thing) and has mailed them to me and Clare to make sure we’re all happy with what was agreed. Then James and I are going to have a few smaller meetings over the next month or two (probably over a beer or two…) to iron out more details. It’s so much easier to plot stuff if you can bounce your ideas off another person. (That’s a tip to all you aspiring authors out there!) I actually find that the process of speaking my ideas out loud helps me to come up with new stuff, and the great thing with James is that one of us can say “remember that scene in Buffy The Vampire Slayer where…?” and the other will say “Yes! And what about that bit in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom…”  and we put the two ideas together and come up with a whole new idea.

Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know what I was doing last Friday. And for those of you who are more interested in the Faerie Path, I’m expecting the UK editors’ comments back some time early in October. Watch this space!