The question resting heavy in the minds of long-time fans of the Daughters of the People Series is: When will the final novel be available?

I've been promising it for years now, but have hit snag after snag with it. I'd like to walk through a few of those snags today to give readers an idea of the scope of the task in front of me.

First, the title, War's Last Refuge, which is also the novel's theme. I've known the title since roughly 2009 - 2010 when I first began developing the series. Yes, that was years before I started writing it and also years before the first novel was published. Here's a quote from the two-page document I used to outline what was originally supposed to be a seven-book series:

Book 7: War’s Last Refuge. The Oracle finds the strength to face her past and the love she sacrificed in the name of the People.

A while back I discussed the two main characters for this story: Lukas Alexiou, leader of the Shadow Enemy, and the Oracle, aka Nala, aka Abragni, aka the Light of the People.

On 19 November 2020, I wrote the first two lines of this story:

The first time Lukas Alexiou saw his destiny, it was in a dream.

He shied away from the memory now, tucking it carefully away while his expression remained neutral, his posture relaxed.

And that's where I got stuck. No matter what I tried, I could not get past those first two lines.

Now I have a bit more experience under my belt and have spent a great deal of time learning about my internal strengths and weaknesses, my writing process, etc., and I've figured out a few things:

• I needed to learn how to write the story itself because...
• It's going to have several points of view, and I had to figure out exactly which ones, and...
• I have no idea what's happening except that there's a war (c'mon, that's not a spoiler; it's in the title) and it's a Romance, so there has to be a Happy Ever After of some kind, as well as...
• I might have started in the wrong place.

So those are a few of the snags I've been tripping over. Let's start with the first one: I had to learn how to write the story.

This may sound like a ridiculous statement, coming as it does from a writer with twenty-plus novels and a decade of writing fiction under her belt, but it's true. I had to learn how to write the story. It wasn't just a skillset thing, although, yes, I am going to need a few new skills.

It's also a confidence thing. Am I going to be able to wrap this series up in a way that readers will find satisfying? (A real struggle for me.) Will I be able to help Lukas and Nala overcome all the hurdles placed in their path?

And from a business standpoint, the confidence thing is also an issue. As in, will this book make enough money to justify writing it? I've been pondering that one for years. On the one hand, I can't not write this story; I don't want to leave readers hanging, any more than I want to leave the series unfinished. On the other, it's going to be a long ass book. Can I really justify spending that kind of time on a book that may or may not sell?

All that dithering really twisted me into a knot. I haven't solved all those problems yet (my confidence is sagging right now), but I'm working on them.

The next snag was figuring out which points of view should be represented. This is especially important because every point of view character must have their own plot arc containing at least three to five plot points. Now, those plot points don't necessarily have to be independent scenes, but they're threads I have to remember to cover and resolve satisfactorily.

I knew there would be at least four points of view going into this:

• Lukas
• Abragni
• Rebecca Upton, aka the Blade
• Ankana, aka the Woman with No Face

Beyond that, I had to figure out which characters with their own stories I had to bring back. Likely this will include Daniella Nehring (Light's Bane), India Furia (Redemption), Pinico Alexiou (Lukas's uncle), and maybe a couple of others.

Yes, I know. That's a lot of point of view characters, and each one has to have their own arc. I'm not doing a David Weber and having so many characters the reader can't keep track. In fact, I may do a character sheet of some kind to mitigate that problem. We'll see.

At any rate, knowing some of the characters helps with outlining the story's content and structure. It's honestly a little easier to figure out what's going on when I know who the major players are.

Take Pinico, for example. After Lukas sought refuge with the People at the Institute for Early Cultural Studies, someone had to assume leadership of the Shadow. It couldn't be Marco, Lukas's younger brother; he's entirely too unstable, as we aptly saw in Sanctuary. So Pinico it is. This opened up some surprising and incredibly interesting details about this side of the war and the personal lives of the characters. I was honestly astonished at some of the story possibilities that popped up when I put Pinico's name on the PoV character list, so that was a good choice.

I expect each of the other PoV characters to bring the same level of story interestingness to the table. Dani and India, for example, can't just be there to update the readers on what's going on in their lives; they have to have a purpose that moves the story forward. That's why I'm not including Maya Bellegarde, necessarily, even though she'll probably play a role somewhere.

Finally, I may have started the story in the wrong place.

This has been a mild annoyance to me with a few other stories, but it's a natural part of writing. Sometimes we just don't know where the story's supposed to start. Now that I know the characters and am beginning to develop the story a little more, I have a better idea of where the story should start. And it probably won't start with Lukas.

Don't worry, though. He'll get plenty of page time. But writing him also harkens back to the first snag: I had to learn how to write a good antihero, which Lukas is. Bless his little heart.

Anyway, I have at least one story to finish before I can really focus on War's Last Refuge. Sweet Surrender may get to you first, if only because it's developed more and is already sitting at 12,600 words, give or take.

But please know that I am working on finishing the Daughters of the People Series as soon as is possible. I've also got a couple of other surprises up my sleeve that I'll share at another point, so keep an eye out for those.

Readers have been fantastically patient with me. I deeply appreciate your continued support!