Panic? What panic?

So that’s The Raven’s Shadow a.k.a Book 3 of The Wild Hunt Quartet packed off to my editor for scrutiny, so I can start to think about Book 4 in more detail than I have up to now.

It’s going to take quite a bit of planning (a novel experience for me) as there is a helluva lot of plot to wrap up in a neat and timely fashion.

As of today, the hit-list for The Dragon House looks a bit like this:

 – invasion, and consequences thereof (including socio-political and economic ramifications)

 – bloody revolution, consequences thereof (ditto)

 – women in combat

 – tentative explorations of new relationships for damaged people

 – conflict between a personal debt of honour and the Greater Good

 – disintegration and rebirth of a moribund institution

 – past mistakes to be faced, pipers to be paid

 – family skeletons hauled out of closets

 – assorted deaths, some new characters and the return of old friends

 – when good magic goes bad, with the corollary: fire and destruction, and lots of it

and that’s just the stuff I’ve thought of in the ten minutes it’s taken me to type this post. Eeep.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net.