Time as an Author

School of Deaths is now available in paperback. It's exciting to see my first novel in print at last. It's also strange to feel disconnected in a way from this incarnation of the work.

While I love the book, and am still immensely proud of it, I wrote School of Deaths four years ago. I'm very excited about Daughter of Deaths, the novel I'm working on now. I wake up thinking about it, and can't wait for others to read it. Yet, it's far away from publication. I feel like each novel I write has definitely improved from the novels before. It's funny to hand someone a paperback and know that they're about to start a journey that I'm at a completely different point on.  Daughter of Deaths won't be available for years. School of Deaths was written years ago, and there's a novel in between the two. While I imagine all series authors have a similar disconnect with time, it's interesting to experience it firsthand.

Ultimately, time is relevant for an author and a reader. The first time you read a story, it's brand new to you. My students will perform Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream next spring, and the story will be brand new for the audiences, while it was written and performed centuries ago. How would Shakespeare imagine his stories performed today? How will my novels be interpreted in centuries to come?