I’m very proud to announce that (after many fits and starts, not to mention unanticipated delays), the second and final series of novels in the combined tale of the Storied Watcher’s advent on Earth, in 2040, has finally been published!

The Future Burns Bright consists of four volumes, entitled as follows :

• Storm In The North (Book #1)
• The Race (Book #2)
• Against Time* (Book #3)
• The Future Alight (Book #4)

Note : Against Time was previously known as The Race (Part 2).

As of today, these novels are available in both e-Book (Kindle / .MOBI) and paperback formats from Amazon (the .EPUB and .PDF e-Book versions for Apple iBookstore and Google Play Books are available now for the first two novels; the rest will be published later).

Here’s the URL that you can use to find The Future Burns Bright, on Amazon :

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Marcus+Shields&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Note : For some obscure reason, Amazon has labeled Storm In The North and The Race as being in a “2-book series” (whereas, of course, the series incorporates all four novels referenced above). Fortunately, this does not have any effect on your ability to access and purchase the other two novels of The Future Burns Bright.

There will be ample time for “lessons learned” and reflections later, but for the record… writing the story of Karéin-Mayréij’s advent on Earth in the year 2040, has certainly been a lot of work, and while I’m completely satisfied by the final results, I’m glad to be finally at the end of this marathon.

I will still be publishing bits and pieces of the narrative on this blog (and elsewhere) over the foreseeable future, of course; but I will be taking a hard-earned rest from “real” novel-writing, for the time being.

Also for the record, I’d like to answer a question that comes up from time to time : “Why did you do two different book series… and why is each series made up of four fairly-long novels?”

There are many technical reasons (associated with the paperback publishing process) for this, but the honest answer is, “I wanted to write the story that I wanted to write”… it’s basically that simple.

As all authors know all too well, when one embarks on a project like this, one is besieged with (often, unsolicited) advice (often from people who have never written, much less published, anything longer than a business memo) about “how to make your books, ‘better'”). Either the book is too long, or it’s too short, or it has too much dialogue or action, or too little, or, or, or… (you get the idea). Failure to fully implement all of this (often, self-contradictory) “sage advice” inevitably (in the opinion of your self-appointed “editors”) will inevitably doom your novels to the bargain bin in Walmart, or wherever.

One tries to be polite when listening to this stuff, but everybody has their own limits, I suppose.

So, at the end of the day,  either one writes the book that one is satisfied with reading back to oneself, or one doesn’t. That’s what I tried to do. It’s up to you to evaluate how successful the effort ultimately was.

Long before I started out on writing The Angel Brings Fire, I had a very clear idea of who Karéin-Mayréij is, what motivates her, and so on; she’s obviously a complex, multi-faceted character, and shortly after putting pen to paper I realized that even if just writing a short book about her might be theoretically possible… it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

I wanted to write a narrative that would not only be interesting for other people to read, but that would fully explore the Storied Watcher’s personality, that would explain the nature of her supernatural powers, and that would (in particular) show how she reacts to and overcomes, adversity. I also wanted to properly depict what might happen to human society, if a being on Karéin’s level actually showed up on Planet Earth (clearly, this wouldn’t be just some story that gets its “15 minutes of fame” and then everybody goes back to following the sports scores). Finally, there’s the concept of “wouldn’t it be great, to have super-powers?” Sure it would… as long as it doesn’t get a government run by nervous (but otherwise quite ordinary) human beings, declaring you to be “Public Enemy #1”! 😉

I’m confident that the combined Angel Brings Fire and Future Burns Bright series, accomplishes these goals… but of course, at the end of the day, that judgment isn’t up to me, as the author : it’s up to you, as the reader!

And in the same vein, there’s another often-asked question that I’d like to address, here; namely, “Is Karéin-Mayréij actually an ‘angel’, in the Biblical (supernatural) sense?”

I have my own ideas about this, but I will leave it to you, the readers (as well as to others such as Devon White, the Claremont family, Minnie Chu, Sylvia Abruzzio, Hector Ramirez, Sam Jacobson, Cherie Tanaka, Brent Boyd, Tommy George, Elissha, Sayuri and, of course, poor old Floor-Tile Sales Agent Extraordinaire Bob Billings), to form your own conclusions on that subject.

All that I have to add, is what I fancy Karéin herself would likely say, if one were to ask her the same question :

“Is it not that an ‘angel’ is… as an ‘angel’ does?”

Sincerely

Marcus Shields

Author, The Angel Brings Fire and The Future Burns Bright