Reader Question Day #41 – future THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS books and THE GHOSTS chronology

Note that this post contains spoilers for THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS series.

CD asks:

I have just finished The Destroyer of Worlds. I enjoyed the entire series as I have all of your books. My only disappointment was the was no follow up with Ally and friends in their new setting. Ally and Lithon are strangers to a strange world. I would have like to have seen more at the end of the book…or maybe a two or three book series on what happened after they left the tower. I can review all but one of your series and as I am a die hard Sci- Fi / Fantasy guy, I can tell you they are all good. They are believeable and you feel like you could belong in that setting. Thanks for the great stories!

I don’t currently have any plans to additional story in that setting, but I do have a few ideas for more.

Basically, Ally’s and Lithon’s world was a medieval fantasy kingdom, and then had a lot of 21st century technology dumped out to it. So the society would have changed drastically – not all of that technology would have gone away once Marugon’s death sealed the Tower of Endless Worlds. So I think any future stories with Ally, Lithon, and Arran would have to be a in a steampunk sort of setting, and there are interesting possibilities with that.

Manwe asks:

What I meant was did you like the idea of it (Hearthfire, the expansion for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)? It’s not a traditional expansion pack by any means. No new story content, levels, enemies, etc. It’s all about housing and family life. I think it’s kind of neat, giving you a chance to be even more immersed in the life of your avatar.

It sounds like of like a Japanese dating sim game, to be honest. I don’t know if there’s a market for that in the US, but I guess we’ll find out!

Skippy asks:

I LOVED your Ghost stories in the Sword and Sorceress anthologies, so much so that I would skip to your stories (and a few others) first when a new one came out. Thus, I was delighted when I finally decided to track down your website and see if there were other Ghost stories written (or if a compilation was available), and discovered a whole series of ebooks. What I am curious about is the chronology of the ebooks and the stories. I am one of those people who is CDO [i.e. OCD put in the correct order], and HATES to read book series out of order. So I would appreciate it if you could tell me the chronological order of your books and short stories in the ghost series.

Here’s the order of THE GHOSTS books and stories.

#1 – Child of the Ghosts
#2 – Ghost in the Flames
#3 – Ghost Dagger (a novella)
#4 – Ghost in the Blood
#5 – Ghost in the Storm
#6 – Ghost in the Stone (if I am diligent, this should be available by the end of October).
#7 – Black Ghost, Red Ghost in Sword & Sorceress 22
#8 – Stolen Ghosts in Sword & Sorceress 23
#9 – Ghost Mask in Sword & Sorceress 24
#10 – Ghost Puppet in Sword & Sorceress 25
#11 – Ghost Dance in Sword & Sorceress 26
#12 – Ghost Pyres in Sword & Sorceress 27 (this is coming out in November).

The continuity of the short stories is about six or seven years ahead of the continuity of the books (i.e., Caina is twenty-one at the end of GHOST IN THE STONE, but by GHOST PYRES she’s about twenty-eight or twenty-nine or so). Eventually, if I can keep doing the novels long enough, they’ll catch up to the short stories.

Hope that helps!

-JM