The War of Six Crowns: The Vanished Knight

Author's Note

First things first. I want to say a huge thank you (and SORRY!) to everyone who's read this story, commented, and voted on it. I loved the comments you left. 

I also want to make a special note of the awesome people who loyally kept reading and voting on most/all of the sections as I posted them. 

Now with that, I guess I should answer why I was so cruel to leave off on a cliffhanger. There's actually a bit of a story behind it. The story goes something like this: 

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had this hugely ambitious idea for an epic fantasy series. So ambitious, that the first book, Doorways, ended up being 109 THOUSAND words long after edits. She wanted to publish the book, but at that stage believed that self publishing wasn't an option for her. (At the time she had various reasons for this, but in reality, she was just scared and unsure.) 

Eventually, she sold the book to a publishing house, but because it's a Young Adult book (and the publishing house believed that teens don't have the concentration span to read a 109k book and know what's going on - which incidentally the girl disagreed with), the publishing deal required that Doorways be split into two. 

The girl agreed because the editor who'd wanted to publish the book loved it so much that she knew that working with the editor would be the right thing to do. 

So the book was split, which gave the girl a chance to add a lot of detail that she'd thought would have to be left out because 109k for a book was already a lot. Out of this, The Vanished Knight and The Heir's Choice were born. 

And simply put, the girl just couldn't put a more definitive end on The Vanished Knight without it completely destroying the vision she has for the series as a whole. 

But then, as in all good stories, there was a dark night of the soul. Things went spectacularly wrong with the publishing house. (Sadly the girl can't go into detail for legal reasons, but suffice it to say that it was ugly.) But like in all good stories, the girl fought back and won back the rights to both books. 

That said, the experience made her rethink everything, and she realized that actually, she could do better without a publishing house. (Spoiler alert: She was right.) 

Once she made this decision, she needed to make another choice: To keep the halves separate or to put them back together again. 

In the end, it came down to one simple fact: She wanted to give people a chance to try out the new story without expecting them to pay a lot of money for it. And at the same time, if you don't charge a lot of money for a 109k book, people think the quality's bad. On top of that, she liked the way she changed the stories, but they also meant that putting them together wouldn't work as well.

So in the end she decided to keep the halves separate, but together by publishing them simultaneously.

And then she thought to post the first half to Wattpad to give people a chance to try it for free. 

The End. 

Oh dear. Another cliffhanger ending. This time for a simple reason: I just don't want to presume how you feel about the story. If you liked it, GREAT! If you don't... that's okay too. I made the decision knowing that some readers will be deeply upset with me. 

In the end, though, I had to balance staying true to my vision with market expectation. 

There you have it. I've now bared my heart about the story exclusively on Wattpad, because I didn't put this note anywhere else. 

So what now? 

Well, if you want, you can mark The Vanished Knight as "read" on Goodreads. The Wattpad version had the chapters split into often much smaller segments, but the contents remained the same. I'll love you forever if you leave a review there (or at any of the vendors' review sections).

If you adored The Vanished Knight and The Heir's Choice and would like to support my writing, please consider buying the books or pledging your patronage on Patreon. 

The Heir's Choice is also available at the same places and on Wattpad, if you want to find out what happened to Callan, Gawain, Darrion, James and Ward. I promise you that it does not end on a cliffhanger.

Links:

Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/MishaGerrick

Amazon Author Page

http://author.to/MishaGerrick

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/MGerrick

The Vanished Knight

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Vanished-Knight-War-Crowns-Book-ebook/dp/B00X5X212Y

Amazon Universal

http://mybook.to/TheVanishedKnight

Draft2Digital Universal (Which will take you to the non-Amazon vendor of your choice.)

https://books2read.com/u/47QL83

The Heir's Choice

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Heirs-Choice-War-Crowns-Book-ebook/dp/B00XW06928

Amazon Universal

http://myBook.to/TheHeirsChoice

Draft2Digital Universal (Which will take you to the non-Amazon vendor of your choice.)

https://books2read.com/u/49yl84

One last thing. I believe it's too cruel to just leave James drowning in a lake, so tomorrow, you can come back for a teaser about him... 

Thanks for reading!