The Mighty Ones' Fall

Author's Note *only read after you've finished the book*

Hello and welcome to the Author's Note. As you (should) already know, I'm @smile4pie aka Alexandria Hook. I'd like to think this Author's Note is a little more personal than the one for How the Forest Gods Reign, so let's get right to it:

First of all, I want to thank every single one of you for reading this book (and the last one) all the way through, especially if you were one of those giving me feedback. It really does mean a lot to me. I can only hope you try reading my other books and doing the same for those. They do not involve Greek myths, but they deserve some love too. They will have plenty of action, moral messages to make you think, and a couple love traingles, just like this series does, and I'm definitely considering publishing at least one of them :) I think they could be real hits!

Second of all, I've taken the time to answer some questions you're probably wondering, and in return you'll find 3 things I've asked you to comment about. If I missed any questions you want answered, please put them in the comments below, and I will get to them ASAP. If they are not answered within a day or two, you can assume I am on vacation and will get back to you upon my return.

Are you still going to publish How the Forest Gods Reign? HELL YEAH! I have signed a contract with a publishing company, and I expect the first book in the trilogy (Book 1=Ch1-18 online, Book 2=Ch19-31 online, Book 3=How the Mighty Ones Fall) to be available both online and in real bookstores sometime in 2015. I'm sorry, but this publishing business takes forever. Thanks for sticking with me and being patient. Follow me (if you aren't already) to receive more updates, and start spreading the word!!! 

Are you going to write more books in this series? NO NO NO NO NO. As I just said above, this series has turned out to be a trilogy, and so it will stay a trilogy. I have other projects I'm working on now that I like a lot, and I hope you will too. There is a very, very slight chance I will do a collection of short stories about the Forest Gods and their untold adventures at various ages, but if I were to do that, it wouldn't come out for a while. (Please comment below on what you think about this idea.)

From an author's perspective, do you like How the Forest Gods Reign or How the Mighty Ones Fall better? Why? How the Forest Gods Reign, by far. Probably the only thing I liked better about HMOF is the epilogue and that you got to see the gods and Alec from an outsider's perspective. Athena mentioned a little bit about how attractive the gods were and how powerful their auras were, though she was a god herself and didn't place much emphasis on it, so I tried to go more in depth in Jace's POV.

Now, reasons I like HFGR better:

1) It was the first, so it will always have a special place in my heart.

2) HFGR was much easier to write. In other words, it came more naturally to me. I don't remember ever having terrible writer's block for that book (In fact, Ch12 of HFGR, in which Alec declares war against Hades, happened totally spontaneously.), but there were times I was writing HMOF when I would just sit there, staring at the screen, with nothing coming to mind. I felt like I was using the same monsters over and over again, and that wasn't a good thing. This was why updates were sometimes late, and probably a result of #3.

3) I like HFGR's characters and the actual plot line better than HMOF's. Believe it or not, this was not how I planned HMOF to go at all, and part of me absolutely hates it. I contemplated writing this in Layna's POV, and I kind of regret that I didn't, but I am NOT going back to re-write this. This story was supposed to be much more about Layna than it was about Alec, but I think it ended up being about both of them equally and, therefore, too much about Alec. In fact, my original plan was for Alec to be included only a couple times throughout the whole book, and the gods weren't going to reappear at all. (They are very distracting characters.)

To be honest, sometimes I think I wrote the sequel the way I did just to be able to write an epic death scene for Alec, to be merciful toward him while giving the readers more closure. And that's not a very good reason to write a book. In the end, I think it worked out okay, because it connected well with the first book and gave more background behind the Knowing.

But I'm just the author, and you're the ones who actually read the books and formulate your own opinions about what you think should happen to the characters. So, from a reader's perspective, which was your favorite? I'd like to hear YOUR reasons. Was there something I totally missed? (Please comment below. It may be your last chance to voice your thoughts about this series!) 

Do you ever regret killing off the Forest Gods (and Alec)? Not really. I developed a motto while I was writing HFGR, and it went like this: If you want to be a good writer, you can't sacrifice a good plot for the love of your characters; if anything, it has to be the other way around. And as it turned out, this plot line was the one monster the gods couldn't defeat. I like to think the story was better that way.

Were any of the characters in this book based off of real people? Nope. Purely imagination.

Now, the last thing I want to do in this Author's Note is point out some things about the series that weren't explicitly stated and that you may not have noticed before. We'll go from most obvious to least obvious:

1) In chapters 1, 4, and 5 of HFGR, Athena refers briefly to a newspaper article her father hid involving the Monster Watch and other missing people, such as the young Persephone and Hades. This is the same newspaper Alec is looking at in Ch31. Alec also takes Athena's journals, which show up quite regularly in this book, and the school photo of the gods, which shows up for a moment at the end of Ch8 in HMOF.

2) What the hell happened to Felix in this book, you ask? I didn't mention him after the first few chapters. This was because my editor for HFGR pointed out around that time that a baby living in the middle of the forest made no sense at all, as there were no diapers or baby foods for him, and he didn't have any real significance to the story yet. After that, I made the executive decision to cut him out of the series completely (just in print, because I didn't want to change the entire online version after you'd already read it). There will be a few minor differences (i.e. short extra/deleted scenes) between the online version and the printed version of HFGR, but Felix is the only major one. I will admit, however, that my original plan for Felix in this book was for Alec to mercifully kill him in the end (to keep Felix from having to live a terrible life as a Sighted orphan afterwards, and so the brothers could live as souls in the Underworld together), and have Clara kill Alec out of revenge for that. Instead of using Felix, I used the affair between Clara and Jason to get the same effect. (I also played up the affair in the printed version of first book.)

3) In Ch20 of this book, Jason welcomes Alec home and Alec's response is "This is not my home anymore, not the one I knew." This is the exact same response Alec gives to Clara when she welcomes him home in Ch15 of HFGR. And in the epilogue, Athena says Clara will die "just like a monster," thus using the same words that she did to describe the deaths of the gods. Sensing a recurring theme yet?

4) I stated in the epilogue that Alec was bleeding out from a reopened scar in his side. This is the same scar that Athena herself gave him on the Fourth of July in HFGR. It was supposed to symbolize the fact that Athena both built him up and brought him down.

5) In Ch16 of HFGR, when the fight breaks out between Alec and Brady, Athena turns and asks an "average-looking boy with brown hair and eyes" what is going on. You will now notice that Jace has that exact same description. This is no coincidence.

 So, were any of these tidbits surprising or noteworthy to you? Comment below!

Lastly, thanks again for sticking through this series with me! You rock! Hopefully we can continue this relationship with my other books too. Can't wait to hear from you again, and please, feel free to hit me up any time on here or on Twitter and Facebook!!! I'm always here to talk!

Good luck, and try not to die <3