Why I tore it all down
Dispatches from the Archive · No. 1
I wrote the Voidhammer books once already. Some of you read them. And for most of this year, I quietly knew they weren't right.
The ideas were there. A broken Gate. A man who comes back from the Void with no memory. A soldier who has outlived everyone he ever served with. Magic that costs you something every time you use it. But the books didn't hold together the way a saga has to. Characters appeared and vanished. Rules changed between chapters. I had more world than story, and I could feel the seams every time I reread a page.
So I stopped, and I tore it all down.
What stayed
Everything that made me want to write Voidhammer in the first place. Emberhold, the last city, with its iron chains slung between the towers to stop the old walls leaning. The Gate that used to open onto nine worlds and now stands on nothing. The squad. The cost of magic. And the question underneath all of it: can someone choose who they become?
What changed
Voidhammer is now two series. The main saga, The Voidhammer Saga, is five books, starting with a completely rewritten The Shattered Gate. A prequel trilogy, The Ascension Cycle, tells how the world broke in the first place. They share a world, and one character walks through both of them. I won't say who yet.
Every chapter is now told through one person's eyes. Every book is mapped before I write a word: where you should laugh, where you should be afraid, where it should hurt. Nobody is safe, but nobody dies cheaply either.
Why tell you this?
Because I'd rather build this in the open than pretend it arrived finished. You'll see the drafts, the art, the game, the mistakes. If something isn't working, I want to hear it.
Chapter One of the new Shattered Gate is up now, free. It starts with a burnt loaf of bread and ends with a voice that shouldn't exist.
— John
