Jacey Bedford tells us about the experience of completing the Rowankind Trilogy.
The third book of the swashbuckling Rowankind trilogy follows privateer and witch Ross Tremayne as she navigates the magical world of alternate 19th-century Britain.
What do you do with a feral wolf shapechanger who won’t face up to his responsibilities? How do you contain magical creatures accidentally loosed into Britain’s countryside? How do you convince a crew of barely-reformed pirates to go straight when there’s smuggling to be done? How do you find a lost notebook full of deadly spells while keeping out of the clutches of its former owner? How do you mediate between a mad king and the seven lords of the Fae?
Ross and Corwen, she a witch and he a shapechanger, have several problems to solve but they all add up to the same thing. How do you make Britain safe for magic users?
I’ve really enjoyed writing the Rowankind trilogy. Ross and Corwen have become personal friends. It seems such a long time since I wrote the first draft of the opening chapter of Winterwood, which was then called (provisionally) The Elf Oak Box.
As edits and rewrites progress, books tend to morph from what’s in the first draft, but strangely enough, the opening chapter of Winterwood changed very little from when it first popped into my head. You can read the opening chapter of the trilogy here.
I checked back. It’s a decade ago since I first put Ross on the page. I didn’t have a publisher then, so I wrote it as a stand-alone with the idea that I could write a sequel or sequels if I ever got the opportunity to turn it into something more. At the end of the first book Ross and Corwen rode off into the sunset for their happy-ever-after, but I had a solid idea for the second book if I ever got the chance to write it. Sheila Gilbert, my editor at DAW, gave me that opportunity. (Thanks, Sheila!) So I followed Ross and Corwen and stomped all over their happy-ever-after by giving them wider problems, and giving them the task of making Britain safe (or safer, at least) for all magic users. Though told from Ross’ point of View, Silverwolf was largely Corwen’s book. We got to meet his family and learned about his unhappy twin brother, Freddie, and his delightful sister, Lily.
Rowankind brings it all together and answers questions raised, but not entirely answered, in the first two books. When Winterwood opens in 1800, Ross, my cross-dressing privateer captain, was isolated from the problems in magical Britain. Widowed, she was getting on with life at sea, accompanied by an unsavoury bunch of barely reformed pirates and the jealous ghost of her late husband. She’s called to her estranged mother’s deathbed and there she gets her inheritance, a magical winterwood box with the instruction to open it if she can. She also meets a half-brother she didn’t know she had. It’s dangerous for her to be on dry land. Ross is an unregistered witch and as such, if the Mysterium can catch her they can hang her without trial. Ross doesn’t know what the box is or what it does, and she’s not sure she wants to, especially since an enemy of her family is now hot on her trail. She tries several times to get rid of it, without success, but discovers that it’s a means of righting an ancient wrong perpetrated by an ancestor. The quest is hers alone. Successfully solving the problem of the box embroils Ross and her new partner, Corwen, a wolf shapechanger, deep in Britain’s magical problems, sets them against the Mysterium and the relentless Walsingham and puts them in the debt of the Fae – never a good thing. In Rowankind Ross and Corwen take on Mad King George, and the government, while heading towards a final showdown with an old and dangerous enemy.
Though I’m delighted to have the third book in the trilogy published, I’m also a little sad that Ross and Corwen’s story is finished, for now at least. I’ve enjoyed my time in their world.
Jacey Bedford is a British science fiction and fantasy writer with novels published by DAW in the USA and short stories published on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in an old stone house on the edge of Yorkshire’s Pennine Hills with her songwriter husband and a long-haired, black German Shepherd (a dog not an actual shepherd from Germany). She’s been a librarian, a postmistress, and a folk singer with the vocal harmony trio, Artisan. She once sang live on BBC Radio 4 accompanied by the Doctor (Who?) playing spoons.
Web: www.jaceybedford.co.uk
Blog: jaceybedford.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @jaceybedford
Facebook www.facebook.com/jacey.bedford.writer
