It feels like it took me a really long time to write Bound. Maybe not a long time by the standards of other authors, but I generally go into a novel with a decent idea of what I want to write, and a laser focus on getting the ideas from my brain to the page. Bound is my fifth novel, the fourth in the Divine Series. It was also the hardest to write (pushing Balance to #2). Why was it so hard?
For one, it wraps up most of the threads that have been guiding the series to this point (note, I said this point. This isn't the last Divine book, just the last featuring the Beast). Ending an arc in a way that is satisfying to both yourself and (hopefully) the readers can be hard. I hope I've done a good job of it.
At slightly over 100,000 words, it's also the longest of the Divine books (Balance is 98k, Betrayal and Broken are closer to 90k). I never planned it that way, but the story wasn't finished, and so I kept going.
Finally, if you've read this post from October, you know that I struggled a bit with how I wanted this story to be told. Even after I had straightened out my direction, I still ended up cutting/rewriting over 10,000 words (on the first draft... so more cuts are sure to come).
All of that aside, I'm really proud of Bound, maybe even more so because I did shed some blood, sweat, and tears over it (okay, just some sweat). I think its a fitting end to the Beast arc, and I really hope you'll agree.
As for release date - I'm shooting for February 8, but it may come on the 15th. As always, I'll send an e-mail out to everyone on the mailing list once it's live on Amazon.
I hope you'll check it out!