As I write the last few chapters of the Sundered Crown Saga, I find myself looking back over a journey that began way back in 2013 – over a decade that feels both impossibly long and strangely short. When I wrote the first words of Heir to the Sundered Crown, I was younger, more unsure of myself, and living through a difficult period of my life. I didn’t know then what this story would become. I certainly didn’t know how much it would end up meaning to me.
When you begin a fantasy series, you think you’re simply building a world. You don’t realise you’re also quietly constructing a lifeline. Writing Luxon, Ferran, Sophia, Kaiden, and all the others became something I relied on more than I understood at the time. Their struggles mirrored my own in ways I only recognised years later. When life felt uncertain, they gave me a place to put my thoughts and energy. When I didn’t know what direction I was heading in, I could always return to Delfinnia and feel grounded again.
Back then, I had no real confidence as a writer. I knew I loved storytelling, but loving something and believing you’re any good at it are two very different things. The crazy success of Heir to the Sundered Crown changed that. Upon release it sold thousands of copies and in its first few months of release I earned more from book royalies than I was earning from my job at the time. It was a massive confidence boost. It didn’t make me arrogant or overly sure of myself , but it did help me realise that I might actually be capable of this craft I’d thrown myself into. That there were readers, real people, who wanted to spend time in the worlds I created and actually spend their hard earned money on them. That discovery gave me something I desperately needed: reassurance. Not the blind kind, but the sort that grows slowly, the way dawn creeps across a horizon. It made me feel like a writer, not just someone pretending.
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Over the years, the saga’s characters grew with me. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say they’ve been companions of a kind. When you write a series for more than a decade, the line between storyteller and participant starts to blur. You don’t simply guide the characters you live alongside them. Their victories lift you; their failures weigh on you. Their voices become familiar. Their losses can hurt more than you expect. I have shared their joy and fears and even mourned their losses. Writing is magic, and at times a story and the worlds we create can feel as though they take on a life of their own. It’s an amazing feeling when the words are flowing and the muse is whispering.
I’ve spent so long in this world that writing the final book feels like saying farewell to old friends. There’s a sadness to that, even as there’s pride and relief. Writers don’t often admit how private and personal the process really is. You put pieces of yourself into every line without meaning to. You spill emotion into scenes no one else ever sees being formed. You carry the weight of the quiet moments, the doubts, the edits at midnight, the scenes that break you before they make you stronger. Writing is a private act long before it becomes a public one, and the Sundered Crown has been woven into my life far more deeply than readers will ever know.
For me, these books were never just stories. They were a constant through job changes, personal challenges, heartbreaks, triumphs, and the slow, uneven process of growing older. They are a record of who I was at twenty-something, who I became in my thirties, and who I am now. To let them go is both wonderful and painful.
But endings are necessary. Stories reach the point where they must close, and writers reach the point where they must allow themselves to release what they’ve held onto for so long. As I write the final chapters of Master of the Sundered Crown, I do so knowing it’s time. Delfinnia deserves its conclusion. These characters deserve their final moments. And I think, after ten years of adventuring beside them, I’m finally ready to let them rest.
This isn’t really goodbye, of course. Books never truly end. They live on every time someone discovers them, every time a reader steps into the world for the first time, every time a character’s journey connects with someone new. But for me as the writer, this is a gentle closing of a door that has been open for a long, long time.
The final instalment of the saga, Master of the Sundered Crown, releases on 22nd December and is available to preorder now. It brings together every thread, every battle, every sacrifice, and every moment of hope that’s carried the story this far. It’s the culmination of a decade of my life, and I’m immensely proud of what it has become.
Thank you to everyone who has walked this road with me. The journey has been long, but it has meant more to me than I can ever fully express.
