On Not Releasing The Sea of the Missing (yet)

For me, the world seems somehow more bal­anced with book 2 off the shelves. I just real­ized this and won­dered if it’s why I haven’t pushed for it to happen this year.

I will release it, of course, and I have recently started back to work, but today I stopped to examine why I, as an author who likes having an audi­ence, am per­fectly happy to keep this one to myself.

Other readers may dis­agree, but I actu­ally enjoy this book more than TWW. The writing is more mature, the secrets are bigger, the mythology is deeper, and the final pay­offs are huge — but beyond that, it’s much more per­sonal, at least to me.

Those who know me well also know that I used this story to write away some of the demons that plagued my young adult life. I caught these dreams and fig­ures that were wound up so tight in my head, then coaxed them onto the paper where they even­tu­ally unrav­eled and began to live on their own. I sup­pose they’ve found a per­ma­nent home there, because one day I dis­cov­ered that they had left me in peace.

So when I read cer­tain chap­ters of this book, it’s like watching little night­mares (or “maras” if you will) cap­tured in tiny snow globes and going about their sto­ries without any idea that they used to be my night­mares and my story. I really like it that way.

Some­where deep down I feel that it’s appro­priate to leave them there, bot­tled up, where no one can rec­og­nize them or trace them back to me, but on the other hand, I haven’t cared enough about it to iden­tify that feeling until now.

What is much stronger is the feeling that Agatha, Ter­giver, the boys, and the many people still in shadow deserve to have their story told. I also feel that the char­ac­ters in book 3 grow more impa­tient every day.

So I’ll con­tinue on until I’ve fin­ished. Cur­rently, the plan is to replace TWW with an expanded second edi­tion, and then release TSOTM, as well as a 1-volume set of both, which makes the most sense to me, as they were orig­i­nally con­ceived together as one long novel.

To all three of my fans, thanks for being patient, you’re the best.