When I have a new book out, I am in a state of total panic, worried that this time I’ve made a muck of it, that no one will like it, that the story will be totally rubbished by incredulous reviewers who can’t get past page 5. I’m torn between ignoring the internet, pretending it doesn’t matter if no one ever reviews the book, and googling furiously in the hope that someone has.

Every book is the same. Every publication date results in nail-chewing, chocolate-raiding terror on my part. Yep, eating chocolate helps a little, but the relief doesn’t last…that only comes when I have a good review. Then I know at least one person likes it!

And the odd thing is that every time my initial reaction to that first favourable review is total disbelief. Really? You liked it that much? Are you sure you read my book?

And the week the last book of a trilogy comes out is the worst of all. Because until I have produced an end that satisfies (most) readers, I really haven’t reached my goal. The Stormlord trilogy is over half a million words in length. That’s a long journey to keep a reader interested, and I am both touched and a little astonished that people stay with me — or rather with my characters — over the space of several years and that many words to find out what happens.

So to all of you who have bought book three, Stormlord’s Exile, and who have read it — or who intend to read it — thank you.

And what did the first reviewers say this time around?

“Themes of family and identity dominate a story line that is both intimate and world-spanning. Series fans will love the exciting action and well-developed characters; new readers will want to seek out the earlier books.” (Publishers’ Weekly)

“Stormlord’s Exile is everything that its predecessors were and more.”
(Rob Will Review)

“This fast-paced read, full of action-adventure and danger, is a fitting finale to Larke’s Stormlord trilogy.” (Romantic Times)

“Just could not put it down. Glenda Larke’s writing is one that is a pure joy to behold, it’s clear, it has great passion and the characters not only stand on their own two feet but they’re people that you’d like to hang around with (for the most part.)”
(Falcata Times)

Whew. I can breath again. For those of you who haven’t started the marathon journey, here’s a little bit about the story to entice you to embark:

The stormlord’s land is an arid one, where water is everything – currency, status, security. It could even be the world of our future. It is certainly the world of Shale Flint, a barefoot village boy kidnapped and manipulated for a talent he hardly understands, and of Terelle Grey, a runaway from a snuggery who goes looking for freedom and finds herself caught in an invisible trap. It’s a land where wars are fought over water, a place of cloudmasters and waterpainters, desert drovers and salt miners, scholars, sand dancers, red dunes and dark water tunnels. It’s a culture where warriors use insects as deadly weapons and rainlords kill with water…

Happy reading!

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So, for those of you haven’t read it yet, what’s Stormlord Rising all about?

It continues the story of Terelle and Shale/Jasper, as Terelle is caught up in the coercion of waterpainter magic and Shale is trapped by his nemesis, Taquar. Book 1 ended with a siege and a war, you may remember. Stormlord Rising also ends with a war and a battle — although a very different sort of battle employing a great deal more water magic.

But in many ways, this is Ryka Feldspar’s story. In many ways it is also (I hope) a touching love story, although not a romance…

Imagine this: you are a privileged woman aged about 29 or so, newly married and expecting your first child, when your entire world is turned upside down. You see your husband fall in a battle, and have good reason to think he is dead. Your side loses the battle, your home and family are destroyed, your whole life has vanished into the maws of your enemies. You see and experience unspeakable things.

And then you are seized as one of the spoils of war. You — that privileged, educated woman — are about to become a victim of unimaginable horror. A slave. You have water power and you could possibly escape by yourself … but every decision you make means life or death to others. Above all, you want to keep your unborn son alive.

You’re in the situation of a classic victim. Trapped in circumstances you can’t control. Supposedly powerless.

But underneath, you aren’t the stuff that a victim is made of — you’re strong-minded, independent … and enraged.

Yet to keep others alive means sacrificing yourself.

Ryka’s dilemma looks to be unsolvable. It’s something that happens to women in wartime everywhere. It’s happening right now in different parts of the world.

Ryka makes her choices and through it all, she stays a very special woman, a human being of dignity and courage who maintains her integrity. She is my tribute to all civilian mothers who are the victims of war.

You often read fantasies nowadays where the woman protagonist meets the male hero on his own ground: you know, the kick-ass heroine sporting a gun or a sword. I did that in The Isles of Glory with Blaze. But that’s not Ryka. Although she can handle a weapon up to a point, she’s no warrior.

She’s a short-sighted, pregnant scholar worrying about how to keep her child alive … especially when he chooses a really inconvenient time to be born.

She’s my heroine.

And if you want to know what happens to her, read Stormlord Rising. It’s out now in the US, in November in UK.

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Imagine this. A five year old, standing in the kitchen of an Australian farmhouse back in the 1950s. It is January, so she is probably tanned, and the feet scuffing at the green linoleum would have been bare and grubby because that’s the kind of kid she is. Then her mother utters the words that will change everything that summer.

‘The water in the rainwater tap smells bad.’

It did too. Dead-rotting-rodent bad. Somehow, a thirsty rat had performed a feat of contortionist daring-do to enter the overflow pipe of the water tank and drown in the drinking water. The tank had to be emptied and cleaned. Which meant no drinking water until the first spring rains came, still several months away. (River water we had. My father pumped it up and we used it all the time, untreated, for everything from bathing to watering the garden – but no one wanted to drink that, especially not in summer when the flow was sluggish.) And so water was bought and carted, and a five-year old child learned the true value of rain. Taps never dripped in our household.

The child grew up, but the lesson remained. She married and moved to a tropical land, where rain was plentiful and housewives washed up under a running tap, car owners washed their vehicles every other day and everyone took twenty minute showers. Yet, because she lived at the top of a hill, her house could go days without water in the pipes. This developing nation had neither learned the value of water, nor how to distribute it equably for a burgeoning population. She stayed at the top of the hill for twenty years and watched while others squandered what she didn’t reliably receive.

She travelled and one clear day she looked down from a plane and saw a series of holes many miles in a line across a dry landscape, ending in a village. In wonder, she sought answers and learned about 2,000 year old tunnels still bringing water to Iranian villages. In the Algerian Sahara she saw the width of slits in garden walls determined by a village committee. When it rained and the streets became rivers, those slits allowed water to enter underground cisterns. The first rains that year came on December the tenth.

Back in the tropics, she worked as an environmentalist on a government dam project. Her job was to study the bird life of a river valley for a year, because the loggers were coming and a dam to supply a huge city with water would flood the valley. The rainforest type there was particularly rare, and so were the birds. That was the place where she finally understood the true cost of water, and realised she was recording the doomed. The forever lost. Part of her heart was lost with it.

And she vowed that one day she will write a book about the preciousness of water.

Of course, she never does, not really. Instead, she writes a book about people and conflict, about love and courage and hard decisions. About brothers torn apart by violence. About a friendship forcibly sundered by greed and magic. About the war (yes, over water) that engulfs a fledgling nation.

You will start that story soon, and read the first book in a few hours. But I, the writer, I’ve been living it my whole life, a piece here and a piece there, until one day it all fell into place and I sat down to write the story of a stormlord of the Quartern.

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