Author Renee Scattergood has announced Part Three of her wonderful Shadow Stalker series. It is out now - check out the links at the bottom of this article.
But why has she written this story as a serial and made much of it free? In this guest post, Renee touches on the birth of Shadow Stalker and its release in serial form.
How Shadow Stalker was born
In 2006, I was reading The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. Suddenly, the image of a character popped into my head (how’s that for synchronicity). I knew right away his name was Kado, and while he wasn’t going to be the main character in the story, he’d play a big part in the main character’s life. He would be a guide and teacher.
It took me a couple of years to work out the main character and the main plotline. Then I finally began writing. In the original version, the main character was a male, and he was married with kids. After writing the entire first novel, I sent a copy to a friend, who is a published author, to get her feedback. She loved the story but suggested that I should make the main character a female, stating that we needed more strong female characters in fiction.
I wholeheartedly agreed, so I set out to rewrite the entire novel from the female character’s point of view. I thought it would be as easy as just changing names and genders, but the story no longer felt right. I decided it would be more beneficial to just start from scratch.
So instead of having an adult male character with a wife and family, I started with a female character who was beginning her adult life and still very dependent on a guardian. It was working out well, and I loved the direction of the new story more than the first, but I was suddenly unwilling to write an entirely new novel. It took a lot of work to write the first, and I was feeling insecure about spending so much time writing a second. I worried that people wouldn’t like it, and I would have spent many more months writing for nothing.
In the end, I decided to write it in smaller pieces that I could publish and see how well it would be received. I published the first episode of Shadow Stalker in August 2014 and offered it as a free download. Since then I’ve written sixteen episodes (I’m working on episodes 17 and 18 now which will complete Part 3), and it’s been slowly gaining new readers every day since.
I’m glad I decided to start with a serial instead of a novel. It was a great way for me to test out the self-publishing industry and work out the kinks. It’s also been helping me improve my writing and editing skills. It has other benefits as well. You publish more frequently, which readers love, and it’s an effective way to start building a mailing list. So I highly suggest it for new authors who are feeling insecure about self-publishing a novel.
Shadow Stalker Part 3
Auren turns herself over to the Galvadi to get close to Drevin and Makari has no choice but to play along. He is forced to either torture Auren to prove his loyalty or die knowing she will be tortured and enslaved anyway....
Shadow Stalker Part 3 is out now!
Shadow Stalker Part 1 (Episodes 1 – 6) is available free at Renee's website. You can also get Shadow Stalker Part 2 (Episodes 7 – 12) free by signing up to Weekly Fantasy Fix, a fantasy newsletter.
Renee Scattergood lives in Australia where she writes dark fantasy and is dabbling with paranormal thrillers. When not writing, she helps promote independent authors through her various websites and her quite exceptional retweeting abilities on Twitter! Find out more about Renee at her Author Blog.
