Now that Men and Monsters has been out for over a month, it’s time to start giving updates about Book 3!

The title changed multiple times during the writing process as the story itself evolved and previous titles no longer fit. But now that I’ve written a large part of the first draft and the plot is mostly finalized, I’ve finally come up with a title that works.

And the title is…

Throne of Blood

Possibly this will be the final title, but I’m still open to suggestions. My main concern is that I’m also writing a prequel novella that covers Callisto’s backstory, and I was planning to call it Moonlight over Blood. Perhaps that would be too much blood? Or maybe that’s not a problem for a vampire series?

In any case, Throne of Blood will be a very different book from Kingdom of Ashes and Men and Monsters in several ways:

Point of View Characters

Myra is the single narrator in both Kingdom of Ashes and Men and Monsters. But here, the vampires become the main characters and we see the story through their eyes. Throne of Blood has eight point of view characters, and most of them are vampires!

Timeline

Kingdom of Ashes gives us the first part of Tristan’s backstory. Men and Monsters shares the rest, in addition to the much longer and more detailed story of Prince Vladimir. In contrast, most of Throne of Blood takes place in the present day. Only two chapters are backstory-heavy, and apart from those flashbacks are limited to isolated paragraphs. Having said that, one of these two flashback chapters is among the things I’ve enjoyed writing the most.

Geography

While we do quite a bit of traveling during the vampire’s backstories in Kingdom of Ashes and Men and Monsters, the present-day action is confined to what is now Scotland. Throne of Blood is very different in that regard. In this book we travel from Northwest to Southeast Europe, stopping at many locations on the way and doing short detours to South and Southeast Asia. Also, while in previous books we had some fictional locations in the present day timeline (the peak where the Wizard is built, Ila’s caves, etc) in Throne of Blood all the locations we visit—caves, rivers, mountains—are real places that exist on Earth.

So, what do you think of the title? Too bloody?