This book series started by mistake. And by that I mean a literal mistake I made as a 14-year-old writer showing her little brother her latest Siraden short story in the back of the Toyota Corolla on the way down to our grandmother’s house.  

“It’s not right,” Duncan declared. “That’s not how the war happened.”  

My story had been a 3-page scene about Dragon Maiden in the war of order and chaos foretold by the Great Legend. This war was set in a time long before the Siraden stories we were currently working on, and my short story was a flashback. But according to Duncan, I didn’t have the events right. (To be fair, we’d never decided the events, but Duncan’s strong suit is improv.) 

He rattled off what actually happened in the war (sheesh, Morgan!) per his head canon. I jotted down notes on the back of my printout as fast as I could. This was great stuff. Epic stuff. I realized that we had a much longer story on our hands.  

Time to write a novel. 

The book we wrote was titled Ripples of Choices. It had the soul of a good story but was executed by . . . novices of the trade. We’ve revised and rewritten it many times since. (So many times.) 

But the book had a bigger problem than high-school level writing ability.  

Once we had the story on paper, we realized that this war wasn’t the whole story. It was the last act. What happened that led up to the war? How could we bring our readers along for the whole ride?  

Enter: Shadow-Spun. We began drafting the first book in the series in 2005 under the original title All the Colors of Night. That summer, our grandparents drove us on a cross-country trip through the southern half of America. While living a real adventure, we also worked on writing a fictitious one. (You have to keep yourself busy on interstates through Texas.) The first handwritten draft came together in a beat-up silver notebook in the back of our grandparents’ minivan.  

Many versions and years later, we have Shadow-Spun and a five-book epic fantasy series on the brink of publishing. We’re here to say: this time we have it right—and you’re going to love every page.  

Hang tight for April 2021!   

~Morgan