Category: The Second God

The Second God: Chapters 1-4

1: Request Ly looked up at me, his hands still working the pastry. “May I ask a favour of you, Drina?” he said, then ducked his head down again. Still diffident, even after five years of marriage. But then he was still my prisoner, officially. “You may ask,” I said, as I always did. He shot me a shy smile, the amber pendant at his throat shimmering. We were sitting in the kitchen of his suite of rooms within my apartment, me at the high table with a glass of wine, Ly sitting on the floor, one leg folded under him, the other knee bent up. His face was intent, as he concentrated on heaping fruit into the pastry circles and folding them. I loved to watch his slender fingers chopping and mixing and shaping. He was an excellent cook and he still liked to prepare food crouching on the […]

Posted January 15, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in The Second God / 1 Comment

Now out! ‘The Second God’

Now out! ‘The Second God’

Yes, folks, the story that started in The Fire Mages and continued a generation later in The Fire Mages’ Daughter now reaches its dramatic conclusion, as Drina and the two men in her life, Ly-haam and Arran, are forced to make difficult and dangerous choices to defend their country from new threats. The Second God is currently just $2.99 for a short time, and The Fire Mages’ Daughter is just $0.99. If you’d like to pick up a copy of The Fire Mages too, hold off until 3rd October, when it will be FREE. All these discounts are available worldwide for the Kindle. If you have a subscription to Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime, you can borrow all three books free. You can also buy the books in paperback, and download the ebook free of charge. Click the cover image to be taken to your local Amazon. Here’s the blurb […]


The Brightmoon world has a map!

The Brightmoon world has a map!

In less than three weeks, on 23rd September, The Second God will be released, my seventh epic fantasy, yet up to now there’s never been a map of any part of the Brightmoon world. But this book is a little different, it covers a wide area of the southern Plains of Kallanash, and with multiple plot strands taking place simultaneously at different locations, it was time to bite the bullet and become a proper, grown-up fantasy author. I have a map! It was drawn for me by Write.Dream.Repeat Book Design, using map elements by Ignacio Portilla M. And here it is: Most of the Brightmoon books so far take place within this map. Here’s how they fit in: The Plains of Kallanash: in the Karningplain. The Fire Mages: in Bennamore. The Mages of Bennamore: in the Port Holdings. The Magic Mines of Asharim: at the top of the Sky Mountains […]

Posted September 4, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in The Second God / 2 Comments

Plotting for pantsers

Most authors like to plot a book out before they start to write. For some, that may be a couple of A4 sheets of scribbled notes. For others, it will be so detailed that it includes every chapter and scene, including lists of characters present and what happens, with a huge pile of background notes on characters, places, research, historical data and so on. The advantage is that when they come to write, they can focus on the words and not have to keep stopping to work out what happens next. The disadvantage is that a tightly plotted book can feel over-contrived and artificial. And then there are pantsers. What’s a pantser? An author who writes by the seat of her pants, that’s what. A pantser sits down with a blank sheet of paper (metaphorically, because almost everyone writes direct to computer these days), maybe a character or two and […]