Actually, it's the beginning of a new book. And the ending of it.
I just finished writing the rough draft of the first book of The Poisoned Past Trilogy, tentatively called The Voice of Hearts, potentially being followed by The Voice of Minds and The Voice of Souls.
There's always this combination of a sense of elation at the end of a book, and sadness too. When you spend a lot of time writing in a world with a set of characters, you get attached. You can sometimes come back to the characters and the world, keep writing … but not the same plot. The problems they faced are solved, or got so bad they have to be dealt with in the next book. You might make some new discoveries about the story during the editing process, triggering a revision, but the biggest discoveries and how things all work out is pretty well set. Like a favorite movie, you can only watch it for the first time once.
I have some fun working on rough drafts, but I'm the sort of writer who has to tread lightly. I don't trust my skills as a line editor. If I tamper with the sentence-to-sentence language too much, the flow isn't as good and the read won't be as powerful. I used to spend a lot of time polishing my work. I learned a lot from practicing that, but I've been told by experienced, professional writers that I trust that my writing is better, has more fire, and goes deeper when it's raw. That won't be true for everyone, but it's true for me. So my work process respects that. If I have to rework a section, it's better for me to write from scratch than mess with the words. Mostly I spend time adding stuff. Sometimes I'll cut an entire scene if it's unnecessary, or replace it entirely if it doesn't work rather than try to reshape it.
Good to know, and yet, it makes writing The End a little harder, knowing it really is the end, more or less. Now I'm just left with sweeping up after the party and tossing empty bottles in the recycle bin.
Innocence and Silence, the last book in The Lord Jester's Legacy, will be available for sale soon. It's still being proofed. I'll let you all know when it goes live! I'll post the final cover here when it's available.