Special Guest Post by Steven McKay, Author of The Vengeance of Merlin (Warrior Druid of Britain Book 6)

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Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

AD 434 – Caer Legion, Western Britain A heinous crime is perpetrated against the druids of Britain and a grief-stricken Bellicus suddenly finds his world changing in ways he never expected. Before he can begin to make sense of things the terrible news that the Picts have allied with the Saxons and now march on Dun Breatann together spurs the warrior-druid into action, and soon he and his companions

are racing homewards.

The Vengeance of Merlin – challenges of writing a series!

In 2018 I published the first book in my Warrior Druid of Britain Chronicles – The Druid. It told the tale of Bellicus, a young druid (with shaved head and no beard, not at all like the stereotypical Merlin we see so often in books and movies) from Northern Britain who goes on a quest to rescue a little girl abducted by Saxon warriors. 

I set that first novel in AD 430 – post Roman Britain, specifically so I could explore the changing landscape of Britain at the time. Christianity was just beginning to get a foothold on the island although the pagan gods still held sway, some Roman soldiers were still living there, and the culture that came with the legions still lingered although it was beginning to disintegrate and the people were reverting to living in hillforts and the like as new invaders (the Saxons) took advantage of the new power vacuum in Britain.

I had a great time researching and writing The Druid and it sold extremely well, as did the sequels, Song of the Centurion, The Northern Throne, The Bear of Britain, and Wrath of the Picts. The latter was the last novel I published in the series in 2022 because I signed a deal with Canelo, one of the UK’s fastest growing publishers, to write a trilogy about King Alfred the Great. For the past two years I worked on those novels starting with The Heathen Horde, onto Sword of the Saxons and, in February 2025 the third and final book King of Wessex will be published.

 
When my deal with Canelo finished I knew I had to write more Warrior Druid of Britain novels – my readers had waited two years to find out what happened with Bellicus and, honestly, I was missing the big druid myself! However, this is where I realised just how difficult it can be to switch from one series to another after a long time away from it. 

I’d spent two long years researching the Anglo-Saxons and England around AD880 – more than four hundred years after my Warrior Druid series is set. I had been writing about new characters, inventing many of them myself, new locations, new enemies, new technologies, new kingdoms, and a completely different religious, political, and cultural landscape. Perhaps most jarring of all – the Saxons, enemies and “baddies” in my Druid series, were now the heroes in my Alfred the Great trilogy.

What all this meant was that when I finally got around to starting work on my sixth Warrior Druid of Britain novel my head was simply not in the right place. My memories of the people, events, and places in the previous novels had faded and it was a pretty frightening situation to be in!

I know some authors keep huge files filled with all sorts of information about their books – character descriptions with biographies, location details, plot events, future plans etc. I had a list of character names with a short description and, well, that was about it. I was pretty much lost, like a dark age druid wandering into a medieval Christian church and trying to join in with Mass!

Now, obviously I managed to find my way again. I’m promoting The Vengeance of Merlin after all, book 6 in the Warrior Druid of Britain Chronicles. We authors often find ourselves terrified that something just isn’t going the way we hoped and it seems at that moment like our career is over forever. 

Maybe we simply can’t come up with a good idea for a new book, or the book we’re halfway through writing seems like total garbage in our minds, or someone else publishes a book with the same idea as the one we’ve been working on. I’ve heard these stories so many times from authors I’ve interviewed on the podcast I co-host with Matthew Harffy, Rock, Paper, Swords!

 
When something like that happens it’s frightening, but we always manage to overcome it. The idea we so desperately need just pops into our heads one day, or we read our WIP and discover it’s nowhere near as bad as we thought, or we realise the book that’s just come out that seemed so similar to our own WIP looks at the themes through a totally different lens. Or, in my most recent case, I realise that I CAN remember my previous series without spending weeks feverishly reading all five previous novels, and things fall into place, thank the old gods!

There’s a piece of software called AEON TIMELINE which had been recommended to me (we actually did an episode of Rock, Paper, Swords! discussing this and other technology like SCRIVENER and SCAPPLE that authors use to make life easier, check it out HERE). Aeon Timeline lets you note down every event in your book/series in as much detail as you like. You can colour code things to make it easier to navigate, and you can use it to keep track of not only your previous books but also to help you plot out new books. 

Essentially, it’s rather like having dozens of post it notes, or notepad pages, but instead of having them scattered all about your house they’re right there in one handy screen. I won’t go into all the details of the app but it allowed me to easily look back at my previous Warrior Druid of Britain novels, note down every significant event and character, take it all in when I was finished and suddenly I knew where the series stood. The Vengeance of Merlin no longer seemed so difficult to approach, and I ended up writing it faster than any of my previous novels.

I hope this little blog post gives you hope if you’re an author struggling with writing your first, fifth, or fiftieth novel. I know the same fears assail us all at times, no matter how experienced we are. Things have a way of working out though, so stick at it. And, if you’re a reader, these are the trials we go through to get that polished novel into your hands and why we appreciate it so very much when you leave a nice review and we realise that people are enjoying the results of all our hard work (and terror)!

Steven  McKay

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About the Author

Steven A. McKay was born in Scotland in 1977. He says, 'I enjoyed studying history – well, the interesting bits, not so much what they taught us in school. I decided to write my Forest Lord series after seeing a house called “Sherwood” when I was out at work one day. I’d been thinking about maybe writing a novel but couldn’t come up with a subject or a hero so, to see that house, well…It felt like a message from the gods and my rebooted Robin Hood was born. My current Warrior Druid of Britain series was similarly inspired, although this time it was the 80’s TV show “Knightmare”, and their version of Merlin that got my ideas flowing. Of course, the bearded old wizard had been done to death in fiction, so I decided to make my hero a giant young warrior-druid living in post-Roman Britain and he’s been a great character to write. I was once in a heavy metal band although I tend to just play guitar in my study these days. I’m sure the neighbours absolutely love me.' Find out more at his website https://stevenamckay.com/ and find him on Twitter @SA_McKay.