My fantasy series originally began over a decade ago with an alt-history YA book. Except I’ve never felt comfortable writing YA and when the book is set right before the civil war I wanted to deal with certain issues. Not happy with the book, I sought feedback, even rewrote the whole thing…and it’s never been published.
When I decided to make the move into fantasy alongside my women’s fictions, I took the world I’d built and brought it into the present day with all the history, all the gravitas that the Musimagium have.
And each and every book surprises me. Because all the books are in the same world there are connections and things that I set up in the earlier books that pay off as I’m writing now.
My world now has unicorns and even pegasus (those books are coming soon) now, and I’ve even added darker forms of magic. By mixing animals, music, characters with physical or mental challenges, and magic, each and every book takes me on a new turn and a new discovery.
I’m not sure I could say that I have a favorite twist and turn. With the work I just finished on the pegasus books and my plans for the future, well, I may just be diving back into the YA genre once more. I’m currently reading, enjoying, and seeing how each story grows this world and these characters I’ve created.
It’s amazing what you can use from old writing to enrich your current projects. I’ve taken things from older stories to make new ones, too. My current WIP is based off of a premise that was merely a side plot in a book I wrote in high school.
I wrote one fantasy book and seemed to need a sequel and then there was the question of ‘how did people end up on this world?’ and next thing I knew there were stories popping up over what I think is a 4 thousand year span, so I totally relate to what you are saying.
I certainly enjoy reading fantasy and your take on the question makes it all the more interesting (never thought of it as “mixing animals, music, characters with physical or mental challenges”)