I’ve always loved fantasy — and let’s be honest, dragons are just plain awesome. So of course, I wanted to write a book that included dragons. I originally had a completely separate story idea called Dragon Queen, which was very different from what eventually became Child of Time. But I loved the concept so much that I worked the Dragon Queen idea into Child of Time instead.

At first, I envisioned Prophecy Series as seven books. But as I kept developing storylines, I realized there was way too much to wrap up. When I outlined the final part of the series in 2016, I ended up splitting the ending into two books: Child of Time and Child of Promise.

Because of Craig’s curse, time itself plays a huge role in the story — and when I finally wrote Child of Time in 2020, I really struggled with where to end it. For a while, I even had it ending on a massive cliffhanger.

Then I wrote what became the eighth book and decided to combine books seven and eight into one final novel, with Child of Promise as book seven. But when my editor went through that giant manuscript, he felt it worked much better as two separate books — especially since Brad and Lili were the main villains. He pointed out that I wrapped up Brad’s storyline too quickly when it was all crammed into one book.

Deep down, I had pictured it as eight books anyway — so I split it back into two.

One of the reasons I’d tried combining them in the first place was purely practical: Child of Time is my shortest book in the series, and it was almost too thin to comfortably make a paperback with a spine label. To fix that, I added Child of Family (book 7.5) into the paperback edition to give it more length.

I also ended up rewriting about the last third of Child of Time based on my editor’s advice — and honestly, the sequence of events makes way more sense now. He wasn’t wrong when he said my original plan made the main characters act kind of stupid… and that’s exactly why I love having him as my editor.

He’s never afraid to call something out, hurt my feelings just a little (in the best way), and push me to make the story stronger. Everything he does is about helping the book reach its full potential.

My proofreader is also a great friend, and she reads each book three full times before sending it back to me. After I plug in all her notes, I listen to the latest draft on Microsoft Word. Hearing the story out loud helps me catch mistakes that my eyes — and even other people’s eyes — completely miss. It’s been a huge help in polishing each book.