Peter McLean’s novel Priest of Gallows is published today by Jo Fletcher Books, the third of War for the Rose Throne quartet, and in this short piece, McLean discusses the issues that arrive when your story doesn’t want to end…

As Priest of Gallows launches today I’m well on my way to completing the final book of the War for the Rose Throne quartet, Priest of Crowns. Although this will be my seventh published novel, it will really be the first time I’ve properly ended a series. Unlike my previous books, which were more episodic, War for the Rose Throne has always been a single story arc that encompasses the whole quartet. That means wrapping it all up in one last hurrah.

It also means holding four books’ worth of plot and character development together in my head. That’s a lot. Sure, I keep a story bible where I make notes of everything I’ve said about anything, who and what is where and what they look like and all that good stuff, and I list the characters and cross their names out when I kill them off (so satisfying!) but it’s still a lot to keep a holistic view of in your mind.

I have no idea what I had for dinner yesterday or even what day it is most of the time, but I can tell you what Billy the Boy said in book 2 that now matters in book 4, and all that sort of thing. This really is a very weird job.

The thing is, I had the whole shape of the story in my head when I first started writing Priest of Bones. I knew who Tomas Piety was and how his story was going to end even then, but it was always going to be a trilogy. Fantasy comes in trilogies, doesn’t it? It is known.

Except this one doesn’t. I’m a plotter and I outline very thoroughly. While I was originally writing book 3, which was supposed to be the last one, I had an epiphany. I had a fifteen-page outline for the book and I had written fifty thousand words of the first draft, and I was still on page one of the outline. That… presented a problem. It’s fair to say the thing grew arms and legs in the writing, as my stuff usually does, so a conversation with my agent and editor was in order.

Both were absolutely wonderful about it and a fourth book was swiftly commissioned, which brought its own problems. Simply cutting the outline in half would have resulted in a book 3 that just stopped, rather than had a conclusion, so that was obviously never going to do. I had to go through some serious plot gymnastics to make this thing work as a quartet, but between us the wonderful Jo Fletcher and I whipped it into shape. I have never in my life before been so glad to have such a great editor in my corner.

But this really is it. Priest of Crowns is absolutely, definitely, the end of Tomas Piety’s story. In a way that’s a relief, to be able to finally say that I finished something, but in a way it’s a shame too. I’m going to miss Tomas, and his friends, and this world.

Until the next world, the next tale.

There is always another story to be told.

Priest of Gallows is out now from Jo Fletcher Books; click here to order from Amazon.co.uk