Ten Things You Might Like To Know About WINGS OF FIRE BOOK 6!!!

Hello wonderful readers!

I have FINISHED BOOK 6!!!!!  It is off to copyediting!  Now it is all in Scholastic’s talons to decide when YOU get it.  🙂

I’ve now moved on to a different crazy-making intense writing extravaganza, but I figured I’d take a quick break from that to come tell you a few things about book 6, as I promise eons ago.  Ooo, and if I manage to post this before midnight, it’ll even count as a June blog post!  Very exciting.  🙂

So the first question for you is . . . have you read books 1-5 yet?  Because I’m going to split this into things to know if you HAVE read all five, and things you can know without spoiling the first five books.  Let’s start with those — the non-spoilery details!  Don’t worry if you’re still on book one; this shouldn’t spoil anything (hopefully!).  🙂

1. What’s it called?

Wings of Fire Book Six is currently called Moon Rising.  That miiiiight still change, but we all really like it, so that’s the title for now!

2. When can we have it?  When?  WHEN?

Amazon.com says it’s coming out January 6, 2015.  That sounds fairly logical to me, as it usually takes at LEAST six months to take a book through the process from “delivered manuscript” to “printed book”.  If anything changes, though, I’ll let you know!

3. Will it star one of the original five dragonets?  If not, will we get to see them?

It will star an entirely new dragonet, but you WILL get to see LOTS AND LOTS of dragons from the first five books, including all five original dragonets EXCEPT ONE.  (OOOOOO, ominous music, everybody panic…)  😉

4. Will it pick up right where book five left off?

It will pick up about six months later.

5. Will the bad guy for books 6-10 be someone we’ve met before, or somebody totally new?

BOTH!  (How’s that for an unhelpful answer?)  🙂

OK, now for the rest of the details — SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!  Only keep reading if you’ve ALREADY READ books 1-5!!  Or at least remember you’ve been warned!!

*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*

6. Where does book 6 take place?

If you’ve read to the end of book 5, I bet you can guess: Jade Mountain, where Sunny’s school for dragonets from all tribes is welcoming its first students.  (Knowing that should also help you figure out which original dragonet you’re not going to see in book 6.)

7. That sounds like a beautiful utopian dreamscape!  What could go wrong?

Ha ha ha!  Yes, let’s take thirty-five dragonets who’ve been at war with each other for the last twenty years and put them all in some caves together to learn history and art.  There are absolutely zero flaws in that plan.

8. Who is the hero of book 6?  Is it the “young NightWing” hinted at in the “WINGS OF FIRE will continue…” tease at the end of book 5?

It IS, in fact!  Her name is Moonwatcher, although she prefers to be called Moon.  (And I know a lot of you have guessed already that she’s the hero, based on the little hint in the last chapter of book 5 — well theorized, brilliant readers!)  (Fatespeaker was a very good guess, too, and I did think about giving her her own book, but in a lot of ways she’s like Sunny, and I wanted somebody fairly different plus all shiny and new for book 6.)

9. Does Moon have the legendary NightWing powers?

She DOES.  And let me tell you, writing a telepathic protagonist with the power to see the future is completely insane.  It’s basically like having an omniscient narrator, except she can’t actually know everything or there’s no story!  It turns out it is particularly difficult to write a “who killed such-and-such” story with a narrator like that.

10. Who killed such-and-such!  Is this a murder mystery?

Soooooooooooooooooooooooort of.  (Another helpful answer!)  🙂

11. Wait!  Why does Moon have powers?  Who dies?  What’s that prophecy all about?  Will we see Queen Scarlet again?  Is Peril at the school?  Are Tsunami/Riptide; Glory/Deathbringer; Starflight/Fatespeaker all together?  Who else is coming back?

Mwa ha ha, you’ll have to read book 6 to find out!  (But the answer to at least two of those questions is yes.)  Fingers crossed that I’ll have a cover to show you soon (I’ve seen the almost-final version and it’s AWESOME).

I hope that all helps — I know it feels like ages to wait between books!  I promise I’m writing as fast as I can!  🙂  And in the meanwhile, my Spirit Animals book (#5: Against the Tide) will be out on September 30th (Shannon Hale’s book, #4: Fire and Ice, just came out last week — it’s so so great!).

AND I might even be out doing events beyond Massachusetts in October — I will try to give you LOTS of notice, if so, since I would really really love to meet you all!  More details as soon as I know them!  🙂

Happy summer!

Quote of the Day:
Idris: Are all people like this?
Doctor: Like what?
Idris: So much bigger on the inside.
Doctor Who