Daughter of the Night is a novel I've been planning ever since it became clear that a certain character in The Alpha's Concubine was quickly becoming one of my favourites. Numerous hints as to her backstory have been dropped over the course of the prior two books, and sooner or later the details of these events were always bound to come to light.
Who is this mysterious character? Why, who else but Den Mother Adel! Although of course, Daughter of the Night takes place long before she was a den mother. The novel follows the early life of the aspiring young seer, charting her rise to greatness in the eyes of the werewolf clans, and the relationships that were formed and broken in the process.
Daughter of Alpha Ulric, leader of perhaps the most powerful pack among all the clans of the Moon People, young Adel is both blessed and cursed with a will every bit as strong as her father's. She does not understand why he must send their pack's warriors to fight and die against their greatest rival, Alpha Kotal, but as a youngster -- and a woman -- there is little she can do to intervene. As blood and sorrow paint the path of her clan's destiny, Adel's future often seems a hopeless one. The young seer longs for power, and the strength to create a better future for herself. But all her dreams of greatness may be less than her heart truly desires, for a chance meeting with a boy from a foreign pack reveals to Adel a different path. Perhaps, somewhere within the headstrong young woman's soul, there lies a sliver of something softer, gentler, and tender enough to steer her away from an inevitable clash of wills with her father.
Daughter of the Night, as a more minor prequel, will not be a numbered instalment in the Moon People saga, going instead by the subtitle "A Book of the Moon People". This may well be a format I revisit in the future to tell more smaller stories that support the central narrative, allowing a little more flexibility in my publishing schedule and letting me mix things up a bit. Daughter of the Night, while still being a full novel, is going to be notably shorter than the main instalments in the series, which comes hand in hand with releasing much sooner! Roughly half the novel is written and partially edited already, the cover is done (thanks to Julie of Duong Covers for this one!), and with luck the book should be available to purchase before the end of the summer.
Subscribers to my mailing list may have the opportunity to get their hands on free or advance copies of the novel, so be sure to sign up if you're interested! And if you're not and just want to be the first to know when Daughter of the Night hits the virtual shelves, then sign up anyway! Announcements will be going out to my subscribers shortly prior to the novel's launch, and further details will be posted here on the blog and via twitter as always a little later.
