The End of a Series

Last Blood is the fifth and final book of the House of Comarre series. I'm currently working on it, pushing closer to The End every day and even though these are fictional characters set in a fictional world, I feel like I'm beginning to grieve. A strange emotion to associate with writing a book, but there it is.

Is feeling that way weird? Maybe, but consider that I started writing Blood Rights, the first book, in the summer of 2008. Four years, one novella and five books later, saying goodbye is understandably difficult. At times my relationship with these characters and this world has been love/hate. There are moments in these books that feel like triumphs and yet, some of the details written in earlier books caused me to make decisions in later ones that I might not have otherwise made. Some days felt like slogging through mud and some days like flying. (And those flying days? Those are the days writers live for.)

Such is the writing process when you commit yourself to basically writing a story that is five books long, because that's how these books work. You should really consider books 1-5 all parts of the same story, just broken down into manageable chunks.

Maybe some of what I'm feeling isn't grief, but exhaustion. *grin* It's tough writing something this long and this involved. These characters and plotlines show up in my dreams, pop into my head when I'm supposed to be thinking about other things and distract me daily from the most mundane aspects of life. They have become...part of me. And wow, just writing that sounds a little too precious, but there it is.

Have you as a writer ever felt like this? As a reader, what do you feel when you read the last book in a series?