New Release: Tethered
The second book in the Bound Series
Tethered is the second book in the Bound Series and I am so happy to have it coming out on 2 Feb 2026! You can pre-order copies on Kindle.
I do have to apologize to the readers of Bound for how long it has taken for the second book to come out. Unfortunately, reality decided to steal my story arc and bring bad things to everyone’s lives. While I do believe books and stories should reflect the times and ideas that exist in society, I did not want to appear to be mirroring current events. I also didn’t want to write about the events of 2020.
A little back story
I tend to have a good idea where a series will end before I really start putting words to paper (or electronic files in my case). I don’t plan out every aspect of the story arc, but I know the key points that I want to have happen, including the inciting events that move and motivate the characters.
When Bound was released, I had started on book 2 of the series. Unfortunately, 2020 happened and those events aligned too closely with key plot elements. I found I could not write about a global plague devastating the world’s population. From a clinical perspective, the historical record of what happened, how people behaved, and the long-term impacts will be important for future generations. Give people a little time, and I know there are a lot of interesting stories to be told, as well as lessons to be learned from those events. However, I knew I needed to change the story for these books.
I tried to clear my head and come up with new plans for the series, but I was too close to my original story arc and struggled to come up with a path forward. Toss in working 60-80 hours a week at the day job I had at the time, and there was not much left in my tank to work on the second book at that time.
I changed day jobs later that year, and that helped give me back some free time, but I still struggled to find a path forward for the series. Therefore, in order to clear my head and come up with a new story arc, I pivoted to another story I had been wanting to tell for a while and wrote Snow Cat’s Shadow. I also had requests for Stephenie’s story to continue, so I wrote Queen of Ista.
The time my brain marinated allowed me to come up with a new story arc for Bound and I started working on it.
The plot thickens
By now, many of you might be thinking about that old Robert Burns’ 1785 poem, and know all about the best-laid plans of mice (they want cheese) and men. Well, reality wanted to ensure my plans went awry. Reality is a bloody thief.
I feel authors have some responsibility to offer commentary on society and the events of their times, I still don’t want to appear to be regurgitating current events in my fantasy novel. Even though I had the idea before the events started happening.
Which leads me to a third story arc for the books. Fortunately, I finished book 2 before the powers that be managed to implement my ideas in real life. (I guess there’s still a few days’ left as of this post if they truly want to, but technically I had finished writing the novel last year, the last few months have been editors and other work.)
Current state
I do like this new plot line as well, or even better, than the original one I had planned. It allowed me to give a couple of the supporting characters more depth and add someone I had not originally planned to include. I hope everyone will enjoy the rest of the series as much I have in writing it!
Also, because times have change somewhat, and the second book’s cover is different, Bound’s cover was also updated. I hope you all will like that change as well.
If you want to catch me in person, I’ll be at Plant Comicon in a couple months!
