Is "Inferno of Madness" the Penultimate Book? Perhaps

...let's discuss the road to the very close end of the "Barbarians of the Storm" saga

With the release of Inferno of Madness, the 9th book in the Barbarians of the Storm saga, I now find myself at the end of the road. The original plan was for this saga to just be five books - no anthologies, no Side Quest installments, just five saga books, each getting more epic in scale. However, when I got the desire to do my first anthology (Eyes in All Shadows & Other Stories), I began to think of other ideas I had but thought I would not actually get to in this series - Fenrik 1984, for instance.

With new ideas, the series expanded. While the workload became immense, I was game to do it. Plus, I thought it’d be a great learning experience on how to manage a series that could expand into a legitimate ongoing IP. I think that, thus far, I have succeeded in handling it all despite a lot of pain in the ass real life stuff over the last 18 months or so. I’ve now reached this weird point, however.

I am both very tired, but also very motivated to reach the end.

With a few titles shifting around, the first and second arcs in the saga are both four books. So, I started to think about this third and final arc, which I am now in, and if four was a perfect number for this phase of the saga. Initially, the answer to that was “yes”. My plan became to do a Side Quest, an anthology, and two numbered saga books as a sort of two-part epic finale. With Inferno of Madness now hitting the market, that means that the next planned book should be the last anthology. And the plan for it was to fill in the blanks during the seven year time jump from Book IV - An Axe to Eat the Gods and the finale spread across Book V and Book VI.

Now, I am thinking that I should eliminate the anthology altogether. One of the stories I planned for it ended up being the bonus short story at the end of Inferno of Madness. The other stories I wanted to tell, I think I can summarize somehow in the upcoming Book V. I’m leaning heavily towards doing it this way. However, this would bring the final Barbarians of the Storm book count to eleven, which is just a weird number to me. So, I have thought about writing what is to be Book V, as well as Book VI, and combining them into one book - a very thick release. This would bring the total number of books to ten. Also, it would be cheaper for the reader, overall. But then, just having two physical books be the final arc feels off to me, as well.

So, I’m hoping readers who have made it this far into the series can chime in and tell me their thoughts. I know that they probably won’t, as no one really cares about this Substack that much and feedback from readers is honestly, damn near impossible this late into an indie book series with moderate sales. Sure, I could run a poll on Twitter, but I don’t think that’ll get much traction either - also, in the end, I may just disagree with the results. But a discussion about it would be nice.

Ultimately, this is going to play out as it should, even though I am unsure of what that is right now. I am going to keep doing the prep work for the two-part finale and sort of just let the chips fall where they may. So, yes… Inferno of Madness could very much be the penultimate book in the Barbarians of the Storm saga. But it also might not be.

Regardless, I have future plans for some of these characters beyond this initial saga.