What Happened to Asteroth?

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE REVENANT AND THE TOMB!

Jump to the YouTube video here.

Recently, at the Midland Mall Comic Con, one of the people who enjoyed my book, THE REVENANT AND THE TOMB, said their one complaint is that the book ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. Later on, my wife - who was the one who told me what a great story it was - confided in me that she agreed.

The fact is, the book couldn't end any other way. And this is going to require a bit of explaining. I've told the story of how THE REVENANT AND THE TOMB came into being before. But, for those of you who've never heard it, here's a brief thumbnail sketch:

After it was decided that I was going to have to self-publish my first book, I started investigating how to market my works as a self-published author. Seeing that I'd need an email list of readers, creating a free giveaway in exchange for an email address seemed like a good idea. Well, not all good ideas work as intended. Or, as in my case, not at all.

THE REVENANT AND THE TOMB was meant to be a "throwaway" story with a "throwaway" character. It was a partial backstory for a character - Asteroth - who appears in the first book of a series that started this whole writing thing: the series about a character named Frankie. Except in that book, Asteroth is identified as the "King of Bones." As I write additional books in that series, the King of Bones will make another appearance.

In fact, the Prologue in THE REVENANT AND THE CULT, BOOK ONE sets up the rationale for Asteroth / the King of Bones to be active in the hunt for Frankie. While Asteroth existed prior to the Great War, his bond and allegiance is to one of the members / entities of The Four.

Just to give you the scope of the timeline I'm using here, The Frankie series takes place about a thousand years after the events of THE WIZARD'S STONE. THE REVENANT AND THE TOMB and THE REVENANT AND THE CULT take place hundreds of years before the events of THE WIZARD'S STONE. So, if I kill off Asteroth in THE REVENANT AND THE TOMB, he then ceases to exist in the Frankie books. Plus, Asteroth represents something more than just some Nazgul-like terror roaming around my literary world. He was once human. He has transcended mortality. And he's not the only one to do that. In short, Asteroth was "made" for reasons other than The Four needing some brooding Witch-King style enforcer. He is also not alone, though he is unique. And that's all I'm going to say at present. Lastly, when Halsedric finally meets Asteroth, he is in his "shadow form." Weapons like Halsedric's flaming sword cannot do damage to non-corporeal creatures. This is something alluded to in ending of THE REVENANT AND THE CULT, BOOK TWO. But I don't want to go into spoilers for that book as well.

So, yeah: Asteroth lives to fight another day. I mean, if you call his current existence "living."

I honestly kinda liked discussing Asteroth and giving you all a peek into what he is all about. Perhaps I'll do a little post like this on The Four?

We'll see.