As one journey ends...

As he publishes his final Young Samurai adventure, The Ring of Sky, author Chris Bradford reflects on how it feels to come to the end of writing a series

With my hero’s journey in Japan finally coming to an end, so has mine. And it has been a musha shugyō (warrior pilgrimage) of epic proportions.

The original idea was born in 2006. The first book, The Way of the Warrior, was written during the spring of 2007 and published in the UK the following summer in 2008. Six years have passed since that original spark of an idea. Eight books have now been released in the series, plus an e-book: 636,208 words written in total. Jack Fletcher’s adventures have been published in 25 countries and 18 languages (so far). They’ve been nominated for more than 15 book awards (and won some!). And I’ve toured ten countries, 20 book festivals, more than 500 schools, and performed live to over 100,000 fans and almost a million as part of the Biggest Book Show On Earth online festival.

So it is with a heavy heart that I close this chapter of my writing life. The characters that I gave birth to and watched grow, struggle for survival, form bonds of friendships and even fall in love are now laid to rest in the pages of my books. Possibly never again will they ‘talk’ to me as I write. I may never be surprised by a sudden switch in plot as one of them says or does something unplanned and unexpected, like when Yamato jumped off the waterfall in The Way of the Warrior or Dragon Eye revealed who he truly was in The Way of the Dragon.

Over the course of the series, characters like Jack, Akiko and Yori have become my firm friends and I will miss them, almost as if they had existed in the real world. But I’m comforted by the fact that they will still live on in the memories and imaginations of my readers. They are the people to truly breathe life into my words and descriptions. And as long as these people are still reading Young Samurai, then I know my characters live on.

So, to sum up my feelings upon completing such an epic adventure that spanned eight books, I would say that as I wrote the last line of the last chapter of The Ring of Sky, I felt a combination of sorrow, excitement, relief, exhaustion, elation, but most of all, pride.

Pride in what I had achieved. And pride in what my characters had achieved.

Yet the emotion of sorrow didn’t last too long. For, as one journey ends, another now begins. And I am embarking on a new adventure, the modern equivalent of the samurai warrior: The Bodyguard.

This past year I’ve been training in the art of close protection - learning unarmed combat, defensive driving, tactical firearms, surveillance training, anti-ambush exercises and even hostage rescue techniques. Having qualified as a professional bodyguard, I’m now primed to deliver an action-adventure story that I hope my readers will find as thrilling and exciting as the Young Samurai series.

I do hope you will join me on this brand-new journey . . .

Young Samurai: The Ring of Sky is out now. Bodyguard: Hostage will be published May 2013.