The Fire Within Series: Books 1 - 3

by Ella M. Lee

  I sighed, stroking the wooden floor, letting my magic shift and play around me.

  “I’m busy. So busy. And so tired. You wouldn’t even believe. I could use an extra set of hands to help with everything. Or, like, ten extra sets of hands. There’s so much to do, and I’m worried we won’t be fast enough.

  “I know, I know, you would tell me that’s stupid. You would roll your eyes. You’ve got this, you would say. Yeah, yeah. But not everyone is an impressive genius like you. No one is like you. I have a feeling I could live a thousand years and still never find someone who can read my mind like you could. Not even Nicolas.”

  I laughed weakly. The sound died, fading into the wood and the wards that dampened everything in this room.

  “This is the beginning, and I’m scared, but I’m also amazed. Lightning is cool. It’s so cool. It’s perfect. It’s doing everything we want. We suck at all of it right now, of course, but it’s there, with all the things we asked for and all the things we need.”

  I closed my eyes, swallowing hard, stifling the tears that were beginning to burn behind my eyes.

  “You did that. Thanks. There isn’t anything else important to say. So… I love you, and thanks.”

  I took a deep breath and stood. Magic pulsed around me, eager and excited. Daniel had asked me to move on, and I would work on that. It would be difficult. It would be frightening. It would be harder than any of the other million times I had started over in my life.

  But it would happen.

  There existed a distant day when Lightning Clan was safe and established. When we had hundreds of members. When we had some of the most powerful magic in the world. Of course we would, because it was Daniel’s magic, and there was no one stronger. We’d get there, no doubt.

  I brushed the edge of the frame that held Dan’s picture and squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. My next words came out as a harsh whisper, having sprung to mind from the depths of a memory. Dan had read this Robert Frost poem to me one a rainy afternoon as we lounged on his couch together.

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep…”

  I paused, swallowing, trying to get the last line of the poem out as though it were part of a spell that would fix all my problems.

  “And miles to go before I sleep.”

  Once I was past all the hard work and trying times, there existed a future where I was happy. I smiled at the thought, even though it felt impossible right now. I would be happy and fulfilled and at peace. I would be powerful and strong and confident. Daniel and Nicolas had said it a million times; it had to be true.

  But for now?

  For now, I could only pick myself up, dust off the ashes of my old life, and step out into the light of a new day.

  Afterword

  Fair warning—this afterward containers spoilers for the first three Fire Within books. That’s why it’s at the end of this compilation, after all!

  Fire Within started as essentially a thought exercise. I read an urban fantasy series that I wasn’t too impressed with, and I felt antsy and annoyed that I’d invested so much time and energy into reading with so little to show for it. I thought, Hey, I should just write something that I want to read.

  So I did.

  The first draft of Fire Within was only about half the length of the final version, it covered even less time than it does now, and the ending was very different. There were also fewer characters, with it primarily focusing on Fiona and Nicolas (more than it already does!). It was a lot like a “bottle episode,” taking place in one location (Nicolas’s apartment) and using only limited characters so that I could blitz through it as quickly as possible.

  I gave it to my friend Samantha to read, and her response was, “Why don’t you publish this one?”

  That started the nearly two-year journey toward publishing this trilogy.

  I love the story it’s become because it has changed a lot. Daniel, who started out as a much different character—younger, spunkier, more hot-headed, impulsive—grew instead into the talented and compassionate young man he is in these novels. Nicolas was originally a genuinely bad guy with a temper, an uncompromising attitude, and no patience. As I wrote him and Fiona together, I knew she wouldn’t love him without him revealing something beneath a cold exterior, so he emerged slowly but effectively into the Nicolas you know. Ryan was originally a Water commander and one of Nicolas’s allies. His role changed when I realized the kinds of relationships Nicolas has with people, and when I figured out more of Ryan’s backstory. (By the way, you will learn more about him in Spark, and I hope some pieces of him click into place!)

  Weirdly enough, Fiona is the one who hasn’t changed all that much from her original conception. I get a lot of mixed feedback on Fiona from readers. Usually I hear either, “Fiona is weak and too anxious and boring and I hate her!” or “I get exactly where Fiona is coming from and her anxiety is so real!” I might be a little biased, but I’m in the second camp. I wrote Fiona a lot like myself—smart in some ways, confident in some ways, successful in some ways. But, in short, not perfect. I wanted her to have a certain type of strength, where she can pull through in an emergency, but not unequivocal competence. I wanted her to have qualities that balanced out Nicolas and that I thought he’d admire—cleverness, attention to detail, forgiveness, compassion. I wanted her to feel like a real human rather than a superhero, because magicians in the Fire Within universe are human. I wanted her and Nicolas to need one another because they aren’t perfect and can shore one another up.

  If anyone’s perfect, it’s Daniel, and you all seem to agree. I have not heard a single negative word about Daniel. In fact, when my mother finished reading Ashes, I got a text from her that said, “WTF! Why did you kill Dan???” He’s my favorite character, and I’m glad everyone loves him as much as I do.

  More than writing the characters, what I really enjoyed most was writing the setting. Hong Kong means a lot to me, and it was the first place my mind went to when I was deciding on Nicolas’s home. I have a deep-seated love of the Cantonese language (one of my husband’s native languages, which I’ve been slowly learning), an infinite admiration for the region’s beauty, and an insatiable craving for Cantonese and Hong Kong food. I tried to keep the food descriptions to a minimum, but even my developmental editor says that my books make her hungry, and she thinks I should write a Fire Within cookbook.

  I travel a lot, so bringing those settings into my writing was satisfying and fun. When I picked locations, I couldn’t help mentioning my favorite cities in the world: Hong Kong, Osaka, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver… and there will be more to come in the next three books.

  So much of the Fire Within books is inspired by my life. Not only the places they are set in, but down to the tiny details. Fiona figure skates because I figure skate. Fiona played the violin as a kid because I did. Fiona loves sweet food because that’s my favorite, too. Ryan loves coffee and owns an expensive espresso machine. My husband loves coffee, and we roast our own beans as a side business. Daniel adheres to Chinese holidays and traditions. So do we. Dan loves cooking. So does my husband. Nicolas’s aversion to overly sweet food was inspired by my husband. Nicolas’s language skills also come from my husband, who is good with any language he picks up. The constant gong fu tea-drinking rituals the group engages in are based on my own love of tea. You don’t want to know how many different gaiwan, kyusu, and other types of teapots I own. I’m pretty sure every writer in existence sticks their knowledge in their books, and I am no exception.

  Although I had always planned for Fire Within to be a trilogy, I didn’t know if there would be more books beyond that. While writing Ignited, I got the first inkling of what a second trilogy could look like. And when I started writing Ashes, I had a solid idea of where things should go. Once I let myself explore the concept, I liked it. So Fire Within is going to be a three-book arc, followed by another three-book arc. Spark will be laying the seeds and setting
up some stuff for the last two books, as well as showing an interesting side of Lightning magic. I realized that although I could have left the ending of Ashes as-is, it felt incomplete to me. I wanted to know what would happen to Lightning, and I wanted to know what would happen to Fiona and Nicolas.

  I’ve enjoyed every second of writing this series. I love the characters. I love the story. I love the publishing process. I look forward to feedback from my editors, from my cover designer, and from my readers. It’s still amazing to me that you all read my books. I can’t believe people out there know Fiona and Nicolas, think about them, and wonder about them. I’ve been living with these characters in my head for years now, and it’s incredible that other people now share them.

  Some of the writing itself was a fun and interesting puzzle! One of the things I wanted to work on the most was giving Fiona, Nicolas, and Daniel all individual speaking styles. Because of that, dialogue for them is written with a set of rules that I keep in mind, and I try carefully to review those rules and adhere to them as I write and edit.

  In the first draft of Fire Within, Nicolas spoke very casually. First Draft Nicolas was younger, more impassioned, and not of the same ethnicity as he is now (he didn’t have an ethnicity, because I barely knew who he was at all). When I figured out more about him and his history, I adjusted his speech to be more formal and incorporate more of his native languages. Nicolas rarely speaks casually now. To convey that, I focused on giving his dialogue proper structure, as well as cutting out certain words and substituting them with more “formal” versions. For instance, Nicolas never says “okay”; he says “all right.” He never says “maybe”; he says “perhaps.” He never says “just”; he says “merely” or “simply.” He uses a wide range of strong adjectives, preferring those to phrasing like “very” + a weaker adjective. When he’s stressed or tired, he speaks in shorter sentences because his abilities bother him more, and he has to keep more going on in his head. When I write and edit Nicolas, I’m always watching out for this sort of stuff.

  Daniel is similarly challenging to write. He’s a native Cantonese and Mandarin speaker, and although he comes off as fluent in English, he’s not. When I write for him, I’m careful to curb his vocabulary level to a more intermediate set of words. He has specific quirks, like sometimes bringing Cantonese sentence structure into his English dialogue and never saying “Mm” in agreement (because “Mm” in Cantonese is a real word used for negating). My husband, a native Cantonese speaker who is used to dealing with non-fluent English speakers, helps me with Dan’s vocabulary and style. He’s also still basically a kid, influenced by English media, so he’s casual and off-hand when he speaks, but he’s also picked up a weird mishmash of high-level vocabulary and formality from living as Nicolas’s ward.

  Fiona is the easiest, really. Her speech is largely a mirror of my own. She’s educated, straightforward, precise, and relatively casual. She’s lived all over the U.S. and Canada, so she doesn’t speak with any particular regional accent, nor does she frequently employ any regional phrasing or sayings. I wanted her to be the easiest to write (since obviously I have to write from her perspective) and the easiest to understand, since that’s beneficial to the reader. Some of her dialogue is meant to echo her own anxiety and insecurities, such as how she often repeats things that are said in the form of a question or poses ideas with hesitancy and trepidation.

  If this all sounds like a lot of work to you… it is! I have a whole editing phase dedicated to searching through each novel to identify rogue speech quirks from the main characters. I usually do this after the line editing phase and before I send the novel to the copy editor, although sometimes I do it before sending it to my line editor. And even still, I don’t always catch everything! But I’m getting better with every novel. These days, I can write a line of dialogue and almost immediately catch if something doesn’t feel right about it, which is a huge improvement from three years ago. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

  Although I’m nearing the end of the main series (Spark is with the editors, and Book 5 is mostly written), I have many ideas for supplemental materials. There is, in fact, a draft containing some of Nicolas’s past in existence. There’s also a draft of the period where Nicolas and Daniel met. Beyond that, there are some short stories about Keisha and Athena in the back of my mind. And as for Fiona? Well, I have some thoughts about stories from her years in Flame, although nothing concrete. I’m not making any promises that this content will ever live outside my head and my hard drive, but I don’t think this is a world I’ll be able to leave alone forever.

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes look at Fire Within’s creation. I could talk for hours about this sort of stuff, but I should probably go put that word count into a novel, right? If you ever do want to talk, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I promise I’m nice!

  See you all in Spark!

  Acknowledgments

  There are many, many people who helped make the first three Fire Within books what they are. My husband, William Lee, who supports me through everything. My best friend, Samantha, who reads my books in their alpha versions and gives me her opinions. My family and friends, who buy my books and read them even though I’ve told them again and again that they don’t have to.

  My line editor, Crystal Watanabe, is not only an excellent and compassionate wordsmith, but also a great source of business advice and experience in the self-publishing industry.

  My manuscript critiquer, Courtney Kelly, cares as much about Fiona and the others as I do, constantly offering her enthusiastic suggestions and advice to make these stories the best they can be.

  My cover designer, James of Bookfly Design, is incredible. I can’t believe how perfect his ideas are, or how patient he’s been with me while I learn all this new author stuff.

  I can’t offer enough thanks to my readers. You guys are the best. I appreciate every piece of feedback I’ve gotten—great, good, critical, or bad. Everything helps, and I feel honored that you care enough to say anything at all.

  A extra-special thanks to my ARC readers on BookSirens! You have all been with me since Day One, and I appreciate your enthusiasm. You make me feel like I have fans, which is sort of amazing.

  Also By Ella M. Lee

  The Soul Bound Series

  Soul Bound

  SPARK, BOOK 4 OF THE FIRE WITHIN SERIES,

  IS COMING IN JUNE 2021!

  PRE-ORDER HERE!

  About the Author

  Ella M. Lee is a graduate of Bennington College who spent years in the tech industry before getting back to her story-crafting roots. In her spare time, she likes to travel, cook, drink tea, and spend Saturday mornings repeating moves, spins, and jumps over and over again for her figure skating coach. She has a loving husband and two semi-loving cats who share her home near Boston, MA. For more information about Ella and the Fire Within series, please visit www.ellamlee.com!