Give the Devil His Due

by Blackwell, Rob

“Good,” Tim said.

  “Well, we’d better go,” Quinn said. “We’re missing our own party. If you ever need anything, just ask.”

  “How do I contact you?”

  “Go to my grave,” Quinn said, and Tim shuddered.

  “Thank you again,” Kate said. “For everything.”

  Before he could respond, the lights went off again. When they came on, Quinn and Kate were gone. Only the pumpkins remained, proof that he hadn’t been dreaming. He wondered how he would explain it to the staff on Monday, then decided he wouldn’t worry about it now.

  He should go home, but he couldn’t help himself. He felt renewed, and anxious to find out what happened. He picked up the book Quinn had laid on his desk and flipped it open. Once he started reading, he couldn’t stop. Hours passed and Halloween ended, but Tim Anderson remained at his desk, reading.

  Some parts of it he couldn’t believe, others he didn’t want to accept, but when he was done, he sighed in satisfaction.

  He was sad when it was over, but his intuition, which had guided him for decades, told him something else. When he finished the last page, he knew the story wasn’t over yet.

  In fact, he had a feeling it was just beginning.

  THE END

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  While Give the Devil His Due concludes the The Sanheim Chronicles trilogy, Rob has other projects (and perhaps other sequels) in the works. To ensure you never miss a major announcement, please join his e-mail newsletter by clicking here. The newsletter is only sent out a few times a year when Rob has a new project to unveil. For more regular updates, please follow him on his Facebook page or on Twitter. You can also have Amazon notify you of new releases by clicking on the upper right hand corner of Rob’s Amazon author page here.

  Acknowledgements

  Warning: If you haven’t finished Give the Devil His Due, this section contains major spoilers. For those who have read the book, you are clear to proceed.

  This book owes its existence to two people: my wife Maia and you.

  After finishing Band of Demons, I strongly considered delaying the completion of The Sanheim Chronicles while I wrote an entirely separate novel. Much like A Soul to Steal, that particular story has been marinating in my head for years, but late last year I had a break-through with it and was desperate to put it on paper. I was afraid that if I wrote Give the Devil His Due first, the idea might curdle.

  Maia convinced me that delaying the third Sanheim novel was likely to a) cause me to lose momentum on Quinn and Kate’s story, and b) tick off fans of the first two books, particularly those waiting to see how I dealt with Quinn’s death. Her logic was unassailable, and I opted to write Give the Devil His Due first.

  I am extremely grateful I did (and hopefully you are too). To put it simply, this book was a joy to write. Writing A Soul to Steal was a years-long struggle that had its share of high and low moments as I figured out how to write down the movie I saw in my head. Writing Band of Demons was easier, but I was still plagued with doubts about whether the story was headed in the right direction. In contrast, Give the Devil His Due always felt right to me. Sure, I had moments when I rearranged plot elements and character arcs, but the overall storyline felt close to preordained. The trilogy was meant to end this way, and I wasn’t so much writing the story as channeling it. It was a wonderful experience, one I can only hope to repeat in the future.

  I wouldn’t have been able to complete the book, however, without Maia. She picked up the slack at home while I spent virtually all of my free time at the keyboard, and was gracious about my writing nearly every night, including while on vacation.

  Arguably more important than her support, however, was her editing work on the novel. For those who don’t know, editing is an enormous challenge. She painstakingly combed through the draft to find ways to improve it. Sometimes that was smaller items like word choices and descriptions, but she often challenged me on larger plot developments as well. I didn’t always want to hear her critiques, but her questions and our discussions were instrumental in making the book significantly better. She spent hundreds of hours improving the novel and I am enormously grateful for her time, energy and talent. I am very lucky to be married to one of the best editors I’ve ever worked with.

  I also want to thank you, my readers. If readers hadn’t responded so positively to A Soul to Steal, I would never have dared to write a sequel, much less two. I’m very grateful for every review (good or bad), Facebook post, Goodreads rating, book signing request and e-mail that I’ve received over the past two years. It feels wonderful to know that readers are invested in the characters and story I wrote. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Without your support, I could never have completed the trilogy.

  I’d like to thank a few other people who have helped this book come to fruition. Travis Pennington once again did a fantastic job on my cover and tolerated my constant tweaks to it. The cover is based on an idea originally suggested by Brian Gill and I’m grateful once again for his feedback on every different version, as well as his amazing support for The Sanheim Chronicles in general.

  Evelyn Davis, my proofreader, spent some of her vacation scrubbing this novel, and I’m once again thankful for her eagle eye in pointing out clichés (like eagle eye), catching errors and making suggestions that helped improve the book. She is a pleasure to work with.

  Finally, I’d like to thank the beta readers who caught large and small errors and also suggested changes: Erik Brandt, James Collins, Dan Gasink, Brian Gill, David Miller, Tristan Poje and Jenny Roahen. I am humbled by the support my friends and family have provided over the years.

  I’d also like to thank my children, Finn and Pippin, for their boundless enthusiasm for my novel writing. My kids are happy to tell their friends and complete strangers that I write novels. I am thrilled that it has inspired them to write their own books (and book series). I love that we live in a world where I can not only tell them it’s possible for them to follow their dreams, but I can show by example.

  If you have any questions about the series or this book, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I welcome your thoughts.

  I’ve already started working on a new novel and I feel confident that if you enjoyed The Sanheim Chronicles, you’ll like this book too. It’s a blend of mystery, suspense and the supernatural that I think will keep you up at night. (You might see a familiar character or two pop in as well.) I expect to publish it in 2014. If you want to be notified when the new novel comes out, sign up for my newsletter here. I promise I will only send a newsletter when I have something important to say.

  I hope you’ve enjoyed the Sanheim trilogy and I look forward to starting the next adventure in 2014.

  All the best,

  Rob Blackwell

  September 2013