The Story Behind Druid Vengeance by M.D. Massey

By M.D. Massey

Druid Vengeance is the seventh book in my Colin McCool Paranormal Suspense Series, also known as the Junkyard Druid series. In this installment, Colin is facing down a mysterious wizard who has stolen a powerful magical artifact from him, a sort of mystical weapon of mass destruction. Obviously, Colin wants to recover the artifact, so he can dispose of it safely and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands again. But there’s much more at stake here than that—in fact, this mystery antagonist plans to use the artifact to cause a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.

When I started writing this book, I knew it was time to tie in the Colin McCool series with my THEM Apocalyptic Series. What many readers don’t realize is that I never intended to write a new adult series with Colin McCool as the protagonist. In fact, I had written the first Colin McCool book as a young adult novel, and after I finished it I decided I’d rather be writing adult fiction.

At that point, I set Colin off to the side and started writing a zombie apocalypse series featuring a character by the name of Scratch Sullivan. Scratch is a war veteran and the prototypical anti-hero, in the sense that he doesn’t start the story wanting to save anyone but himself. But, over time and due to a series of events that occur during the course of the first novel, he is forced to become the hero he never wanted to be.

That series did fairly well when I released it, and by the third novel, I had a small but loyal base of fans who were eagerly awaiting the next installment in the series. But a funny thing happened on the way to completing that third book—about one-third of the way into writing the novel, Colin McCool showed up as a supporting character. His appearance happened organically, but while I was writing that story it made sense to me that he’d be living in the same world as Scratch, since they were both fighting the same war but from two very different perspectives.

As often happens when authors reinvent characters from previous works, I found I enjoyed writing Colin as an adult much more in this new iteration. Thus, I started developing an urban fantasy series for him while I continued to write the Scratch Sullivan novels. I finished the fourth book in the Scratch Sullivan series in June of 2016, and then immediately started writing the first Colin McCool novel, which I released in October of that same year.

Little did I know it when I was writing Junkyard Druid, but I had an instant hit on my hands. Because demand was so high for the next Colin McCool novel, I set aside Scratch for nearly a year while I wrote the next three books in the Colin McCool series. Finally, in December of last year, I finished the Scratch Sullivan series with the fifth and final installment, both to get closure on that series for myself, and to give closure to the readers. Today, all my writing attention goes to writing all twelve planned titles in the Colin McCool series.

Do I miss writing Scratch Sullivan? Certainly, but I enjoy writing Colin McCool just as much. And who knows? Perhaps someday I’ll write a crossover novel that will feature both protagonists. But until then, I’ll continue writing the Junkyard Druid novels, fulfilling my promise to keep writing Colin McCool stories for as long as readers continue reading them.

M.D. Massey is the author of the new book Druid Vengeance. 

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