INTRODUCTION by Justin Somper

What follows are two chapters, which were deleted from the final edit of VAMPIRATES: IMMORTAL WAR. Be warned, if you haven’t yet read IMMORTAL WAR, you might not want to read them as they are sprinkled with plot spoilers!

These two chapters – “Love and War” and “The Warrior in Winter” – show Bo Yin and the Federation’s newest captain, Moonshine Wrathe, making a journey to Lantao Island to collect more swords from Bo’s father, swordsmith Master Yin. But when they arrive at Bo’s home, there’s a nasty surprise in wait for them…

These two chapters would have straddled Chapter 32 – “Love and Death” – in the finished version of IMMORTAL WAR.

I think I had my suspicions quite early on that my editor would strike through these chapters with her red pen. Why didn’t they make the cut? Well, I guess at this point in the book, we’re into the endgame of the story – and the sequence as a whole – so it’s not helpful to open out the story further at this juncture. I think my editor also felt that the level of flirting between Bo Yin and Moonshine was a bit strong and sudden. I’m not sure I agree – after all, all’s fair in love and war! Another very pragmatic reason for the cut was that I had written another long first draft for IMMORTAL WAR so where easy cuts could be made, they were.

But I was always rather pleased with these two chapters, not least because Bo Yin and Moonshine are amongst my favourite characters in the latter stages of the sequence. It’s always satisfying to see my characters growing up and new relationships between them forming, without too much direction from me. Plus I like the sense of Master Yin’s mortality that emerges from what happens here. I wanted to give the whole of IMMORTAL WAR an elegiac quality and I felt that this sequence contributed to that mosaic nicely. I’ve always been a sucker for haiku too – the Japanese poem form of just seventeen syllables – so I couldn’t resist, however clumsily, attempting one here.

So that’s a bit of context for you. Have a read and see what YOU think. Meantime, I’m going to have a look through the rest of my archive files and see what more LOST CHAPTERS I can find to share with you very soon.