When I think about the Fields of Honor series, I think first about family. Before the political ambitions, public conflicts, and questions of honor, there are people bound to one another by blood, marriage, affection, and obligation. They know one another’s secrets. They remember the slights. And they have very different ideas about what they owe each other.
 
That's fertile ground for a novelist.
 
I write historical fiction, but at its heart, Fields of Honor is a family saga. Across the series, I’m interested in what happens when the people who love us also disappoint us, constrain us, or force us back to ourselves. A family can offer belonging and still make that belonging difficult. Loyalty can be sincere and uneven. Love can survive a grievance without resolving it.

In Masque of Honor, those connections form the foundation of the story. Family relationships carry consequences well beyond the home. A marriage joins two people, but it also joins families, shapes prospects, and creates expectations. What one person considers a matter of principle, another experiences as a betrayal.

Bargains of Fate carries those relationships forward, along with the consequences of choices already made. That is one of the things I love about writing a series: the past remains present. Characters bring their attachments, disappointments, and unfinished arguments with them. Fanny’s determination to push against expectation belongs to this larger story, too. Making a life of your own becomes complicated when others believe they should have a say in it.

In Swamp of Lies, coming in March 2027, continues this larger family story. The distance between William and Jack gives those family tensions new dimensions. William is in Florida, where he must find his footing in a place where much of what he encounters challenges him. Meanwhile, Jack is in Virginia, forging a new life for himself and his family while picking up the pieces of what William left behind.

Resentment runs deep in this book. Leaving and staying carry different burdens, and the people bearing them do not necessarily recognize what the other is facing. What does one person’s departure require of those who remain? When does loyalty begin to feel like an obligation imposed without consent? And how do you move forward when you are still keeping account of what someone else has cost you?

These tensions develop within a relatively short stretch of their lives. By book four, Yoke of Ambition, a little more than a decade has passed since Masque of Honor. So much can change in a family in that time, even as old grievances remain remarkably intact.

That is what keeps pulling this story home. Wherever these characters go, their choices reach back into the lives of the people who know them best. Distance may change a relationship. It rarely settles what remains unfinished.