The year I spent writing The Rise of the Goddess was one of the worst years of my life. It started quietly, like those tremors which rumble months ahead of a devastating magnitude nine earthquake. But that's when it began—when I began to write the final book. If I am honest, I already knew it, I could feel it in my bones. Something awful was coming. I just didn't know what. Now I know.

The first draft of the final book of the series was begun on a broiling hot August day in 2018, during the most severe heat wave and drought in Sweden's history. Fields withered. Trees succumbed. Thousands of livestock were slaughtered because farmers had no food for them. Entire forests burned, so vast they could be seen from space. The acrid stink of smoke was always in the air. Water was rationed. My garden dried up. It was unbearable to watch it die. That was how it began. In the fires of August. The beginning of the end of my world. And with every word I wrote, as though penning my own destruction, my life worsened.

The last word of the first draft was written on another blistering day in August 2019, almost one year later to the day, in a different house to the one where the majority of the series had been written. I sat alone in this house, where I did not feel like I belonged, where I was lonely. Where I did not know anyone. In January 2019, we moved to another house to better accommodate my husband's career and my medical needs. It was the move which triggered the tremors into minor earthquakes, when the windows rattled, and the chandeliers shook. When everything began its brutal descent into the abyss—when I saw what was coming, but fought it with every ounce of my being.

Then, in June 2019, the earthquake struck and its devastating tsunami slammed into me. As I prepared to go out for dinner with him, my husband left. I did not see him again until four weeks later when he informed me he was going to divorce me. After that I never saw him again, the man I had loved for ten years. Gone. Just like that. I wrote this book locked in a vacuum of silence, lost, alone, unloved.

In the end, he was Muwatallis, and I, his unwanted queen, Tanu-Hepa. Wherever he is, I hope he is happy. Even though this year has almost destroyed me, I still have him to thank for having been able to write this series. It was while I was with him I had the freedom to write full time. He supported my writing, was proud of it, was proud of me. Nothing can take that away, not even the sorrow of a broken heart.

Because of what must unfold for each of the characters to complete the story's arc, The Rise of the Goddess is perforce the darkest book of the series. Often, I wondered if the pain and sorrow I suffered while writing the book was somehow meant to be, that the strength of the book's narrative lay in the author's anguish. I cannot say. I was driven to write this series years ago. I had planned the final book long before these things unfolded.

And yet. Who can say? Perhaps there is a Creator after all, and I am a piece on his game board, and this series was always meant to be written—my heart, happiness, and security its ultimate cost. If so, I would do it again, and again, and again. I could do nothing else but write Istara's story. It is as if I had been destined to write this series. And now, my task is done. Perhaps, for me, at last, a portion of happiness—of love—awaits. Perhaps.

There is very little of historical significance in The Rise of the Goddess, since the majority of the book takes place in the fictional world of Elati. However, I could not resist the chance to breathe life into the once-glittering era of an island where I lived for some months in the past. Oenone is the modern day island of Aegina, two hours from Athens by hydrofoil. The Temple of Aphaia is still there, albeit in ruins. Its grandeur still exists in its worn columns and ashlars, and its views over the Saronic Gulf are breathtaking. If you close your eyes, you can imagine falling back into the time when the armies of Athens and Oenone stood together as one, sworn enemies, at the Battle of Salamis and drove Xerxes and the Persians back across the sea, amid the flames and smoke of burning ships and cries of fallen warriors.

E A Carter