I just finished writing the follow-up story to Defender of the Realm. It is called Defender of the North and takes place two years later. Ironically it has been two years since I finished writing the first one. When I initially started writing Realm, I had set the year as 1174, but the more I wrote and researched, the more I realized it had to be set earlier, because of how much political turmoil England was going through in 1174. I wanted to introduce my characters in a slightly less volatile time and shifted the year to 1172. But all the reasons for shifting the first story, made for a perfect second story. There is so much going on in King Henry's England in 1174, the book practically wrote itself. All I had to do was figure out how to weave my characters into the middle of it. I think you'll like what I came up with. Look for Defender of the North in January 2011!