Ted Dekker gave me three things I use every time I sit down to write.

The first is the double world. Two realities running simultaneously. One modern and grounded. One ancient and elemental. A character caught between them whose experience in one affects what happens in the other. I talked about this earlier in this series. It is the backbone of Black Water’s architecture and I borrowed the concept directly from Dekker before I made it my own.

The second is the cliffhanger as a promise. Dekker does not end books with resolutions. He ends them with invitations. He answers enough to satisfy the reader’s immediate need and leaves enough unresolved to make the next book feel necessary rather than optional. I try to do that in every chapter I write. Not just at the end of the book. At the end of every scene. What is the thing that makes the reader turn the page instead of putting the book down.

The third is world architecture. Dekker did not just write four books. He built a world that could generate additional stories indefinitely. The Circle Series became the foundation for a much larger creative universe. The rules of that world were established carefully enough that new stories could be set inside it without breaking anything already built.

That ambition — building a world rather than just a story — is what I am trying to do with Black Water. Every book in the series is not just a new plot. It is a deeper exploration of a world with its own logic and history and spiritual architecture. Dekker showed me that was possible. He showed me what it looked like when a writer thought that big from the beginning.

I am thinking that big. I have been since I put his book down and reached for the next one.

Stephon Rudd