ELLWOOD CITY — Local author Nancy Wallace already misses the characters from her recently completed trilogy and is considering how their adventures could continue.
Wallace, 67, who has worked at the Ellwood City Area Public Library for 29 years and now serves as the youth services director, is celebrating the publication of the final book, "Before Winter," in her Wolves of Llise trilogy.
But as the last book in her young adult fantasy series ends, she is excited about the opportunity to continue the story.
"There is just so much more I could do with these characters and the country. I would like to have the opportunity to write another trilogy about the wolves of Llise," Wallace said.
She was very pleased by a review written by Mieneke van der Salm. "She felt there was so much more I could write about. She appreciated how appropriate it was for what is going on now, the inequities between the rich and poor and current affairs. That information is power and misinformation is a tool and truth can be malleable and said these are all relevant issues today. The book expresses my feelings religiously and politically," Wallace said.
"In all, 'Before Winter' was a very satisfying ending to a wonderful series. Wallace resolves the main mystery in the series tying off loose ends, but with Devin’s new position, there is an opening for far more adventures in Llisé. I really hope she’ll get to tell them, because I’d love to see more of the characters, of Llisé, and its surrounding countries," van der Salm wrote.
"Among Wolves," the first in the series, is a fantasy based on an 18th century French history by Jean Chastel about the Beast of Gevaudan, a vicious man-eating wolf, which legend says was trained to kill people.
Devin, the protagonist in Wallace's trilogy, is the storyteller who is learning the oral chronicles of all the providences. Devin and the men he is traveling with are attacked by a pack of wolves in the first province they visit. He is rescued by Jean Chastel's grandson, also named Jean Chastel. Devin learns the legend and much more as he searches for the truth.
"In my story I tried hard to portray the Count, a werewolf, not as a vicious werewolf. He runs with the wolves, but he is an elegant wolf," Wallace said.
In the final book of the trilogy, Devin and his group discover cave paintings depicting that the natives were terrified when people came by boats to their land. Fearing for their lives they could not leave the cave, but they needed food. As a protective mechanism to keep them from starving they changed into wolves and falcons so they could hunt for food.
Wallace's mother, Ann Kennedy, instilled in her the love of fantasy and magic by reading her fairy tales and books by C.S. Lewis and encouraging her to use her imagination.
Wallace said she and her older sister, Ann, were always fascinated with wolves and spent a lot of time talking about them. "We believed that we saw wolves. We would think they were in our rooms and my sister believed she touched one under her bed. I would dream about wolves and that one was between me and my parent's room and I couldn't get to my parents, but when I stepped into the hall, it disappeared and I believed it hid in the bathroom," she said.
Wallace's imagination is still active and she is working on other writing projects while Harper Collins is considering her manuscript "The Scottish Cadence."
The author of 13 books, and many magazine articles, Wallace continues to review for the "Voice of Youth" magazine. The books in the trilogy are available on Amazon and at her stomping grounds in the borough's library.
"I have been at the library gone enough to touch several generations of kid's lives and I hope I have," she said. "I enjoy working with children of all ages."