Gail Z. Martin kicks off her annual Days of the Dead International Blog Tour this week! You can find her tour stops here.

Gail is writing a new series for Orbit that is set in the same world as the Chronicles of the Necromancer, so we caught up with her to find out what readers can expect next…

Q: Your fourth book, Dark Lady’s Chosen, comes out in December. Will there be more stories after Dark Lady’s Chosen in the world of the Winter Kingdoms?

A: Oh yes. My new The Fallen Kings Cycle series with Orbit will pick up where the first four books leave off. It’s exciting, because we’ve reached a point in the story where a whole new story arc begins and it’s also a perfect place for new readers to begin enjoying the adventures, even if they haven’t read the first books.

So fans of Tris, Jonmarc, and the others will see more new adventures and of course, bigger, badder bad guys. The first book, The Sworn, is tentatively scheduled for release in 2011. Book Two: The Dread, should be out in 2012. And new readers can jump right in with The Sworn if they want and start from there.

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek?

A: Here’s the blurb for The Fallen Kings Cycle:

Revolution and betrayal threaten to tear the Winter Kingdoms apart as plague scourges the lands and old tensions rise between the living and the undead. A dark necromancer prepares an invasion force to challenge Margolan’s Summoner-King, Martris Drayke. Fanatic devotees of a forgotten death cult seek to turn powerful magic to their advantage. As the kingdoms descend toward anarchy and a relentless invader lays waste to the land, a group of nomadic protectors known as the Sworn may be the last hope. They are the guardians of the Dread, ancient spirits that watch over the portals to the abyss. Both sides hope to enlist the aid of the Dread, but their rise after millennia of slumber is said to mark the end of the world. As thrones topple and chaos rules, is any magic strong enough to prevent annihilation?

Q: You do a lot of worldbuilding with your books. Does it get difficult to keep everything straight as you’re writing?

A: I really enjoy the worldbuilding. A reader just told me that he liked the feeling that I “lived” in the world of the books, and I try to do that as much as possible, at least mentally. Sometimes I have to go back and re-read what I’ve written in another book or another scene to keep things straight, and my family helps tremendously by reading my manuscripts for continuity. But as a reader, I love to feel like I’ve just stepped through the looking glass into a world where I can reach out and touch everything, a world that seems real. So I try to give that same feeling to my readers.

By the way, for the not-yet-published writers out there, I am actually teaching a four-part teleclass on World Building for WriteWellU.com this spring and we’ll go into the how-tos in detail.

Q: So The Sworn begins a new story arc. What does that mean to you?

A: In the first four books, the story focused on a coup by Jared the Usurper and Martris Drayke’s attempt to win back the throne and secure his kingdom. In the Fallen Kings, there’s a whole new focus as the world changes around the characters. So just as in real life, once you overcome one hurdle, there are several new ones to jump. The events in the first four books shape the future for my characters, but the Fallen Kings Cycle will take those characters forward into dealing with brand new threats as the whole fabric of society in the Winter Kingdoms begins to change.

I’m very excited about the idea of carrying the world and the characters forward into new stories. I think readers will see the characters change and mature, and they’ll also experience more of the Winter Kingdoms than they’ve seen before. And new readers can pick up the story with The Sworn and not feel left out.

Q: Where can we find you online?

Check out my site at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com, for all the downloads and more Days of the Dead stuff. Also, please find me on Twitter.com as GailZMartin and on Facebook and MySpace as well.