How did you come up with the concept and characters for the book?
After writing Mechanical Dragons I wanted to write a series that I could carry on for dozens of books. I wanted to make sure too that as the books carried forward it wouldn’t start to feel saturated.
I knew I also wanted to try something completely different from what I had already written. In this series I wanted to follow in a few different footsteps. Stephen King and the writers of the MCU. Strange combo right?
Let me break it down a bit, Mr. King did something in all his books right from the start of his career that I thoroughly envy and wish I had the foresight to do. He carried characters, themes, and places into each book. Many with very subtle references, some with downright finger pointing. I so badly wanted to do this but by the time I figured out his connections it was far too late for me to do it.
Which brings me to MCU. What I wouldn’t give to sit down with the writers that put those first 21 movies together that lead up to End Game. It was truly brilliant and I’m awe struck. The intertwining of the story, the characters crossing over each other and each character getting their own day in the sun.
So this brings me to the Realm Wardens series. Obviously events, places, and people would be the same across each book. Right? I wanted my books to highlight only one maybe two characters per book, and I wanted the books to be able to stand on their own. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen with Tor, in order to understand the events of Tor you have to read Blood Magic and The Gift first. But each of these books follow different characters, I show them intertwine with each other and show how the main event of the three books affects each of them.
Instead of each book picking up where the last left off, like the MCU each book has its own separate story to tell all leading to their own main event, but also connecting to the first.
I also wanted the characters to be very different from each other. I found inspiration for the different races in the Realm Wardens by a few sources. Tolkien of course was a big influencer, but also D&D, WOW, and a mobile game called Empires and Puzzles. I’ve changed many things about the races we have all come to know and love and made them my own, but these are the places I found my inspirations.
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