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Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Long Way Down 

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Read Fantasy Book Critic's Interview with Craig Schaefer

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Read Part I of Fantasy Book Critic's In-depth Interview with Craig Schaefer

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Read My Sworn To The Night Cover Reveal Q&A with Craig Schaefer

Today we are glad to have Craig Schaefer with us and like last year, he was very gracious to answer a few questions for us. We chat about his Wisdom's Grave trilogy and all the twists, secrets, and ramifications it entailed. This interview will hinge upon some spoilers for the trilogy so be warned.

Q] 2018 marked the completion of the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy and also marked about four years since you first published The Long Way Down. It felt like the completion of the Phase one of your grand story arc ((to paraphrase from the MCU, with the DF, HB & RC books). Would you say that’s a fair assessment?

CS: Definitely. Once I got a handle on what I was aiming to create, I couldn’t help but mentally parse it that way; I’m not even a big fan of the Marvel flicks, but the concept of a “cinematic universe” is so popular and ingrained it’s hard not to view it through that lens.

Q] With Bring The Fire, you had a lot of reveals with regards to the trilogy as well as some of the deepest questions about the state of the universe. How did you decide on what you wanted to put in it versus what you choose to hold back?

CS: It mostly came down to what fit the narrative flow of the story. Nobody likes infodumps; there were a couple of bits I ended up trimming not because I didn’t think readers would find them interesting, but because I couldn’t find a way to make them relevant to the characters and the plot. They’ll show up in later books, eventually, when and where they properly fit.

This happened with characters, too. My original ambition was to have every single (living) character from all of my previous books make a cameo at some point, and that was the first idea to land on the cutting-room floor. Fan service is fun, but it’s got to take a back seat to story.

Q] Sworn To The Night has also made it to the 2018 SPFBO finals. So many, many congratulations on that front. How did you feel when you found out about it? How do you rate its chances?

CS: Very pleased! I don’t rate its chances particularly well (the trilogy as a whole is fairly divisive, people largely either really like it or really don’t – thankfully, more land in the former category than the latter), but anything that gets my work in front of new readers is a net positive.

Q] After the events of Bring The Fire. Will the Owl & the Knight Characters be making future appearances in any of the Faust or Harmony books?

CS: Their influence will definitely be felt. Given the new status quo of the multiverse, they’ve got a lot to deal with, but their influence will definitely be felt. More than that, I can’t say just yet.

Q] Another character that drew my eye was Rosales. She was a fascinating character who while being evil (so as to speak) was fun to read. With her seemingly being on the same spectrum as Jessie (with regards to her powers), will we get to know about her past?

CS: In my original outline, Rosales was slated to die in the final showdown. Ultimately, I was having such a good time writing her that I decided to get self-indulgent and gave myself a way to bring her back sometime. In a world of cosmic schemes, it’s fun to have a villain whose ambitions largely amount to “make enough money doing villain stuff so I can stay in bed, eat pizza and watch reality TV.”

She’ll be back sooner or later, and I’d like to get her and Jessie in a scene together to see what happens. (Possibly violence, possibly Netflix and chill. It could go either way.)

Every now and then I play with the idea of a stand-alone book involving a Suicide Squad style team-up of minor antagonists from the Faust/Black novels, and doing it as a gory pitch-black comedy. If I ever actually write the thing, Rosales will definitely be on the team.

Q] The Wisdom’s Grave trilogy ended on such a strong note and with so many revelations. As a reader, it becomes easily apparent as to how much planning has gone forth in all of your series so far. Can you tell us when you began planning for this trilogy as you nearly had to write sixteen books before you could write this trilogy?

CS: I’d say I started planning in earnest three years ago. As soon as the greater scope of my fictional setting started to unfold, I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to take it and where the first crescendo would land. At this point I think readers know me as a writer who plays a long game, and I knew I had to make this work.

Q] It was heartening to see how the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy ended in contrast to the Revanche Cylcle with regards to the bonded Characters. With your books, it’s not often that the characters get a happy ending. This was particularly sweet since we know how throughout the millennia and through various worlds, the Story has played out. Was that a purposeful twist?

CS: Purposeful and mandatory, considering the themes I wanted to explore with the trilogy. Ending the trilogy on a sour note, with the Story repeating again, would have been – I’d go so far as to say ethically, morally wrong. Not everyone comes out of the trilogy with a happy ending (or survives it at all), but it ended the way it needed to end.

Q] With your books being so intrinsically tied in with each other. I noticed one curious aspect that you mentioned about the Garden of Eden. Is the Garden of Eden referenced in The Living End (Daniel Faust #3) the same as the one mentioned by shepherd in Bring The Fire?

CS: Exactly the same. And as per the epilogue to The Neon Boneyard, there’s still a stable gateway in Mexico, now in the Network hands. (Which reminds me of a tangential issue, because it comes up in that scene and I’ve been asked if it was deliberate:
- Yes, the Mr. Smith from Neon Boneyard is the same Mr. Smith who shows up in the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy.
- Yes, he’s been murdered twice, by two different people.
- Yes, there’s a reason for this.)

Q] On a side note, the Shepherd mentioned that events on the Planet of Eden along with the family that resided on it were somewhat of an epic shitshow! Do you think you would ever be able to tell that specific tale?

CS: It’s definitely going to come up. Not very soon, we’ve got some other business to take care of first, but it’s going to come up.

Q] Following on from the Phase One aspect of your grand story, Will there be more phases to play out since the Enemy was surprisingly silent amidst all of the events of the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy. With the whole Paladin-Enemy conflict that's ever present on the horizon, are you at liberty to reveal if that’s the central conflict of the next phase?

CS: As I mentioned, originally every character I’ve written was supposed to appear in the Wisdom’s Grave trilogy. The Enemy was the first to go, simply because he’s Daniel’s nemesis and I couldn’t find a way to fit him into the trilogy in any kind of satisfying way. A lot came down to exposition. Specifically, trying to avoid it. The entire story of the Enemy involves a lot of background lore and buildup, little of which was directly relevant to the trilogy’s plot, so bringing it in would have involved a ton of extraneous background. That said, the next phase is all about the Enemy and the Paladin, so expect that conflict to take center stage now that the trilogy is complete.

Q] One of the curious things that was unearthed was that the Story was thrown awry as the Characters are supposed to be reincarnating simultaneously but that wasn’t the case. What was the specific reason for this mechanism to be thrown off?

CS: Imprisoning the Enemy broke the entire mechanism. (I’m avoiding massive spoilers, but as we learn in Bring the Fire, it wasn’t a very elaborately designed system to begin with.)

Q] As mentioned in the Daniel Faust books, the Enemy was imprisoned on a desolate world. That seems like a tale in itself. Will that story be ever explored? Was that due to the machinations of the other Characters or due to the inhabitants of that planet? 

CS: It will be, yes. I can’t say more about that just yet, but it’s going to come up. (And as some readers have noticed, one of the very first antagonists in my books – the sole surviving Smoke-Faced Man – has been off-stage for a long time. That doesn’t mean I forgot about him, hint hint.)

Q] One of the fascinating things that came up was that the Story has thirteen Characters. However not everyone’s stories are tied in together. Does this mean that Story is finally broken or will that only be done once the Enemy-Paladin conflict occurs.

CS: The Story still exists, baked into the fabric of the multiverse. For now. Which means, of course, that Daniel Faust still has to deal with the burden of having the mantle of the Thief, and you can expect more development on that front very soon. Whether things will end with the Paladin/Enemy showdown, or if our heroes will come up with something a little more tricky…well, I’ve already said too much.

NOTE:  Part II of the interview focussing on Craig's upcoming books and plans will be posted tomorrow.
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Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Senlin Ascends 

OFFICIAL AUTHOR INFORMATION: Josiah Bancroft started writing novels when he was twelve, and by the time he finished his first, he was an addict. Eventually, the writing of Senlin Ascends began, a fantasy adventure, not so unlike the stories that got him addicted to words in the first place. He wanted to do for others what his favorite writers had done for him: namely, to pick them up and to carry them to a wonderful and perilous world that is spinning very fast. If he’s done that with this book, then he’s happy. Josiah lives in Philadelphia with his wife, their daughter, and their two rabbits, Mabel and Chaplin

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: Fearing an uprising, the Sphinx sends Senlin to investigate a plot that has taken hold in the ringdom of Pelphia. Alone in the city, Senlin infiltrates a bloody arena where hods battle for the public's entertainment. But his investigation is quickly derailed by a gruesome crime and an unexpected reunion.

Posing as a noble lady and her handmaid, Voleta and Iren attempt to reach Marya, who is isolated by her fame. While navigating the court, Voleta attracts the unwanted attention of a powerful prince whose pursuit of her threatens their plan.

Edith, now captain of the Sphinx's fierce flagship, joins forces with a fellow wakeman to investigate the disappearance of a beloved friend. She must decide who to trust as her desperate search brings her nearer to the Black Trail where the hods climb in darkness and whisper of the Hod King.

As Senlin and his crew become further dragged in to the conspiracies of the Tower, everything falls to one question: Who is The Hod King?

FORMAT/INFO: The Hod King is 607 pages long divided into four parts. Narration is in the third person via Thomas Senlin, Voletta, Iren, and Edith Winters. This is the third volume of the Books of Babel series.

The book was published by the Orbit Books on January 22, 2019. Covert art by Ian Leino with design by Lauren Panepinto.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: How does a fantasy book reviewer critique a work that he unabashedly loves? Do I try to make up bad things about Josiah Bancroft’s newest Book of Babel? Do I scour it for the tiniest typo and the smallest grammatical error simply so I don’t come off as an advertisement for Orbit Books?

I mean, I guess it took me five days to read through The Hod King. I finished the final book in the Harry Potter series in a night (a feat I regret to this day because some things deserve to be savoured), so I clearly didn’t love this installment enough to glue it to my eyelids and never look away. Then again, see my statement in the parenthetical and maybe not finishing it so fast means I liked it even more.

What seems clear to this reviewer is that, with every book he writes, Josiah Bancroft proves he is more than just the winner of a self-publishing contest and better than a one-hit wonder. The Arm of the Sphinx was as good, if not better, than Senlin Ascends, and I think that The Hod King is maybe the best yet. How common is this in series fiction? Not very, in my experience. Sequels tend to be worse than their predecessors, even if later books in the same run can reverse the trend. But Bancroft keeps getting better, and if his fourth and final Babel book continues this upward trajectory, he has every right to be carved on to the Mount Rushmore of fantasy authorship.

But enough gushing - what is The Hod King about? Beware of spoilers now because I intended to talk of The Arm of the Sphinx in detail. At the end of the second novel, Senlin and his crew had met the legendary Sphinx, a figure deified in Babel lore and who wields more obvious power than any living thing in the Tower. Through some coercion and bargaining, the Sphinx gathered Senlin, Iren, and Voletta into his net, a web in which Edith had long ago been ensnared. The Hod King sees our heroes undertaking their first overt missions for the Sphinx, and Senlin’s just happens to take him to the very Pelphia where his long-lost wife Marya now resides. It also separates him from his crew, a crew which Edith now captains, and so for the first time since his initial foray into the Tower, Thomas is alone.

I admired the hell out of Bancroft’s bravery in changing viewpoints in The Arm of the Sphinx, and I continue to be impressed with his ability to do so in The Hod King. Senlin Ascends rarely, if ever, took us out of Senlin’s head, a viewpoint that I would wager is quite comfortable for Josiah Bancroft. Both subsequent novels see Bancroft diving into the heads of Edith, Iren, and Voletta, and they are such wildly different characters, and so far removed from Senlin, that watching him stretch his skills like this is like watching a monarch emerge from its chrysalis - you know it will be beautiful but it’s wondrous to watch. Bancroft nails these viewpoints, and lets us into the minds of characters who we could only wonder at in the first novel. We could never have known of Iren’s insecurities or Voletta’s flightiness in Senlin Ascends. We might never have known the depth of Edith’s feelings, nor of her desire to fly had her author not decided to step out of his comfort zone. It works, and it is part of the reason why The Hod King is so successful. This is no longer a story about a man traversing a tower. It’s become almost familial in its intimacy, and I find myself increasingly loving these characters in a way I seldom have for fictional beings. It’s become so bad that I have cajolingly threatened the author on Twitter should he George R.R. Martin any of them.

Aside from character, both the plot and setting of The Hod King continue to captivate and embrace the reader. Bancroft takes a Pulp Fiction approach to his story, with each section using the same basic time-frame to tell a different perspective of the same overall narrative. This is a technique that could end in utter failure, but Bancroft shows mastery over the style. By the last quarter of the book, my urgency to see the whole plot of The Hod King was so focused that I lost sleep about it, and I am continually amazed at the new vistas that this Tower has to offer. That one building can encompass more lore and mystery than many fully-fleshed fantasy worlds is an impressive feat. It helps that it’s likely one of the biggest structures ever imagined in literature.

CONCLUSION: There is not much more to say about The Hod King that will tempt anyone to read it or not read it. Let’s face it, if you read through the first two novels in this series, you will likely want to read through this one as well. I truly do believe that it is the best of the three, and I said in my review of Senlin Ascends that I thought maybe Bancroft had written one of the best fantasy novels of the last decade. I can’t really praise these books any more than that, even if I will continue to do so. I don’t know the name of the last book in the Babel series yet, but this is the first time in a long while that I will be eagerly scanning new release schedules and wishing I could get my hands on something that does not even exist yet. That’s a good feeling to have.

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AUTHOR INFORMATION: Mike Shel was born in Detroit, Michigan and grew up in the suburb of Dearborn. He has practiced as a psychotherapist for over 20 years and is a freelance adventure designer for Paizo Publishing and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Aching God is his first novel. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife Tracy and has three children, Haylee, Trinity, and Leo. And two dogs, Neko and Elsie. Let’s not forget the dogs.

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My first draft of Seraphina’s Lament did not have a communist government system. It wasn’t until I was getting ready to do my rewrite, and doing a ton of research in preparation for that, that I realized that the Sunset Lands really needed to be communist. How could I possibly tell a story even remotely related to the Holodomor without communism?

Furthermore, how could I do it without a Stalin.

It was impossible.

So, in my second rewrite I realized I had to almost completely rebuild the world I’d created. I also needed to create a Stalin, and then a magic system that fit into all of this.

I knew that communist government systems weren’t that common with fantasy books, but I don’t think I realized just how unique having a Stalinist communist system would actually be until people started commenting on it.

This required an incredible amount of research. I’ve got a few books totaling around 6,000 pages on Stalin sitting on my bookshelf at home, and that’s not taking into consideration all the books I’ve read at the library, or the ones I bought through Audible. The thing is, it’s pretty easy to create a world where communism is the government once you know enough about communism to be able to do that. After I’d done all my research, the whole story fell into place and I realized that communism was exactly what had been missing from that first draft that it had desperately needed. I also realized that my own character, Premier Eyad, who is patterned after Stalin in so many ways, really needed to be part of this book.

Stalin was a horrible person. There are no mincing words about that. He killed millions upon millions of people, passed policies that had dire impacts on just about everyone, and left a red-stained legacy behind him. Yet despite all of that, he still thought he was doing the right thing. I really hated doing it, but trying to capture that element of Stalin’s character was really important to me. Villains rarely think they are villains.

Once I stopped looking at Stalin as a hulking historical figure, but started to see the man that made him who he was, creating a character influenced by him was pretty easy.

Communism was really interesting to learn about, and even more interesting to write. Communism is pretty foreign to people located out here in the United States, and while we learn about it, a lot of the details are either glossed over in history class in high school, or just not touched on at all. Basically, from high school, I was left with the understanding that communism is bad, and not much else.

In order to build a realistic communist system in my world, I had to not just understand the policies, but the impacts of these policies and how they were implemented. I had to take the main points of Stalinist communism, and change it enough to fit into the Sunset Lands.

Communism itself has a lot of territory for an author to tinker with. Setting down the policies of this government system and figuring out the impact on society as a whole was really the groundwork for building my world. Once I had that figured out, everything else fell into place.

Going into this, I knew I wanted to create a magic system based on the elements. However, due to communism, and state ownership of both goods and labor, it had to be a magic system that could be utilized like any other skill. It needed to be something that could be worked, and create, or help create, goods and services. Therefore, I ended up deciding that the elemental magic system needed to be something that could be bartered and traded.

Due to the dying world, and the changing nature of magic, the magic in Seraphina’s Lament, is understated, but there are a few situations that show what I’m talking about here. One, early on in the book, where a woman who has a talent, is forcefully separated from her son and sent to a village, ordered to use her elemental talent to help people in that village work their land. Seraphina and her twin brother Neryan are slaves because their fire and water talents are incredibly rare and valuable. Every person in the Sunset Lands is tested at a certain age, and a mark is branded into their cheek that shows if they are null talents (no talent) or what talents they have, and then, depending on the results, are either sent into specialized schools, labor camps, or assigned to villages for labor.

While I chose to write this book with a government system based on Stalinism, I ended up being really surprised that there weren’t more fantasy books with communist government systems. It’s a form of government that has plenty for authors to draw on, and use in the books they write.

The world is a big place, and part of reading is discovering it, and exploring different ways of living. Part of doing that is straying away from the tried and true forms of rulers and leadership in fantasy, kings, queens, emperors and the like. There will always be a place for that in our books, but there are so many other governmental systems out there, and so many other ways that people have lived, and are living. For me, choosing to create a communist governmental system was natural to the story I was telling. I can’t imagine Seraphina’s Lament being told any other way.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sarah has been a compulsive reader her whole life. At a young age, she found her reading niche in the fantastic genre of Speculative Fiction. She blames her active imagination for the hobbies that threaten to consume her life. She is a writer and editor, a semi-pro nature photographer, world traveler, three-time cancer survivor, and mom. In her ideal world, she’d do nothing but drink lots of tea and read from a never-ending pile of speculative fiction books.

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Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Glass Dagger

Q] Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Before we start, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who is MD Presley? And why should everyone be reading your novels?

MDP: I’m an introvert, so this is my most dreaded question of all times. I swear, I’ve lost more jobs than I can count when I hit the “tell me about yourself” question and I would stutter something like how I’m not a serial killer. Which we all know only makes you sound more like a serial killer. Because who needs to assure you that they’re not serial killers other than serial killers?

Now that the creepiness is (mostly) out of the way, I guess you should know I’m a former screenwriter who still works in the industry and got tired of no producer ever greenlighting the bizarre and budget-busting ideas I had. So I decided to self-publish, which might just be the best retirement plan for all screenwriters who don’t quite “make it.” But I like to think I learned a lot about plotting and characters from my time in the trenches, which hopefully shows in my novels, which is why you should read them.

Plus floating trains. And psychic exoskeletons. Who doesn’t want to read about those?

Q] When and why did you decide to become an author?

MDP: Ugh… I am the writer cliché that always wanted to be an author. Ever since I was a kid playing with my GI Joes/ Star Wars action figures, which I acted out really, REALLY intricate stories with. Then I would run the scenario again, but changing one event to see how it played out. Not borderline-type behavior at all…

Shortly after college I learned about screenwriting, which embodied everything I loved: Stories that no one ever read. I don’t particularly care for my prose, and screenwriting is a medium where no one but the film crew actually reads your work. So it seemed perfect.

Smash Cut To: 15 years later as I write novels and expose my prose to everyone who will deign to look.

Q] What draws you to writing in the genre of fantasy?

MDP: My mother checked out a single chapter of The Sword of Shannara on tape when I was in fourth grade and I listened to the battle between Panamon Creel and Keltset versus the skull bearer and I was pretty much hooked. Which sort of put me at a disadvantage since I encountered post-Tolkien authors (ala Dragonlance) before actually reading any Tolkien. So it was always a bit of a letdown when I read the source from which all inspiration sprung.

Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was the next real eye-opening moment for me when I realized authors could do anything, be it blending comics with sacred myths, all the while adding our own idiosyncratic mythos in a modern setting. It really was pivotal for me, and probably why I focused on epic urban fantasy during my screenwriting career.

Q] Tell us a little bit about your writing process. What do you start from? Do you start with a character, an image, or an idea? Talk a little bit about how a novel “grows” for you.

MDP: I’m a creative cannibal in that pretty much all my worlds, plots, and characters were begun in a completely different story idea that never panned out. But there were always some kernels of awesome seeded there, so I would keep them in my notes and wait until they found fertile soil. Usually by mixing them with another aborted idea. Sol’s Harvest, for instance, is a variation on a character I came up with in college mixed with a plot for one of my earliest screenplays, painted on a world I came up with as a thought experiment.

But that’s just planting the idea garden with a bit of compost from other ideas. After everything takes root, I’m really disciplined in my outlining phase, bible writing, world building, plotting, and the like. I would talk your ear off about it, but I realize there is nothing more mentally grating than hearing an author go on and on about their process. So I’ll just say visit my blog, where I go into excruciating detail as to the process weekly.

Q] What’s the hardest thing for you during the whole “writing experience”?

MDP: The process is pretty streamlined for me at this point, so I’ll say the waiting and myopia. Even with the great community of fellow self-published authors I get to hang out with online, writing is a very lonely endeavor: I literally sit alone in a darkened room after the rest of the household goes to bed. So you develop an intimate relationship with the material that isn’t always healthy. You (meaning me) get too close to the story, to the point you lose perspective and can’t tell if it’s good or bad anymore. I try to schedule time between the rough drafts and the editing phase so I can approach it with fresh eyes, but you (meaning me) honestly can’t tell what it’s worth until you start getting some sort of feedback, usually in terms of beta readers. Unfortunately, this is several months into the process, while all the while you’re left wondering if you’d just squandered your time and sanity on something no one will ever possibly love.

Which is why, I guess, there’s always such a cliched comparison between writing and raising children.

Q] What made you decide to self-publish as opposed to traditional publishing?

MDP: Like I joked earlier, I see a lot of screenwriters turn to self-publishing as a means to get their ideas out when no one in Hollywood will listen. We come from a world where the screenwriter makes (maybe) 2% of the budget of the film and then has to do rewrites (which are invariably TERRIBLE) based on the director/ producer/ actors’ notes multiple times throughout the process. Now don’t get me wrong, I obviously value others’ opinions (see above answer), but it gets very soul-crushing to be the one whose specialty is the story, yet having the least amount of control over it in the room. So writing novels was my escape from this, the ability to tell the stories I wanted to tell the way I wanted to tell them.

Which is why I avoid the traditional process like the plague: It’s the same thing I was trying to escape from the film world. Now this is my personal path, and I do not begrudge anyone who wants to go the traditional route. I just didn’t have the time/ inclination to start the same process over again at this point in my life. And, as advances drop and publishers try to wring diminishing profits out of their authors and new mediums like e-books and audio books, I feel I’ve made the right decision.

Q] One of the big challenges with self-publishing is finding readers. Was that your experience?

MDP: Oh dear God, yes. As wonderfully democratic as it is that anyone can now publish a book and get around those mythical gatekeepers of quality in the traditional publishing approach, the double-edged sword takes effect in that anyone can publish a book… usually of dubious quality. And as much as I am a proponent of self-publishing, I do realize there’s a lot, LOT of crap out there flooding the market. So the real problem in being a new self-published author is convincing a potential reader that you’re not like the rest of those terrible writers.

Which, just like a serial killer, is exactly what a terrible writer/ serial killer would say.

I did make some good early connections with fellow authors early on, but Mark Lawrence’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off was really a turning point for me in finding an audience. I ended up here at Fantasy Book Critic, and while I lost the opportunity to bear your banner to the championship round to eventual second-place winner Alec Hutson, the reviews I received here gave me that seal of approval I could tout to others as to why they should give my books a chance.

Q] What advice would you give someone who wants to self-publish?

MDP: Learn the lay of the land. Writing is a great personal experience, but you need an audience. And chances are you’re probably writing for/ in a subgenre. So go find that subgenre and where they hang out ahead of time. Become one of them so your book will have a better chance of reaching a receptive audience when it comes out.

Then make sure to put out a professional product. The reason self-publishing gets a bad rap is because much of it is crap. So rise above and take the extra effort to look like the real deal. That means professional proofreading, editing, and a great cover… all things I made mistakes on in my first fledgling steps.

But there are resources out there for authors now, covering everything from how much you should spend on editing to creating your author newsletter. Learn it and practice it.

Q] As you know, I'm a huge fan of your series. The novels can be read simply for fun and engaging plot, but they also deal with issues of politics, sacrifice and religious zealotry. Why were these themes important for you to write about?

MDP: I joke that the true pitch of my series is The Last Airbender put through the True Detective blender, which is to say I want to take everything that is bright and enjoyable of a fantasy world, then cover it in grit. And as much as I’m riding the current grimdark wave as it crests, I think it’s important that we don’t gloss over these big issues as we write our escapist genre. I’m a firm believer in the anti-hero, which also means that no one thinks they’re the villain in their own story. Which is why it matters so much to me that there’s shades of grey from all perspectives in this series.

Q] What was your initial inspiration for the Sol's Harvest series?

MDP: Oops, I answered that above. It really was The Last Airbender in that I wanted to test myself to see if I could create a world equally as lavish and interesting as that series, and True Detective in that I wanted to do a multiple timeline tale where you get to watch the protagonist(s) arc twice in the telling of each book, so that when you finish one timeline the events that preceded it now offer a different perspective than when you were reading it at the time.

Q] The thing I really enjoyed about the story was how you’ve orchestrated different, but converging time lines and how each book of the series focuses on a different character. Why have you decided to write them this way?

MDP: That’s the True Detective influence again (I should probably read the upcoming questions ahead of time so I will stop answering them in the previous questions). But each perspective adds new insight to previous events, so that knowing what you do about Luca in book two, you would read book one differently. Ditto with Graff from book three. And don’t even get me started on how book four will shift the understanding of the whole series…

Q] One of the things I’m torn about is my favorite character in this series, and that’s a good thing. I am definitely partial to Marta, though I probably find Luca most charming and Graff interesting in a creepy way. Do you have a favorite to write yourself?

MDP: I shouldn’t admit this, but Carmichael and Oleander were probably my favorites. I do like Marta and Luca (and Isabelle) as characters, but I don’t think I’d like to actually hang out with them as people. Not now that I’ve dealt with them for years on end. Oleander gets the benefit of the doubt because she’s remembered as a perfect and loving foil by Marta, which Carmichael is the exact opposite embodiment of. Which makes him so much fun to write.

Is it bad that I always identify with villains?

Q] The characters do develop and change as you read the novels. Did you find your own views of the characters changed as you were writing or was it always your intention for things to be “as they are”?

MDP: All their arcs are mapped out way ahead of time, although the path they take to get to those beats that I’ve planned out sometimes surprise me in the execution. And yes, my opinion of Graff changed significantly before/ after writing book three.

Q] The setting of the books is excellent. Though we’re not told everything, there feels like a rich backstory of history, myth and legend. What challenges did you face not just in making it accessible, but in incorporating all the information that needed to be conveyed to make the story work?

MDP: This is a tough question in that I’m currently doing research on a book on fantasy worldbuilding and will talk your ear off on the subject. But I do think it’s something we should discuss as fantasy fans/ authors because I think, along with plot and characters (and maybe prose), worldbuilding is one of the table legs that support our genre.

Personally speaking, I wrote something like 100 pages of worldbuilding spanning from their creation myth to the different factions currently vying for control before I even began outlining the books. But worldbuilding is a lot like backstory for characters in that, while the author needs to know it all, the audience doesn’t. It’s all about context and what you think is necessary for the story to make sense. I tried to show-not-tell the bits I could, but didn’t fear the infodump when I couldn’t. How well I accomplished creating audience context is entirely up to the readers to decide though.

Q] What sort of research did you do for Sol’s Harvest?

MDP: I hate to admit, but most of my research was Wikipedia. I mean, I read some books on the Civil War as well as a lot of myths, but mostly relied upon my memory of high school history and used my imagination (it is fantasy after all). Wikipedia was for moments where I needed specific details like how many troops are actually in a brigade.

Q] What was the most difficult part of writing this series? What was the most enjoyable part?

MDP: The most difficult part was the starting out as a self-published author and not knowing a damn thing. It was like being a newly blinded person let loose in a mob and told to go purchase a train ticket from a machine a half-mile away (I don’t know where that simile came from). Needless to say, there was a lot of fumbling and some skinned knees.

The best part, I hope, is yet to come when book four comes out and people see this unholy monstrosity I’ve wrought over the last several years.

Q] If you would be given the chance to rewrite any of the scenes in The Woven Ring before publication, would you do it? If yes, what and why?

MDP: I would rewrite it from page one on until the final punctuation mark. Not the story beats, mind you, but the prose. As I’ve said, I hate my own. But I hate what I’ve recently written less than I hate what I wrote long ago. Which is why I only read what I’ve already published to find specific details I need for the current story. Otherwise, reading it pains me since I want to correct it to fit my current style.

Q] Would you say that Sol’s Harvest series follows tropes or kicks them?

MDP: Well, it kicks the farmboy with a sword trope in the balls right out the gate with an aristocratic female with all the gifts who has already failed at life as the protagonist. Although I guess she does have a sword. There’s also no immediately obvious prophesy or dark one, and I do sort of end the initial quest in book two of four.

Which might be why this series isn’t that popular: People like tropes and I don’t think I included nearly enough.

Q] Which question about Sol’s Harvest series do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

MDP: Will character X be the final POV for book four? I love that question because it shows that people are engaged enough to care. And I can’t really answer because that would give it away.

But that was sort of a cheat. So I’ll leave you with this creepy question I got once: Will Marta and Carmichael ever make out?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Noooooooooo!

Q] Do you have a plan for your career as an author? At the moment you are wrapping up Sol's Harvest tetralogy. Do you have any other authorial goals that you are striving towards that you want to talk about?

MDP: As I said, I’m going to try my hand at a non-fiction book on fantasy worldbuilding when this is through. Then I’ll kick off an urban fantasy series that’s been living in my head rent-free for almost two decades. And I’m also considering returning to the world of Ayr with a series of novellas exploring the other continents and their particular magics with one of the surviving characters from this series. But we’ll see how much energy I actually have.

Q] Can you name three books you adore as a reader, but that make you feel inadequate as a writer?

MDP: Neil Gaiman’s The Wake: I had so many feels for this one that I don’t think I’ll ever produce in anyone ever, even if I live to be 100. 100 Years of Solitude: Just plain lush. And I’ve always wanted to make a movie out of Peter Hoeg’s Borderliners because of the way he captures alienation in a way I’ve never been able to. Although I’ve certainly tried.

Q] Thank you so much for agreeing to this conversation, MD! We greatly appreciate your time and thoughts.

MDP: You’re kidding, right? You appreciate my time?! How often does an author, especially a self-published one, get to go on about themselves on a stage like this without having to pay money (or perhaps an organ) for? Seriously, much of the success that I do have comes from Fantasy Book Critic and the support you’ve shown me, an unknown author with no connections. You opened the doors for me and I will never forget that.

So if you ever need a body buried west of the Mississippi, you got my number.

East? Well, I know a guy…