When people complain about the writing in fantasy–even if it’s a legitimate complaint–but they seem to be relatively clueless at the hellfire-and-lightning storm-plagued mountain ridge the fantasy writer had to go through to even finish their book–I feel like throwing things. It’s not that readers aren’t allowed to complain about things. They’re allowed to–it’s your …
I wrote Jaeth’s Eye when I was 17 years old. It wasn’t called Jaeth’s Eye back then. It was called The Lion’s Tracks. The first manuscript was finished at 150,000 or 160,000 words, I believe. I wrote it in the span of 6 months during a long vacation in the Philippines. This was back in the days when …
Read more “The Courage to Start Again — Confessions of an Epic Fantasy Writer”
The eternal dilemma of every writer is the nagging self-doubt in the back of your mind: “What if what I have to say has no value to anyone? What if I go down this road and it’s all for nothing?” But for a lot of us, it isn’t a choice now, is it? I’ve tried …
The Agartes Epilogues is not grimdark. This is something I tell people in the description, because someone who is savvy in the genre of epic fantasy could immediately think this upon reading the Prologue of Jaeth’s Eye. It’s been described by many reviewers as violent, with some sex and some swearing. In epic fantasy, these are usually the signs of …
Read more “Grimdark or Just Honest? On Epic Fantasy and the Tendency Towards Gratuitous Violence”
Most days, I’ll be too tired from running around after my kids and dogs while doing as much writing as I can to answer this question any more eloquently than, “My ass.” Partly sarcasm, but also partly true. After all, isn’t it a writer’s job to say more with less? I don’t get fantastic ideas from …
