Tides of Gafforah - New Release Coming Soon!
Tell us a bit about the inspiration for Tides of Gafforah. What gave you the idea?
Tides came from a collision of ideas—firstly the concept of Andriel is one I’ve been building for over a decade now. The second piece was wanting to create characters that were as different as possible and throw them into the same story. For example, a successful hero with no magical abilities in a magical world, an elderly woman with a grumpy personality, and an abrasive, hard-to-like teenager. From there, it was a lot of trial and error in putting the pieces together. It was the biggest challenge of my writing career so far, and my proudest accomplishment.
Fantasy is notorious for bad media adaptations. So many movies and TV shows that try to capture the feel of epic fantasy just turn out hokey. What are some of the good screen adaptations out there?
The older (1-2 and some of 3) seasons of Game of Thrones were impressively good. Most of the lines in the first season were straight out of the book. As someone who reads A Song of Ice and Fire once a year or so, I enjoyed seeing a story that stuck to the books. The Lord of The Rings, sans the Hobbit movie trilogy, will always remain classics as well. I admire Peter Jackson’s adaptions as the books weren’t consistently visually descriptive, leaving a lot to interpretation. I felt he successfully captured the thematic elements and emotions of the stories.
Epic fantasy is usually packed with interesting characters, unique races, and awesome magical abilities. Tell us about your favorite character to write in Tides of Gafforah.
My favorite character to write in Tides of Gafforah was Wendwynn Forella. She is a combination of many female strong characters and people I’ve known, as well as parts of myself. Ironically, she is part of a race of people that have no magical abilities, meaning she’s had to fight and scrape for every accomplishment she has. She’s not afraid to take risks and do what she must to protect the people she loves as well as fulfill her own personal ambitions.
Most modern fantasy creatures have their roots in ancient Greek and Norse stories. Given how many cultures throughout the world developed the same kinds of creatures despite not having much contact, do you think we’ll ever find fossils of things like harpies, dragons, unicorns, or minotaurs? Any chance that something we once considered purely myth will turn up in the real world?
I like to think that there’s elements of truth in every myth. I also think there’s a lot that older civilizations experienced that we just give different names now. If an ancient person found dinosaur bones, they would tell their friends they found dragon bones. Whose to say they were any less right just because we gave the bones a different name? Perception is reality. While it’s unlikely we will ever find something like a unicorn or harpy, the chances are never zero!
What’s next for you as a writer?
So much. The prequel to Tides of Gafforah is in the editing stage, and the sequel is in the rough draft stages. I have dozens of nations in Andriel, all with unique cultures, beliefs, magic, etc. I’d like to tell as many of their stories as I can.
Tides of Gafforah - Coming Soon!!!
Stay tuned for the pre-order link!