People: What made you want to write fantasy?
Me: Just something new I wanted to try.
People: How did you deal with stress during the worst of the pandemic?
Also me:
- Read the entire Witcher Series. (Damn, Geralt and Cahir had some crazy E2L energy.)
- Watched the Witcher Netflix show and played the game. (Damn, Geralt and Jaskier had some crazy F2L energy.)
- Listened to every episode of Lore Podcast.
- Put eleventy billion hours into Skyrim.
- Played the entire Dragon Age series multiple times.
- Read the Hobbit to Boychild the Elder (Did anyone else feel like Bilbo and Thorin had vibes? Just me?) while Boychild the Younger became obsessed withe the Tolkien movie.
- Watched the entire Vikings series. (Everybody's hot. Damn, Ragnar had some major bisexual energy.)
- Played the entire Mass Effect series and began sharing Star Trek with my kids, starting with Disco-->TNG-->DS9-->Voyager. (Because sci-fi is also cool.)
- Played AC Valhalla to continue my viking obsession.
- Added the scores to Skyrim, Vikings, and AC Valhalla to my writing playlist.
- Read Neal Gaiman's Norse Mythology to Boychild the Elder.
- Started the Redwall series with Boychild the Elder.
Clearly fantasy is a coping mechanism. LOL but I'd say it's a relatively healthy one, all things considered.
But seriously, I've always loved fantasy, and I've always wished it had more romance and more queer rep (that was actually canon rather than fanfic/ships/headcanons). I finally decided I had to write what I wanted to see in the genre and that's how the Black Blade Chronicles began. I think you'll find influences from viking as well as celtic mythology, along with a lot of lore that's completely a product of my wandering mind. Speaking of lore, a lot of my inspiration for lore-crafting came from my obsession with the podcast Lore.
For more insight into the inspiration behind Wicked Lovely and future books in the series, check out my pinterest board with everything from costumes and character design to fantasy inspiring locales.
I hope you all will check out the book and if you do, I'd love to hear what you think!
(I'm also once again including my world map so my blog will have something to put in the thumbnail. 😂 This is the revised version formatted for the paperback!)
