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I'd like you to make up a 6 or 7 book series about the founding of the elder empire!
I like six or seven books as a series size. Idk about the founding of the Elder Empire--depends on how the main series does after the relaunch.
If they weren't stuck with the class 1 fiends would the readers and other people with powers of Elder Empire be able to ascend? Has anyone ascended from the world of Elder Empire?
(...class 1 fiends...?) Yes. (...has anyone ascended...?) No, after they were locked there, it was locked down. No one has ascended from that iteration.
I'm very curious about your writing process. How different was the first draft of Unsouled from it's final form?
Funny story about that, Steve. You picked an interesting example because I was intending Unsouled to be released on my blog for free as a series of chapters because I was going "Hey? You know what, I'll just try and do a web serial as my side thing in order to keep people reading the blog and keep people remembering that I am a person that exists while I write the next set of Elder Empire books." But then I rolled out all the short stories over the mailing list, which we used to do, and that got people engaged and I was like "Oh, okay, well I don't need to do that with this but now I have a book, so let's finish it out and put it up and then we'll know what we know how to do and release it on the Kindle store and then maybe that will keep people engaged." And then that got way more engagement than Elder Empire ever did, so I was like "Uh-oh." And then I wrote Soulsmith.
So Unsouled's first draft and it's final form were not very different. Most of my first drafts are really pretty clean in general. Not universally, but in general I write pretty clean first drafts. The final drafts I don't change a whole lot, but what I do change has a lot of impact. It's not like I go through and make a million major changes so the story's completely different. What I do is, it turns out there's a lot of things you can change with just a word or a sentence here and there. Generally if you read my alpha draft and you read my published draft you would be able to see easily where I went from one to the other but they will read very differently.
Hi Will, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. First off, let’s get a quick overview of your books. You have the Cradle series, the Traveler’s Gate trilogy, and the Elder Empire series. Can you tell us a little bit about each series, and where do you recommend someone new to WW starts?
I’ve had nothing but time since you captured me and put me in this cage, but nonetheless it’s great to be here! Traveler’s Gate was my first series, and it’s kind of my standard fantasy action story with swords, monsters, talking dolls, hummingbirds with deep and manly voices, etc. Elder Empire has a unique dual novel structure that causes lots of confusion, but besides that it’s ninjas vs. pirates in a Lovecraftian fantasy setting. Cradle is definitely where I recommend new readers start, because it’s my newest and most popular series, and it’s kind of a martial arts fantasy journey.
Why aren’t Monarchs more liberal with their ability to bring back the dead? Is it a specific skill of Northstrider, too much of a resource drain, or was there something special about the Uncrowned King Tournament to give all the fighters infinite lives?
It is the sort of thing where... if you're not Suriel, you can't reverse time for an entire Iteration. You can't just effortlessly bring people back to life. It is something you can do if you're right there, if you have authority over them, and if they're not that powerful. So, the more powerful somebody is, the more authority it would take to bring them back. [clearing 20 squares in stardew]
So that's the reason why they don't constantly bring everybody back from the dead. It is impossible to do if it's been too long. One of the issues with that is- we have really seen like Suriel-scale resurrection but not most lower-scale resurrection, and then we've seen what Northstrider did at the Uncrowned King tournament. Well, what he did at the Uncrowned King tournament was a lot easier than just bringing some random person back from the dead. For one thing, relative to him they're not that powerful. For another thing, he is given- lent special authority over this event by the rest of the Monarchs. And, for another thing, he sets that rule at the beginning, and then he's always right there.
So all of that makes it a little easier to do, so it was pretty simple for him to [bap bap bap] resurrect everybody, relatively speaking. Now, Suriel can do almost whatever she wants, so that's- relative to the Monarchs.
Does the 8 Man Empire have power loss, or is Reigan Shen equal to 4 entry level Monarchs?
No. So I'm sure we're going to get into the details of how the 8 Man Empire armor works, at least to some degree. I don't know how much detail we're going to get into, but to some degree we're going to go into that. And the idea is that they can all draw on the powers of the others. So that does not mean that they are equivalent to four Monarchs, it means that collectively they can express the power a Monarch. So in some ways that has an advantage because, of course, they have a greater breadth of powers and things that they can do. And they can be in multiple places at once. But at the same time it also has some disadvantages. One of those being that if one of them is drawing on their full power, or two of them are splitting it among themselves, then the others are not as powerful. So they couldn't fight four Monarchs at once. They could certainly fight one, and potentially two depending the circumstances, but usually they are spread out. They are not usually in the same location because they don't need to be.
Are there any awakened, sentient, wepaons or items in the Elder Empire?
By definition i think awakened items possess thoughts even if they are just simple thing like "KILL!" Or "FEED ME!".Are the Awakened weapons sentient?That's a hotly debated question in the Empire. Many Soulbound feel that their Vessels "speak" to them, but always in impressions or mentally communicated desires. Some of them swear they hear an actual voice in their head, but is that really the weapon? Or is it their imagination providing words for the impressions the weapon sends them?The common belief is that Awakened objects do have a measure of awareness, but not true sapience. They can't "think" or reason beyond the capacity and purpose for which they were created....as far as anyone knows.
The gap between these stages of advancement is HUGE! people are trying to scale Lindon and the gang and it seems people think sage/Herald are closer to monarchs than they actually are.
The 8 man empire are the equivalent of one monarch. That's not because any 8 sacred artists at the level of sage/Herald (S/H) are the equivalent of a monarch, they need the help of special magic space armor to combine their significance to reach that level. This fact alone means that without the magic space armor, that I would take over 8 S/H to rival one monarch. The way the story talks about the 8 man empire I would guess it would take many more that 8 S/H to rival a monarch.
Unfortunately I have no idea how to estimate exactly how few S/H it would take to match a monarch.
That being said, the fact that Lindon and Yerin could push back against Malice, with the help of Mercy, is huge. To say Lindon is just a Sage with the raw power of a Herald is a joke. Our boy could spank any Herald or sage level sacred artist low dif.
My view of Yerin in this fight is that she’s roughly the equivalent of a normal Herald. She has some unique advantages, but so do many Heralds.
Fury, for instance, could have beaten her.
But she’s at the level of being able to participate in this fight while Lindon puts the lion’s share (tiger’s share?) of the pressure on.
That’s my general thought process, anyway.
Let me take a few minutes to address the 8ME.
A group of 4 Sages and 4 Heralds all fighting a Monarch together could win. And probably would, all other factors being equal.
The disadvantage is that none of them could 1v1 the Monarch, so they’re prone to getting picked off and defeated separately. Are you going to stand there and fight eight guys? No, you run and pick your moment later.
The advantage of the 8ME is that they don’t need to be together to combine powers. And that they can fuse their power to perform Monarch-level feats, which Sages and Heralds can’t normally do.
How does a Monarch beat a Sage? Engage them physically or in a straight-up power fight. How do they beat a Herald? Keep throwing workings at them they can’t match and make them waste willpower and concentration shutting them down.
An 8ME member can draw on the power of the others to remove those weaknesses at will.
How would you defeat the 8ME? Force them to spread out. They have a finite pool of power to draw on, so if three of them (for instance) need to draw on Monarch-level power at once, what does that leave for the rest?
Problem is, no faction has two Monarchs. So let’s say Reigan Shen wanted to take them down. He engages Larian in combat, and he assigns or hires a Sage or Herald for each of the other seven.
How does that actually play out?
They don’t pump Larian up to Monarch-level. She flees and runs and hides and does anything she can to survive with only her own power, and they pump whoever has the weakest opponent.
Suddenly, the person facing down a single Sage has Monarch-level power. The enemy is crushed. Then they move on to the next-weakest enemy, and so on.
Larian might die. Maybe she couldn’t hang on either.
But it’s still WAY faster and easier for the 8ME to pass power between each other than it is for Shen to travel through the Way to face the other members. So, in all likelihood, they become the Six-Man Army but all their non-Monarch opponents are dead.
Then they replace the lost two members and now they’re gunning for Shen.
And that’s the story of why the 8ME still exists.
I join your other fans in congratulating you on a huge milestone-300k sold is fantastic. Thank you for your honesty and openness on how KU works. My sense is you regard yourself as well treated by KU, something I had hoped is true but had no info about.
Being somewhat new to you and your blog, I may have missed an estimate of how many volumes you expect Cradle to be. Hearing from you on this, even if it is a rough guess, would be a great way to share with you where all of us are in the Journey, and a nice way to celebrate 300k sold.
Or, maybe you could share with us a tidbit on the creative process. Is there any recurring challenge, and how do you come out on top, or try to? When or how do you know you have a good idea for a series? Really any insight into how you work would really interest us and would be a way your fans could join you in celebrating a major milestone in your literary career.
Oh, and many thanks for this blog, which I am enjoying, while waiting for Blackflame.
I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but I've been VERY well-treated by KU. It's the bulk of my monthly income nowadays.
As for the Cradle volumes...SPOILER WARNING, I guess, although this is so fluid and subject to change that anything I say can't really be much of a spoiler because I haven't made my own mind up yet.
I'm planning 12 volumes actually on Cradle. It could end there...or not. It depends.
The answer to most of those creative process questions you've asked is "I fly by the seat of my pants."
Recurring challenge: getting up every day and going to work. I get paid regardless, there are no deadlines, and no single day is going to matter in the completion of a book. I combat that by putting myself in scenarios where I have no choice but to write--I'm locked in a hotel room without the WiFi password and no books or games. Writing it is.
Recurring challenge #2: demotivation. In every book so far, roughly into the 2/3 - 3/4 mark, I'm convinced that it's a pile of crap, the worst thing I've ever written, and completely broken from stem to stern. I just know that I'm going to have to throw it all out and start over.
It hasn't been true yet, but each time I'm sure that THIS is going to be the time.
And that's where I'm currently at with Blackflame. I am convinced it's garbage. But by this point I'm learning to predict my own issues, and I was ready for this. A week or two from now I'll be saying "Hm, this is better than I remember it being."
Or maybe for the first time it really is crap, and the book will be delayed.
How I know when I have a good idea for a series: when it sells well, because that means people are reading it.
For instance, I thought Elder Empire was a great idea. Much better than the ideas behind Traveler's Gate or Cradle. I crammed too much into the setting, that's true, but the "dueling perspectives" thing and the "epic fantasy with a Lovecraft backdrop" thing are both rich ideas. Plus it's more character-driven by definition, which is a neat change of pace for me.
Then not many people read it, so evidently it was not a great idea. Live and learn. Unsouled has outsold all of the Elder Empire books combined, I think, and if it hasn't yet it will soon.
So apparently that was the better series concept.
Less jaded and cynical answer to the same question:
I choose which new series to write based on what book I think I can enjoy writing AND what I can complete in a reasonable amount of time.
With Cradle, for instance, I'd been reading a lot of translated wuxia and xianxia novels, so I wanted to try writing one. I was passionate about the genre, I had a few twists on the established formula I was excited to include, and it seemed like it would be very possible to write without any hidden obstacles along the way.
That's pretty much it.
Xianxia stories are fairly formulaic to start with, so I knew I could at least write the first 80-90k words of one without much trouble. And initially I'd planned to release Unsouled as a free twice-weekly release here on the blog, but that's another story.
That was a much longer answer than I intended, I'm sorry. The creative process is a big topic--maybe I should talk about HOW I work more.
Problem is, I often feel like the answer is "I just kind of make stuff up until it all fits together." It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but instead of looking for the right piece, you just 3D print one to fit.
How do Monarchs compare, power-wise, to the Abidan?
There are lesser Abidan that the Monarchs can beat. I may have answered this before, where someone asked if Northstrider could potentially beat the low level Hound that we saw in Kiuran in the Uncrowned tournament. And yes, potentially he could. Now they would have to have a fight, and it depends on what other powers Kiuran has, but potentially yes, Northstrider could do that. That's something where he's considering just killing Kiuran. The reason why he doesn't is twofold. One thing, you never know what tricks and Abidan has up their sleeve, and then of course he doesn't want to antagonize the rest of their massive interdimensional organization.
What is the saddest death you've written?
So that's a spoiler for other books. It is not in Cradle. It's in Traveler's Gate. That's the one I think is the saddest. So I don't want to give that away because it's not a [Reaper] spoiler. But I will say that there is somebody I killed in one of the first books of Elder Empire that I think may be pretty bad. That's a rough death. A lot of people give me crap for that to this day about that one. But I did that one in Elder Empire for a reason. There's another thing that I think... I don't think killing characters inherently makes a series better. So I don't think killing characters makes a book or series better.
Like, for instance, I don't think Harry Potter needed to kill very many characters. You can kill Cedric Diggory in book four, you can kill Sirius in book five, and then obviously Dumbledore in book six. [Gets yelled at for spoiling book six.] If you haven't read Harry Potter, what are you doing here? Then in book seven she kills a lot of characters that I don't think are necessary. So, I just think that series didn't need that. It makes a more serious tone. Don't think it needed that. So, I'm not always about killing characters but in Sea and Shadow, I killed some characters in the first installment to, first of all because I thought it was tonally appropriate to the series and second of all because they are going to stick around for the next two books in flashbacks. So because I had a major flashback story line and could still use the killed characters I decided to be liberal with the people I killed.
How does the Eight Man Empire work?
The Eight-Man Empire operate collectively, not individually. Suriel singles one out in order to give Lindon perspective, but their powers are very limited when they're not working in formation with the other seven.
Not that they're pushovers individually, but yes, Reigan Shen would eat them alive* if they tried to fight him separately.
*Not literally.
...maybe literally.
Northstrider vs Kelerac, or Northstrider vs high ranking elders
Unsealed Elders no, simply due to the nature of the fight. At that point it's not a power level thing. Using sacred arts to fight unsealed Elders is, by and large, like trying to use your fists to fight a virus.But sealed Great Elders (like the ones the Emperor dealt with)...yeah, easily.
What is your favorite book, web novel and game that you have discovered in the last year?
Ooh, book, web novel, and game. Does it count if I say Subnautica: Below Zero for the game? Is that cheating? Because while I did not discover Subnautica in the last year, Below Zero came out in the last year. So, still counts.
So book, web novel, and game. Trying to think of what all games... I mean I really liked the Demon Souls remake for PS5. That was really good. Again, I feel like that's a cheating answer, though, because it's not exactly a game that came out in the last year but technically it is. I don't know. I'll have to think about the game part.
Then book and web novel. Book and web novel. Now book is going to be hard. Let's see, let me look at my Kindle. I don't know. I liked Alec Hutson's The Shadows of Dust. That was a space fantasy series that came out and it was coming out when I was thinking out outlining a space fantasy series. So that was something I was like wow this is fortuitous and he wrote The Crimson Queen which was a book I really liked a few years ago and then, of course, the rest of that trilogy. So I enjoyed that, that was creative and neat. But that's the first one that pops into my head.
I really liked the last Dresden Files book. I actually really liked, there was a Dresden Files book, the one before last, that Peace Talks, that wasn't as popular and you know it wasn't my favorite Dresden Files book but it was a Dresden Files book and that is all I needed. And it had been way to long since I had had any Dresden Files book of any description so I was extremely happy to get both of those. Still really good.
And then web novels. Now the question is, how to narrow down my answers. Probably I'm the Lord of an Intergalactic Empire was, I think that was hilarious. It also happens to be scifi/space opera stuff. But it's just, I think it's very funny. One of the top negative reviews for that series is well it's almost like a comedy. Well it is a comedy, it is 100 percent a comedy. So I don't know what they were thinking. And I Want to be a Power in the Shadows or I think it got translated as Eminence in the Shadows. That's getting an anime which is great because it's fantastic. It's like fantasy isekai One Punch Man.
Someone is saying plus one on Iron Prince. And yeah, I would have said that if I had discovered it in the last year but I didn't. It's been more than a year, right?
So, Intergalactic Empire I think is great. I also have weirdly enough been really enjoying Kidnapped Dragons. I'm not all the way, actually I am all caught up on that. I enjoyed that. That's very much not something I usually like because it's very slice of life but it's about a guy raising, effectively, four daughters who are shape shifted dragons because he has to keep them happy because otherwise they'll destroy the world. And it's surprisingly wholesome and slice of life and yet, I enjoy it. So that is an unusual combination. Usually I don't like those at all.
The Beginning after the End was amazing.
Yeah, the Beginning after the End is amazing.
Hey Will! I've been reading your books since you published House of Blades, and I'm a big fan. Now, question: The Arelius family in Cradle and the Aurelian empire in EE. Is that a connection or a coincidence?
I am very glad you asked that question, because it IS a coincidence. I knew someone would notice, and I'm glad you pointed it out.
Here's the deal: originally it was the Orelius family, because I thought "Eithan Orelius" sounded cool. But the first round of readers conflated Ozriel (the missing Judge that Suriel is hunting) with Orelius, and they became confused.
Basically, when you're making up a bunch of names, you want to make them sound as different from one another as you can, or people get confused. That was one too many similar-sounding O-names, but I liked the sound of "Orelius." I couldn't go with "Erelius" because then Eithan Erelius sounds like the fake name of a wizard, and I ruled out Eithan Irelius for reasons that probably made sense at the time but I can't recall now, and settled on Arelius even though I knew people would assume there was a connection to the Aurelian Empire.
There isn't. Just a coincidentally similar-sounding name.
There has been debate about exactly what happened when Northstrider took Dross from Lindon but ended up letting Lindon join. Did Lindon prevent the spatial opening from fully closing? Did he start re-opening it? Or did Northstrider just feel Lindon's strength of desire and decided to re-open it and bring him? What exactly happened?
Good Question. Siiiiiiiiiip ((looks directly at the camera and sips loudly))
Do other nations have the knowledge and the resources required to produce Underlords with greater ease than the Blackflame Empire?
Yes, other powers can produce more Underlords than the Blackflame Empire. Not ALL other nations/factions, but some.
I have been planning a "Northstrider might have a blood shadow" video[...]
Northstrider doesn't have a Blood Shadow, I'll give you that one for free.
Does the part of the Blackflame Empire they're in experience seasons?
Will there be bloopers the books? I hope there are bloopers
Is this series set in the Willverse?
Will there be Abidan/Vrosheer(idk how to spell it) side plot/references in the series, like in Cradle and Elder Empire?
I know most of these are unanswerable, but I wanna ask just in case
Yes
MAYBE (yes)
No
The first book is written mostly as though it’s not connected to the broader multiverse, but it is.
3. Will there be appearances in later books?
MAYBE
Have you bestowed upon this iteration a portion of your Will power?
Only a portion, lest I destroy everyone in it
4. where does this place chronologically in book order?
or is that mega spoiler?
It’s a spoiler, idk if it’s a mega spoiler yet. That depends on Future Will and whether he does or does not deviate from my plans.
Future Will loves to deviate. He’s a notorious deviant.
You dont have to answer, but is it on Fathom?
The descriptions of it in Reaper sound a lot like a reasonable setting for a large scale magic space adventure.
That seems like it would be a cool place to set a space series, for sure.
