What is the next type of series you are planning to work on?
Alright, so I've teased this, and I've talked about it. I'll tell you now, the next thing I'm planning on working on is space fantasy. So, it's not exactly scifi, it's a very soft sci-fi it's kind of a wizards in space with dragons. So you've got star ships, you've got wands, you've got dragons hatching from stars. Fun stuff.
Other than regular flavor, what is you favorite type of Oreo?
Birthday Cake. It's funny because I try all these different kinds of Oreos, and I really enjoy that and it's really fun; but you always come back to the double stuf is the best. Then I think of the fancy ones, Birthday Cake man. It's great.
Is the MFA program at the UCF worth enrolling in?
It was worth it for me, but I can't say it would be worth it for everybody. As I've said before, it was worth it for me because it was worth reading, being forced to write, read other people's writing. Learn how to give and receive feedback. All that kind of thing. Become familiar with myself as a writer; but everything you learn from an MFA program you can learn from, on your own, or from a writers group. From getting mentors. You can do that online for free, if you're going to, but I wouldn't have, I dont have the discipline for that. I wouldn't have done it. The MFA made me do it, so it was worth it for me.
What's your favorite game in the Legend of Zelda franchise?
Breath of the Wild, no question. I think Breath of the Wild is just amazing, what an awesome step forward for the franchise and for open world games in general. I like a lot of the other, I mean Link's Awakening is really good, a Link to the Past. I know Ocarina of Time was everybody's big, and it's a great game, but it was one of those things where I played it as a kid and it didn't make that much of an impact on me. So... It's, it's a good game, but it wasn't anything that informed me. (Takes sip.)
How do you name your characters?
Uh, I've said this before, kind of any way. All the ways. There's only really a couple of rules I go with, one is if you want people to, who are named by a certain culture to have something in common with other people named by that culture, and then other ways are, you don't want main characters with rhyming names or names that start with the same letter; because that becomes confusing. So, you kind of, your main character names have to be distinct. Dresden Files is my big example of that, we have Murphy, Michael, Mouse, all these people who begin with M, and it's like, it looks confusing on the page. So it's not terrible, it's just one of those things where, avoid those things if you can.
Yeah, Elden Ring names.
Character names shouldn't start with the same letter? Someone tell Elden Ring.
Oh yeah, Elden Ring, that's another good, Elden Ring yeah. All the Elden Ring, Godfried, Godrick, Godwhatever, it's okay sure. Godwin, Godbolt.
How do you start with conceptualizing a new series or world, and how do you transition that into a story or series?
Alright so I start with some kind of, some kind of concept, that is just the seed for whatever I think is interesting about that idea. Then I build out from there, and then I have to link it to a plotline and characters and all that kind of stuff. Whatever my initial thought process is, so for Cradle I was going look I want to do a cultivation series, that is more designed for western audiences; because a lot of the cultivation series that are written in China and Japan and Korea, they assume a level of cultural familiarity that a lot of people here don't have, and they're translated. So I was trying to go, okay let's use English words, let's use western tropes, and let's try to write it for a western audience. So I take those things and I go, what do I want to see?; and then I go out from there. That's generally how I start; but it goes back and forth. Everything I figure out about the world informs the characters, everything I figure out about the characters informs the plot, everything I figure out about the plot informs the world. So on and so forth.
How fast does Plasma Bolts?
How fast does Plasma Bolt?(presumably?) Quickly, anytime anything happens, he's just ready to bolt. Plasma is just out of there.
When does Lindon show up in Plasma Bolts?
Um, 6.
Does your upcoming series Plasma Bolts have plasma swords?
Yes.
People always ask who is Will Wight, but we want to know how is Will Wight? :D How are you doing?
Aw, 'how are you doing?' I'm doing alright, not too bad. One of the things that we're continually trying to figure out is how I take time off better. So I give myself time off, but it's hard to kind of turn my brain off. So I've been trying to figure out how do I channel that into projects that make me restore...
Turn Will off and on again. That might reset him.
(...) Yeah, yeah that's actually what I'm talking about, how do I turn myself off and on again and rest. I know you were joking about the lag.
Why and how did you decide to try doing such an ambitious work of two parallel trilogies? Hats off to you, structurally it must have been difficult, how did you figure it out?
Brute force, I figured it out by brute force. Doing two parallel trilogies, I always really liked that idea. Oh actually wait I'm going to back up. (...) Structurally it's difficult for Elder Empire, yes it was very difficult. I figured it out kind of one step at a time. It was hard to, hard to do. Something that was just, I had to do it, I had a great time doing it, I don't recommend it. (...dialogue lost to lag...) The flashback storylines were major storylines. (...more lost...) I then had to get the flashback storylines to work complimentary with the main storylines.
Bro, Cathel is cool.
I do not understand that, and I'm going to move on.
I love Shera, as a woman I resonated with her, what is the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
It's fan response, it's reviewer response. People have certain ideas about what it means to be writing in a characters head based on their gender. So in general, speaking very candidly, when you are a man writing in the head of a woman, really even if you're a woman writing a woman character, it is, people have these assumptions that what you're doing is a statement on women in general. Where as when you do a male character, it's not taken that way. So, when you, so I can write a male character doing anything, and it isn't taken as a judgement or a statement on who men are, but whatever I have a woman do it is taken as, it can be taken as a statement on what women are like or what I think about women. So that is really the hardest thing, it's not really writing the characters, so there's a lot of good reasons for that, I'm really not attacking that, it's just what it is. So because of that I have to keep in mind what people are going to expect or how they're going to read this. I don't really have to do that for male characters, so that's the hardest part. That's the, I have to go, however the way I prefer to write characters is, and the way that I usually do is I write them just as the people that they are in the scenario, and then I kind of assign gender later. So I sort of have them in their role and their personality and their backstory, and then I figure out who they are as a human. So because of that, gender kind of comes along later in the process. So I write them the same, I write them the exact same ways, the same process. It doesnt change. Except that then, I have to determine, afterwards, okay is this, what can I? Am I allowed to do this? Are people going to take this, is this going to offend any body? Is this something that is going to, is there a problem here? You know, I've got to check, right? A lot of my beta readers are women, so I get to have that checked for me, they get to tell me what they think about it. That is primarily how I write characters, the same. That is how I would prefer to do it the entire time, I would prefer to write them exactly the same way. You have to keep reader expectations in mind, I certainly don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. That's the hardest thing, in terms of how you'd write people, look, you write people as authentically as you can. theres this idea that there's a gendered voice in a pov, and I have not found that to be true. It all comes down to how authentically you are writing the character, and if you're writing the character authentically then I think it comes across as an authentic voice and if you are not then I think it doesn't. There you go.
I'm glad Yerin is female.
Okay so Yerin is one of those characters that I had as a woman from the beginning, and the reason by that is, she is the character who is the protagonist, who would be protagonist if Lindon wasn't around. She's got the sword powers, she's got the blood powers, main characters in these cultivation stories always have either sword, darkness, blood or fire powers or often all of them. Therefore Lindon got the fire and darkness and magic powers, and she got the sword and blood powers. So, I had her just be the, she's kind of the protagonist, and that's why she's the one who wants to fight all the time. Thats the typical cultivation protagonist. So her being gender flipped was intentional on my part, because she's the other side of the coin. Of a normal cultivation protagonist. Thats the backstory of Yerin's design there.
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.
Does Elder Empire take place before, or after Cradle?
We get that question a lot; and I'm still not going to answer it.
What rank is Bass.exe?
Probably no rank because he's a program, so there would be nothing for him to interact with now.
You said it on some podcast that it was twice as many books from more than double the amount of work. If you could do the series over again, would you approach it differently?
Yeah, so one thing I would do is, we think the main deal with Elder Empire is, the concept is not super clear. So, I would clarify that. I think one thing that hurts that is, the titles, which I think are super fun, but they don't communicate the concept really that well; and they're hard to remember. So, it's, there's a lot of presentation things that we would change, I probably would, the thing is I probably wouldn't do, I would probably do a different concept; but it's hard to say that because I'm glad I did it, once, it was cool, it was a good experience. I grew as a writer, I learned a lot. Now I would do that, but I would only do that now with the benefit of hind sight, so if I really went back in time I would probably do the same thing. So... It's really the dual book structure thats not clear.
What's not clear about pirates vs ninjas...?
It's the dual novel structure that's not clear, why is it two novels? What is the structure, what are the flash backs? It's not clear. So I would clarify that more; but I did say before it is twice as many books for more than double the amount of work, yeah it, it look. Writing two books would be easier than writing two books in parallel; because two books in parallel you have to be extremely clear and exacting on where everything is at each time. Plus, they both have to be structured in relation to one another and also independently. So they have to work on a structural level, as themselves, and in relation to the other story. As you can imagine, that's hard; because you have to have characters, both characters pushing their story line forward in a way that interacts with the other, but in a way that's also satisfying on its own. It's very very difficult to do. So, that was a challenge that I took on. Some people have in the past been like, 'ah, yeah, you did that so you could get two pieces of income, for essentially the same book.' Uh, no. That, that's kind of the opposite of what happened; and it is really, I would have made way more money had I just written six books 1 2 3 4 5 6, instead of two at a time. So yeah. It would have been way easier.
What would happen if a person who had two Territories pulled on both hard enough to incarnate at the exact same time, would they die a gruesome death, or would the territories be linked? Also how does someone ascend from this world?
Would they die a gruesome death? Probably. Would the two Territories be linked? No, they would not get linked, they would, they might become an incarnation of both, that would be a weirdo hybrid thing, that could happen; but most likely they would just die. How does one ascend from this world? It's in between Territories, so Territory, obviously spacial travel, there's a lot of weird spacial stuff happening in Amalgam, which is the Traveller's Gate world. So there are a lot of ways where you could go from a Territory and be like a back way out, where you would get lost between worlds. That's the kind of thing where you would do, it's less ascending like it is in Cradle in terms of you have transcended this plane of existence, more or getting lost and stumbling out. In terms of if you were to ascend from Amalgam, in terms of becoming that great, you would basically just have to become the greatest Traveller of all time.
Are the Travellers comparable to the Sages of Cradle? They both can bend reality to their Will, open gates, portals and pocket worlds, both can become stronger by exercising their Will power.
Jamie D. Woods, which I'm going to assume is James Woods the actor, (...), Sage is more equivalent to like, the Founder of a Territory. So, Simon of course being the honorary Founder of Valinhall, but not the real one, Valin being the real Founder of Valinhall, but not like someone who is fully in control of their powers. If Valin had been able to create Valinhall and control it completely, he would have been like a Sage. That would have been like where he's at; but because he can't, because he was sort of using material that was already there, and was kind of a, they had similar abilities but not as well controlled.
Qirani shifted her goggles from her eyes to her forehead and leaned back from the engine. Fire aspect Remnants burned inside the metallic chamber that was bigger than her entire house. She could see the spirits through the viewpoints pursuing their strange Remnant tasks. Even with heat and dampening scripts it was a sauna in here. Though not nearly as relaxing as the actual saunas she visited on her occasional holidays. Without her goggles she could get unfiltered looks at the engine’s control panel. It seemed fine. She'd welded two metal plates together and the control script was whole again. She gave it long eye making sure the light stayed steady.
When she was certain that the script was functional she sighed in relief and gathered up her tools. Her personal bound spirit was contained in a tank on her back. Burning Swan was a natural fire spirit she’d raised for years. And she could channel his energies for welding or, theoretically for combat. She hadn’t seen any duels since graduating the Academy and she didn’t expect she ever would again. Her grades in the arena had been adequate at best.
Her supervisor, a pudgy woman named Torkle, slammed the door open in an enthusiastic burst and practically danced down the stairs. She had a massive cloud of gray hair and a pair of smaller spirit tanks strapped to her forearms instead of a large one on her back.
“Oh my darling, my favorite how are you doing this fine evening?" Torkle sang. She did a pirouette and finished her spin with a flourish as she reached Qirani. Qirani smiled in spite of herself. Today she had planned to duck her supervisor and get home on time for once but Torkle’s enthusiasm was infectious.
“Not so bad” Qirani admitted “Finished sooner than I thought and we didn’t have any further breaches.” Torkle gasped in amazement, raising her hands to her lips. “You’re a genius and a savant! Without you we would be ashes in a crater.”
If Torkle saw someone lace up their boots she would exclaim that no one had ever tied such a perfect knot. When Qirani had finished her hundredth job with the company Torkle had commissioned a light sculpture of the triumphant moment. The job had been the inspection of rivets in a sewer runoff pipe and it had taken fifteen minutes. Still Qirani’s cynicism melted before Torkle’s positivity like ice under the sun “Nothing that bad, maybe a few burns.”
“Burns!” Torkle fluddered her collar as though overcome by the heat though she had only been in the engine room for a few seconds. “Theres nothing worse than the heat. To me you stave off doom. You’ll have dinner with our family tonight won’t you? I’ll take no for an answer but I won’t be happy about it.”
Qirani considered the offer instead of rejecting it out of hand like she usually did. A little money saved was a little closer to the vacation of her dreams. A local travel agency had been promoting a tour of the exotic Ashwind continent home of the dragons. She’d always wanted to see the place and since the tour made use of existing portal networks they could keep travel times down to only a month’s journey either way. Any use of portals skyrocketed the price since those were the workings of a Sage. Of course there was the cost of missing several months of work. But steadily she inched toward her dream.
She was about to accept Torkle’s offer when Burning Swan whispered in her mind. "Enemy" the spirit whispered. Burning Swan didn’t speak in actual words but in complex impressions passed through their bond. Suddenly the familiar clanks and hisses of the engine room sounded ominous and the shadows in the corners deepened. Qirani extended her spiritual sense but felt no one other than herself and Torkle. The supervisor frowned noticing her distress.
“Oh my, what’s wrong? You didn’t forget something did you? I left my spare wrist strap here last week and wouldn’t you know it that was the very day that my first one broke. I had just bought it too and it was a nicer one than I usually
She continued prattling but Qirani was paying more attention to her bond spirit. "Enemy?" she asked. The simpler the message the more clearly the spirit would understand. Burning Swan’s mental impression was firm."Enemy." His thoughts focused on Torkle. Qirani wondered if she should take Swan to a Soulsmith. Maybe a drudge could figure out where his senses had gone wrong. Torkle was harmless in every sense of the word. Not only had she once wept when she accidentally shut the door on a lizard’s tail but even if she did go mad and suddenly attack she wouldn’t be much of an opponent. Qirani wasn’t a fighter but she had still been forged through years of hard work. Torkle was soft and frail and much older.
The supervisor had one bond spirit of life and one of dreams which she used to monitor and coordinate her workers. Qirani was in more danger from burning her skin on an overheated bolt. Even so she decided to play it cautious. Just in case. “Torkle? You haven’t had any strange dreams have you?” Only days ago after the sky had turned black and the world had panicked one eyed leaves had drifted throughout the city and whispered reassurance. The voice of Emriss Silentborn the Monarch, spoke to the citizens directly and told them they were safe, protected.
Everyone Qirani knew had gotten the same message. Probably everyone on the continent had. But the Monarch had left a warning as well to remain on guard in their dreams. If they met a stranger there who asked to enter their minds they should deny him. That had been strange, of course but it was the warning of a Monarch. Torkle gasped when Qirani asked about her dreams. “Oh I almost forgot to tell you, I have had the best sleep of my life lately. I have this tea that you drink before bed and Emriss stake my lips now if I know what they put into it but the second I close my eyes I drift right off.
She kept chittering but she didn’t say anything about meeting a stranger in her sleep, Qirani didn’t hear anything wrong. A wary voice came to her again. "Look!" Burning Swan commanded. Qirani’s senses shifted somehow in a strange direction that she didn’t have the words for. She opened her Copper's sight and looked at the world but only a little. She extended her perceptions halfway too. This felt like Burning Swan had forcibly made her open an eye in her spirit halfway. The sensation was hazy and frustrating even uncomfortable but after only a moment Qirani saw something. A glimmer of white light hovering behind Torkle’s head. like a halo or perhaps a crown.
Qirani’s breath died and for a moment she couldn’t even speak. Then she bolted for the exit. She took the metal stairs two at a time leaving Torkle sputtering in confusion behind her. Qirani dashed down the metal catwalk reaching out her perception for a script on the wall ahead of her, the emergency alarm. Qirani triggered it with a flow of madra as she flew out of the room slamming the heavy door after her. She panted as she leaned against it. Through the thick glass of the round porthole at the center she saw Torkle heaving her way up the stairs. The enthusiastic energy that had filled the supervisor earlier had wiltered leaving a heavy weight of disappointment that hung visibly on her.
Her muffled voice came through the door. “Qirani why, this isn’t funny!?”
Tears filled Qirani’s eyes. She didn’t quite know what to do. She had heard the rumors of what happened to people wearing that crown, the legends really. But Torkle seemed fine. She didn’t know what to do but that was all right. She didn’t have to know. Security arrived a moment later, wearing thick tanks on their back and their limbs covered by the energy of their bound spirits. They strode up to Qirani as she stammered out her story.
“Torkle! She! My supervisor! Crown! I saw it! My spirit warned me!” Enemies, Burning Swan said. And this time Qirani heard the distinct tones of despair. Dreading what she would see she once again half opened her spiritual senses as Swan had shown her. Both guards had a faint white ring floating behind their heads. She backed up against the wall as the alarm died and the door slid open. A panting Torkle made it through turning to glare at Qirani.
“What has gotten into you? If you don’t want to have dinner with us I’m not going to force you. Is it my cooking?” Torkle still seemed normal but disturbingly so. Qirani glanced down the hallway toward the exit. She would never make it not with security here. You didnt get to be a company guard by only getting mediocre grades in your arena classes. Torkle knelt at her side and gave her a kindly smile. “Poor thing you're so frightened? What do you think is going to happen to you?”
Qirani shivered and didn’t answer. “Come on then, shoo boys and leave her alone. Let’s talk in my office my sweet girl.”
Torkle led Qirani down the hallway but at the first corner they rounded Qirani shrieked. There was a body lying in blood soaked carpet. He wore a tank on his back and a security uniform. But without seeing his face she didn’t recognize him. The first guard strode over the body the second stopped at the sound of her shriek and Torkle turned with a frown. She was standing with one foot casually braced on the mans skull. Are you still scared? You’re safe with me Qirani I swear.
“Did you kill him?” Qiranis accusatory finger trembled. Torkle looked around blankly. “Who?” “Him right there! You’re standing on his head!” Torkle looked all the way around the hallway until her expression softened. “Oh dear. Oh dear. You need that vacation more than I realized. Stress can get to all of us sweet girl.” With a dawning horror, Qirani realized that this wasn’t an act. Torkle really couldn’t see the man’s body "enemy" Burning Swan insisted.
Qirani followed Torkle to her office and sat on a plush chair. The place was so ordinary and familiar that it was easy to forget anything was wrong. Torkle chattered as she brewed tea while Qirani remained silent. The supervisor poured two cups and slid one over on a saucer. "Take a drink and relax you poor thing. I didn’t mean to work you so hard.”
Qirani took it on reflex. She had tea with Torkle hundreds of times. Before she thought about it she had already taken her first sip. Someone hammered on the office door. Torkle didn’t seem surprised. “Could you get that for me, dear?”
Qirani had her hand on the door, but Burning Swan was vibrating in its case trying to extend fiery wings. "Danger!" She removed her hand. “Why don’t you get it?” “It has to be you.” Torkle sipped from her own tea and smiled. “Go on my girl." A man’s voice came from outside, regal and assured. “Let me in Qirani and I will explain everything.”
She stumbled back from the door and looked from her tea to her supervisor. “You brought me into a dream” The steel container strapped to Torkle’s left wrist was open and there was no shimmering purple light coming from inside. Her Dream Remnant was missing. She had used a technique or an elixir in the tea, or both. Qirani looked at the window which was made of the same thick barely transparent glass as most in this place. She wasn’t strong enough to break her way through.
But she could melt it. "Swan, please?" With a quick flick of madra she released a panel on the side of her spirit tank. A wing of flame madra emerged and plunged into the glass which began to glow red hot. Torkle leaned back so fast she spilled her tea. “Really now, you’re going to dry out my skin” Qirani’s own skin was singed by the time she melted enough glass and she wasn’t even sure that going out a different way would help her escape. How much of this was a dream and how much was real?
She had to try something. She almost leaped through but the red hot glass around the hole made her hesitate. As did the voice from the door. “There’s no risk to you,” the stranger said. “Life is far safer for my friends than my enemies.” If Qirani hadn’t been warned she might have opened the door already. But she knew who the voice belonged to, the Silent King..
She gritted her teeth and prepared to plunge through the hole in the glass to the desolate and metal and concrete streets outside. It was late enough that no one was nearby and she wasn’t sure if that was a curse or a blessing. The burning glass was a threat one she could risk. She snapped her goggles over her eyes and pulled up the collar of her thick fire resistant work uniform. Then she screamed as a face floated out of the shadows from the window a face but not a human one.
It was like a floating head with pebbly flesh such a dark purple as to be almost black. One giant eye took up most of its face and its mouth was stretched into a strange almost smile with an expression she couldn’t read. It had two boneless arms that undulated slowly. "I have come to pull you from the abyss of silence" the spirit whispered "To free you from the chains that bind your mind and restore you to the waking world."
Then as though if it had suddenly remembered something it added "And don’t be afraid" Qirani commanded Burning Swan to attack but its fiery wing shivered and retreated. "Not enemy", the spirit told her, "and strong"
There came a crash from behind Torkle’s desk. The supervisor had hurled her teacup, part of a set she’d inherited from her mother to the ground. Where it shattered. She glared furiously at the one eye spirit with teeth bared.
“Get out” Torkle shrieked “I’ll claw out your soul!” The dark, floating spirit giggled. "That would be impressive." The Silent King’s voice from the door was amused. “Intruders? How bold.”
A force slammed into the door shaking the room. Qirani hesitated only another instant before she reached out to the strange spirit tendril. If this was an elaborate trick by the Dreadgod to get her to walk outside it was working. The spirit pulled her out through the glass coming within an inch of searing her flesh off. But Qirani didn’t land on the street outside Torkle’s office. She was back in the engine room standing before a welded steel panel. Had she fallen asleep after finishing her job? How would that be possible? The dark spirit still floated before her, chuckling in an unnerving voice.
"Walk with me, unless you wish to see the void of death." “Who are you?” she demanded “What’s going on?” "You’ll see "it said "And you can call me Dross."
