Recent entries

Anonymous

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? 

Will Wight

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. 

Alex Alverez

Bro, Cathel is cool.

Will Wight

I do not understand that, and I'm going to move on. 

Jamie D. Woods

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?

Will Wight

(...class 1 fiends...?) Yes. (...has anyone ascended...?) No, after they were locked there, it was locked down. No one has ascended from that iteration. 

Megan Kurlac

I love Shera, as a woman I resonated with her, what is the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?

Will Wight

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. 

Jess H

I'm glad Yerin is female.

Will Wight

 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. 

Coggleton

What rank is Bass.exe?

Will Wight

Probably no rank because he's a program, so there would be nothing for him to interact with now. 

Sorry Not Sorry

Does Elder Empire take place before, or after Cradle?

Will Wight

We get that question a lot; and I'm still not going to answer it. 

Nick Fuller

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? 

Will Wight

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. 

Patrick Cannon

What's not clear about pirates vs ninjas...?

Will Wight

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. 

 

Charles Shumway

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?

Will Wight

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. 

Jamie D. Woods

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.

Will Wight

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. 

JoeCool101

Do you think that you may be making new content for Traveller's Gate in the near future, or do you think you may do something new?

Will Wight

So I'm going to do something new first, because it has been 6 years since I've written a new book. The new thing was Cradle, and I love writing new stories, and I don't do it very often. So I like it, I want to do it, I will now do it. So I'm going to do a new thing next, and then after that, ....probably the next thing is going to be Traveller's Blade; but I can't guarantee that, but probably, but who knows?; but yeah. 

Vincent

About what level of Cradle advancement would various travelers be at? The obvious examples would be the incarnations Alin, Zakarath, and Simon.

Will Wight

Uh, again. Mapping other magic systems onto Cradle advancement system is a little harder than it sounds, because Cradle advancement system is relative to itself. So, you don't map them exactly; but in general they'd be about gold level, and then, would Simon or the higher level incarnations would be like Underlord level. So... They would just get absolutely trashed in Cradle, where as then the, so the, but they can do other things right. So it's a more flexible magic system, so you have things like ragnarus things being able to curse people, or give them commands, or having stuff that Cradle would have to do manually they can do kind of automatically. 

David R

What was the reasoning/thought process for making the Valinhall blades so large and unwieldy? Was it to force the Valinhall Traveller's to use their gifts?

Will Wight

Alright, a couple of reasons. One is, large swords are cool. Second is, they have super strength, so they can. That's it. 

Dustin Campbell

Will this stream be rewatchable later today? 

Will Wight

Yes, when, not sure. Should be later today, soon as we end it should automatically upload to YouTube. Who knows. 

Jamie Woods

Will the Amazon books be updated with the new versions that have bloopers and extra scenes? 

Will Wight

Yes, they will. We will be updating those, however if you have the ebook on your device, you should know as anyone who has experience with these Kindle books should know, you have to kind of manually update the books. So, if you have the old version, it's gonna stick with the old version on your device unless you manually update, and sometimes even then it's kind of a headache, there's nothing we can do to force an update your device, so it's up to you. 

Ash

Has either of your siblings written a book?

Will Wight

The answer is, I think they probably will. You should keep an eye out for that. (Will and siblings laugh).

Garrub

Will have you played One Step From Eden? It's a MMBN roguelite. 

Will Wight

Yeah I have, and I was like, I didn't like it. 

Anonymous

You had said previously that Audible wasn't interested in rerecording Traveller's Gate, what changed?

Will Wight

Well, there's a lot of journey to that, a lot I can't really get into, story would take a long time; but the bottom line is, I always wanted to change it, and we ended up getting to the point where because Cradle was so popular I was like, we'll get more people interested in this, we wanted to do it, Travis wanted to do it. So, I wanted to do it the whole time. We ended up being able to rerecord it, it was one of those things where we really wanted the quality of Traveller's Gate to reflect the rest of the series, the rest of the books I mean. While Rebecca is busy making changes to my keyboard I can go ahead and tell you stories. So when we started off, I was reading the books myself, we were recording in a closet in my parents house. We had pinned a bunch of foam material and afghans and rugs and stuff to the walls in order to muffle the sound. We had bought our own equipment, we had a friend of ours who could do audio engineering, he came in and helped us out. We invested $2-3,000 into this, and that was a huuuge investment for us at the time. That was not easy, we were, that was a lot of book money. So we were going, yikes, we wanted an audiobook out there because, people want audiobooks. We want to record this, and we want to do as good of a job as we can, but we can't afford to do a really great, we can do the best job we can afford to do. So we did all that, and it was only because of you guys the fans sharing this with your friends, sharing it with your, recommending it, enjoying it, that we had enough money to do even that; and then we had the audiobooks out to people, and people enjoyed those, some people enjoyed the new books, obviously people really responded to Cradle. The more fan engagement we get, the more you guys are spreading the word, and this kind of thing, we are able to just do a better job. Without you guys we'd never be able to hire Travis; and so now Travis is part of the team, really he's the voice of Cradle, but more than that he's the voice of my books right now. I mean, Emily Woo Zeller did a fantastic job with the Shadow side of Elder Empire; but every other book is read by Travis. I think he is just, he does such an amazing job, with everybodies books, not just mine. With me in particular, I really think he does a fantastic job of bringing out my intentions for the text, how I want it to be delivered. I obviously write it with a certain delivery in mind, because that's just how I'm writing. He's just so great to work with, just a great guy. He delivers these things so we'll, that its just greater than the sum of its parts. I think Travis our audiobook narrator is, so great at this that I wanted to, take Traveller's Gate to the next level, and we really wanted it to happen. (...audio starts to cut out a bit...) We could go on about it for a long time, the reviews for House of Blades crossed 1000 this week, because we asked. We've never asked for reviews before, we don't ask for reviews. (A lot more dialogue is lost)(...) We don't want to ask for reviews, but on the other hand if I was a fan, I would want to know if reviews were deleted, and I would just go leave a review. Right? I would want to know. So we were going, people are going to want to know, but if we tell them it's going to be the same as asking for a review, so we realize, it took us a long time to draft out a... (...) We had a post about the reviews letting you know that they were down, and now we're over 1000. Also, this week, we heard from Audible that House of Blades was #8 on their most listened to books in fantasy, right? (Asking Rebecca off camera) For the week? Oh wow, for all of fiction? I thought it was, so yeah #8 in all of fiction, listened to this week was House of Blades. It's funny because there was a typo, they made a typo in the email where they sent it to us, where they said City of Blades was #8 and I was like, oh cool I'll let Robert Jackson Bennett know. That his book is at #8, but it was, it was House of Blades; and then we, look there's just so much stuff you guys, so I had to, just by the way this is the art that Rebecca got available and it's hanging behind me, it's going to be the new cover for the Travelling Gate collection. I love that art, (...) He was great to work with, he does great art and I think the quality shows through, and I think it's great, and it's like I'm thinking wow, I'm working with fans, right?; and then I think the trilogy cover is like, I love it so much. The detail on the dolls, right? He actually went through and drew the dolls appropriately. Some of them are dolls from the books, but a lot of them aren't, if you have a doll that you're looking for in the books it's up there in the shelves. So I love that, I think it's really cool. It's really neat, it's just neat to get to work with fans, to be able to work with Ari Ibarra so much, it's cool. 

ga557

What are your casting choices for all the main characters if we ever get a live action Cradle?

Will Wight

Animation; but if I had to do live action, Danny Devito, all the parts. 

EchoDoctor

Can you explain why Adriel looks like Idris Elba in my imagination?

Will Wight

I can not explain that, I can just say that Idris Elba is my casting choice for, Makiel. 

Rebecca

Idris Elba is my casting choice for like every role. 

Karthik

Was Lindon always intended to manifest a Void Icon? When was he originally slated to become a Sage, considering he'd have become a herald first?

Will Wight

Uhh, yeah, I had always intended him to manifest the Void Icon, yes, 100%. Yeah, that was planned a long time in advance, that's right around with where I talked about Eithan, in a previous series. The protagonist in that series had, it's prototype magic system had access to a Void Icon, and kind of an Order Icon. So, yeah. (Takes sip).