More generally I’m inspired by the fantasy serial standalones of my youth like Steven Brust’s Jhereg, Steve Perry’s Matador series, and Jim Butcher’s Dresden files.ĭo you have any other favourite authors and books? I am most directly inspired in this series by Robert Kirkman’s Invincible (yes, I know, not a book). What authors and books inspire your writing? We all have certain books that inspire us. I think if I had every little detail planned beforehand the writing would be boring! I do come up with worldbuilding on the spur of the moment. I’m not sure the readers care but I have meticulous notes for all of that sort of thing. If there’s some bad guy we don’t hear from for two days, I need to have an idea why they were out of action for that time or what they were doing. I’m definitely the sort of writer who needs a written timeline somewhere so I can track all the character movements. I also sometimes come up with clever things while writing and adjust the outline as needed. Like pretty much every planner, some parts of my outlines are less detailed than others, and I have things I have to figure out in the moment. Occasionally I eat or drink something.Īre you a planner or pantser? Or somewhere in between? How does this affect planning characters, worldbuilding etc…? On a weekend or day off I do less of the day job and more of those other things. For the next 12 hours or so I alternate work (my day job) with surfing the web, discord, twitter, and writing. Not as much as I should! I get to my desk around 7.

He picked from there and I couldn’t be happier! I had a lot more input into the cover of book 3, mostly because I had a specific idea for how I wanted that one to look.ĭo you have a writing routine? If so, what does a typical day entail for you? I gave my cover artist, Chris McGrath, a character description and a few options for the background. How much input did you have on the cover design?

Twitter: to The Fantasy Review, and thank you for agreeing to this interview! To start this off, can you describe your book in 3 words? He spends far too much time on twitter, discord, and instagram, whispering to himself that scrolling through one more set of pictures of expensive watches will somehow further his writing career. By night he retreats to his secret lair and fights the deconstruction of the superhero genre by writing stories where the heroes are trying to do the right thing and, for the most part, succeed.

Wistful Ascending by J.C.M. Berne