Reader Question Day #63 – all about DEMONSOULED, GHOST IN THE ASHES, and computer games
Gordon asks:
Couple of questions about a few characters who you have dropped or killed off and I missed it. What happened to Wesson, Gerald’s squire and Sir Nathan?
I can not wait for the final book. You have me hook line and sinker. Well done and a great read.
Thanks for the kind words about the books! I’m glad you liked them.
Concerning Sir Nathan, he did indeed sort of drop off the map. Officially, he died in his sleep between SOUL OF DRAGONS and SOUL OF SORCERY. Originally, in the outline for SOUL OF SORCERY, I had Adalar Greatheart come back as a point-of-view character to come home and bury his father, then get caught up in the Tervingi invasion and the Great Rising, and fall in love with Molly Cravenlock. However, that didn’t work for several reasons, mostly because upon consideration neither Molly nor Adalar would like each other very much, and it added another POV character to what was already a very complex book. So I decided to consolidate a bit. Originally, the Guardian of the Tervingi was a old man, and his apprentice was a young woman. So I flipped the roles, and made the Guardian into an old woman (Aegidia) and her apprentice into a young man (Riothamus), which then let Riothamus be Molly’s love interest. Unfortunately, in the process I never got around to addressing Sir Nathan.
As for Wesson, he became a knight in Lord Malden’s service, and won some lands in Mastaria for himself. He and Adalar are still friends, and Wesson appears briefly in SOUL OF SWORDS.
I think at some point I might do a short story where Adalar and Wesson come back to the Grim Marches to bury Sir Nathan and put his affairs in order. Of course, there will be complications. It’s fiction, so there are always complications, much like real life.
Several people write to ask:
When is SOUL OF SWORDS coming out?
June. I won’t say when in June, but unless I die or get gravely ill or something equally calamitous happens, the book is coming out in June.
Mark asks:
Were parts of Demonsouled inspired by Baldur’s Gate?
Oh, totally. Though the DEMONSOULED books went in quite a different direction than the BALDUR’S GATE computer game series. Writers occasionally talk about their influences, books they read as a child and so forth, but most of my influences came from the computer games of the 1980s and the early 1990s. The QUEST FOR GLORY series was a huge influence, as was ARTHUR: THE QUEST FOR EXCALIBUR (the very first computer RPG I ever played, using my uncle’s old Mac Classic), and two of the early LEGEND OF ZELDA games, specifically A LINK TO THE PAST and LINK’S AWAKENING, both of which, in my opinion, were classics. MASTER OF MAGIC, a combination of Civilization and Magic: The Gathering was another, and I loved that game – I still play it occasionally, 19 years later.
In fact, it was a computer game that got me into reading fiction. I hated reading fiction as a kid, mostly because the teachers invariably assigned books about plucky children and their heroic canine sidekicks, and I hated dogs, a side effect of having a paper route. I preferred books about astronomy, paleontology, geology, and archaeology, but only about ancient Egypt. Then I played BETRAYAL AT KRONDOR, and found the world so fascinating that I started reading the Midkemia novels, and have been reading fiction regularly ever since.
Stefanie asks:
I finished Ghost in the Forge quite a bit ago, and I was wondering what the next book would be.
I’m going to start writing GHOST IN THE ASHES in June, as soon as SOUL OF SWORDS is done. Here are some details on what Caina will do in GHOST IN THE ASHES:
https://www.jonathanmoeller.com/writer/?p=3696
-JM