I Want to Write a Magic System that Feels Like an Anxiety Disorder: Erin M. Evans on Epic Fantasy

If you've ever wondered about how to create a world, the thought process that goes into getting all the moving pieces of an epic fantasy together, and how to create your own unique world, Erin M. Evans is a writer to listen to. 

Stacy and Erin discussed the writing process, how she got published, writing a murder mystery in an epic fantasy setting, writing shared-world fantasy, working at Wizards of the Coast, and more.

Erin M. Evans is the author of the Books of the Usurper series, beginning with Empire of Exiles, and the award-winning Brimstone Angels Saga, set in the Forgotten Realms. She is a co-host of the podcast Writing about Dragons and Shit, and a cast member of the actualplay series, Dungeon Scrawlers. Erin lives in the Seattle area with her husband and sons.

Buy her books here: https://curiouscatbookshop.com/search?type=author&q=Evans%2C%20Erin%20M.

Find out more about Erin at https://erinmevans.com/.

Transcript

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So like for Empire of Exiles, I was like, I really want to write a mystery novel, except I really love writing secondary fantasy. So I want to do that. I want to write a magic system that feels like an anxiety disorder. And I kind of miss writing D &D people who make no sense. Like, here are these like bipedal dragon people with no tails for reason. It doesn't matter, right? So I was like, I'm just not going to strike. Because I had just sort of written a, I had a trunk novel that was like this very rigorous epic fantasy based on the bronze age collapse and I have spent a lot of time justifying all the things and I was like, you know what? There are people in this that are like octopus centaurs and I am not going to even think about how that happens because it's not the important thing! Welcome to the Curious Cat Bookshop podcast, the podcast of the independent bookstore of Winsted, Connecticut, creating a literary community in Northwest Connecticut, bringing our local authors to the world and the world to our community in Northwest Connecticut. Hi, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the Curious Cat Bookshop's podcast. I am Stacy Whitman. the owner of the Curious Cat Bookshop. and we are the independent bookstore of Winsted, Connecticut. We're building a literary community in the northwest corner of Connecticut. I just wanted to let everybody know if you're watching this in October of 2024, we've got Kitty Storytime coming up on the 26th at 11 a.m. It's a Saturday. The fun thing about Kitty Storytime is that we bring actual kittens to the store with the local rescue. You might see some of them co- co-starring with us tonight. I've got two of the foster kittens and their mom in my house right now. I'm fostering them. So the mama will be there and some of our new kittens will be there. So go to our website, which is curiouscatbookshop.com for more information on all of our events. And if you're watching this in the future, you can still go and look at the events tab and see what we've got coming up. So I'm so excited tonight because I am... Welcoming old friend and old coworker, Erin Evans to the podcast. She is an epic fantasy author. She's the author of the Books of the Usurper series, beginning with Empire of Exiles. My screen is doing, I can't see both. I'm like holding it off. And continuing with Relics of Ruin, which just came out this year, right? Yeah, spring. And you're also the award winning author of the Brinstone Angels Saga set in the Forgotten Realms. She's a cohost of the podcast, Writing About Dragons and Shit and a cast member. made me say, you made me curse. actual play series, Dungeon Scrawlers. Erin lives in the Seattle area with her husband and sons. Welcome Erin. Thank you. So. Let's get into our conversation with Erin. So it's been, don't know how many years since our time working together and you've done a few things since. It's one of those things, right, where start, it seems like it was just yesterday, and then you think about it, you're like, it can't be that long. Absolutely just yesterday. Yes. Yeah. So I... Yeah. you've been up to a lot since then so have I. so what have you been up to? tell us about your books and your work in general. i just summarize them but tell us more in detail. Well, so you and I worked together in the books department at Wizards of the Coast. I left there and I became a writer for them. So I wrote the Brimstone Angels Saga, which is a six book series about, it's about how your family becomes your family of origin, that transition space where you have to kind of redefine yourself as you become an adult and as your adult children leave. And it's also about fighting devils. and things. so I did that for quite a long time. And then I recently started writing the Bookseed Server series, which is my epic fantasy murder mystery series for Orbit, which is kind of I stopped, I stopped trying to think about what was the best thing for the market. I like, I'm just gonna put everything I like in one book. So it's a murder mystery. It's a secondary world fantasy. There's stuff in there because I thought it was cool. There's lots of history references. It's a lot about mental health and the way that we manage. One manages a mood disorder. Yeah. And it's a wild fantasy adventure about a kind of fragile nation trying to hold it together, knowing there's a great threat on the other side of this barrier they built themselves. So I'm very excited about that. I've also recently published a book with Titan for RuneScape. the massively multiplayer online game called the Gift of Guthix, which was a lot of fun. I didn't know very much about RuneScape. I actually didn't know pretty much anything about RuneScape when I started. So it was like a deep dive, lots and lots of lots of research. Very not loosely, not not based on point break. What's that? I said I don't know much about RuneScape either. It's a game, right? Right, it's a game and it's been around for like 20 years. I mean, it's been around for quite a long time. I think you and I just sort of missed the peak of it because I have a lot of friends who are slightly younger who are like, oh my God, I was obsessed with that middle school. I recently found out my brother-in-law was like quite into it and has recently started playing it again. So when he and my sister-in-law were visiting, I was like, hold up, I got something for you. I ran in the other room, I'm like, here, you will appreciate this. That kind of, that kind of reminds me that mirrors my experience of working for Wizards in the first place. And so let's back up because we didn't actually say where we work together, Wizards of the Coast. and when I first got a job at Wizards, it was right out of my graduate school in children's literature. And so all of my college friends who had played D & D the whole time we were in college and never invited me, they were all like, as similar. how did you get a job at Wizards? So yeah, that's what I'm curious like because I still have a mug, a Maryland mug that you gave me when we were co-workers. That's how I remember that you're from you're from Maryland or you live there. You know what? You're mixing me up with Susan. Susan's from Maryland. Susan gave me the I'm from Missouri. I could have sworn you were the one who gave me the Maryland mug, which would have been really weird if you'd never lived there. as I want to take credit for a kind gift, I'm not sure where I would have gotten it. I'm listening, Susan. Just, okay, total sidebar. Do you remember this swath where someone stole all the mugs off people's desks? No! lost a very cool mug with like an art deco lady on it that way. Someone like came around and stole the mugs that people had left on their desks. So I'm glad your Maryland mug avoided the mugger. I must have just taken it home. the whole point of my question was not to do with Maryland but how did you get a job at Wizards? like were you already into gaming and wanted to edit fantasy or how did it work for you? Yeah, I was like you. had never, I think I had played D &D once as an adult when a friend of my husband's was like, we're going to play a D &D game just like we did in the old days. It's going to be like nostalgia fun. And I was like, nobody ever asked me to play D &D, which is one those things I look back on. And I'm like, how did, how did that happen? Cause I loved fantasy. I was the kid drawing dragons in the back of the room. I was like, you know, working secretly working on my, my little teenage fantasy novel about a girl who was like way cool, but different. who could ride dragons that talked to her. And she was special, that kind of thing, you know, the book of our book of all of our little 14 year old hearts. But I moved out to Seattle, because my husband is a software developer. So obviously, we're going to go where his job takes us, because it's well rewarded by society. And I was working at a job where I did like after school science programs, I wrote the scripts and I performed and it was really not making me happy. So one day I kind of got on the, what I think was monster.com or whatever website was, was the thing. And I saw a listing for an assistant editor. So actually back up. The other thing I was doing was I had found a, internship with a small press locally, Per Aspera Press, and I applied. was like, I've already graduated, but I love books. This is what I want to do. I don't know what capacity I want to do it in, but I would love to. come find out more. So it was, that was a really great experience because I did it. We, got to learn to do lots of things, do some layout, do go through slash, do, you know, send out review copies. had to get printer quotes. I don't want to do that again, but I understand it, right? I don't recommend it. It's really complicated. And so I had that background, but obviously like it's an internship with a small press. I was fortunate to be able to do it, but it was not getting paid. I think by the end they were giving me like a little bit of a stipend, which was very generous considering it's not really saying you're into making a ton of money. So I was burning out on my day job and I saw the listing. I was like, whatever, I'll try it. I'll apply. I was very surprised, honestly, it was very surprised to get called in for an interview. I actually really remember it because it was my birthday. I had just come home from work and I like cut myself a piece of chocolate cake and I sat down to my phone ring and I'm like, I'm not answering this. And then it went to the answering machine because, because I'm not young in case you were curious. And I heard. Um, but our, our, our, eventual boss, our eventual boss, Phil Athans was like, Oh yeah. Can you come in? And I ran across the room and grabbed the phone. I was like, I actually do want this call. So yeah, so it turned out I did have enough experience and I think more importantly that there is something about going in and being enthusiastic at that shows because it is the kind of job that goes well with a lot of enthusiasm for books, for stories, for all the things that go along with them. So that's how I got there. Yeah, that's right. You came in after Peter left then. Yeah. I think we just talked about this on your own broadcast because I was hired by Peter and then he was gone within six months or a year and we were over in the new building, Gelatinous Cube as opposed to the Borg Yeah, I never saw the building before and I do remember Peter coming to visit once and everybody being like, he's wearing jeans. It's so weird. And I'm like, okay. I don't know this man. always more suit and i think i think i remember him wearing a little bolo tie most of the time anyway when you were at WotC did you edit Forgotten Realms? it's i mean i knew back then but i don't remember yeah I so I kind of came in because it was it was all a little shorthanded. So I became one of the Forgotten Realms editors because the line was so big There were three of us Remember that Pete, not Peter, that Phil worked on it too. Yeah. So Phil had a couple of, of, of authors and he was because he became the managing editor. So he just did not have time to do quite as much hands-on, but R.A. Salvatore stuck with Phil. I know Paul Kemp kept working with Phil and I feel like there was one other person. Susan J. Morris became the main editor. And then I was sort of picking up the smaller lines. I also did some of, I became the Eberron line editor when Mark left. And then I did also some of the. bought back and cleaned up for like Dragonlance because there was an offsite editor but then everything at the end of it had to be done by someone in house. And then lots of little things. I took care of the samples library. I collected everybody's cover copy. That kind of thing. But yeah, a little bit of everything. Somebody says, that's hilarious, he's so casual on his streams now. I think they've got somebody else in mind because Peter passed away a couple of years ago. Yeah, that would be a super different Peter. Yeah. Then, so I was laid off in 08 and I think you stayed on a little bit longer. Were you starting to write while you were an editor? Yeah, I wrote The Godcatcher while I was in That came out right before I was laid off in 2010. And that, or maybe right after. So how did the writing side of it start? you. What's that? Say that again. was, I think we've got a little bit of a delay. I was wondering how the writing part started. Were you like, their in-house thing, you know, do this? I think I was the last in-house person to get hired for that before they were like, this is messy. We don't want to do it. Yeah. So I think if I recall correctly, what happened was like I mentioned, Susan J Morris was the lead editor for Forgotten Realms and she was handling a series that was called Ed Greenwood Presents Waterdeep, which were standalone stories that Ed Greenwood had kind of an advisory hand in. And then she had done the first three books and there were going to be another three and she needed to do a limited call. some of the people she was going to pull weren't available. And so she came to me and she's like, listen, I need enough people to make this call worthwhile. Do you want to audition? And it was, you know, at the time, the feeling I got was this is mostly to pad out the call because as I'm sure you know, you need three books, you need to ask minimum five people because Someone's gonna be busy. Someone's gonna turn in a book that's not quite right. want, you want. They're going to turn in an outline that's like, I don't think that you know this world. The perils of tie-in. It's like, no, that's not how that works. No, you don't get to make that change. So yeah, so I put in an audition. Ed Greenwood loved it. And so that was how I got to write The Godcatcher. And again, if I recall correctly, because I worked there, they were concerned that this was like, maybe I was getting some favoritism. So she had to actually pull a couple more. just to be like, no, this is the one Ed likes best. This is is the one. So that was my first for Brimstone Angels. It was it was kind of a similar thing because at that point, things were starting to get shifted around and and lines were getting cut down. And so we weren't really sure who was going to edit all of the books, but we had a series we wanted to do, which at the time was called The Plane Touched. And so they were going to be four standalone novels, which were kind of based on these heritages, these races that are connected to planes in D &D. And so one of them was the tiefling book. I think we had a genasi book, we had the shader-kai book, and then Tiefling pretty brand new at the time. It had been around for a while, but it was just around when fourth edition had come out and they became like a main player character race option. And they had kind of gotten a little more sort of standardized. And part of the problem was we had a lot of pitches that just weren't quite hitting the tone because, know, obviously some people want to play Tieflings. They want to be like, I'm touched by evil and I'm such a bad boy. And we're like, we want something like a little more complicated, like something that's more like, Like not just here's the here's the obvious trope, but can you make this feel like people? And after reading several of these, I started getting an idea which was very loosely rooted in the D &D game we were playing at the time. And so after we got through another batch and we're like, this is not it. I pulled Susan into a room and I'm like, I'm going to pitch a book to you and you just have to let me say it. And if you don't like it, that's fine. And so I pitched her what eventually became Brimstone Angels. But She did like it. She's like, okay, I'm going to go talk to talk to them about starting up a contract because this is great. Then that sort of changed. decided they wanted those to sort of start series. So I changed a lot of things about the initial book so that Farideh was younger. This was like the beginning of her journey. And, and yeah, and then the rest was history. People liked it. I ended up doing six books. The last four were in hardcover, which was very exciting at the time. I got to be part of the Sundering Crisis Crossover series. Yeah that's I mean that's great and especially because like it makes me wonder did you ever really were you you said you had written some as a kid were you ever really thinking about writing for yourself before you had the opportunity to just be like Yeah, I definitely, it was, I wanted to be a writer first and then I realized I was also okay at editing and I would still say I'm probably better at writing than I am at editing at this point. But, and at that point in my life, I was still working on it, right? There's still figuring out, you know, how to craft things, how to kind of develop your voice, all these things. So I have said before, like, this was a really good experience in a lot of ways. Like I got to write books. I am proud of and that really connected with people, which is awesome. But also I had a situation where every year I wrote a book and I had a deadline and I had to figure things out. so, and, there was also this part where I, know, I, the way that tie in works, like you, get paid upfront a little bit. And so then you have to finish it or you have to give the money back. And so it was, it didn't let me get in my own head. way that I know that I have a tendency to do and I definitely had a tendency to do when I was in my early 30s but having that opportunity to really like hone my craft over those six, seven books is invaluable. was really happy to do it looking back. Also working in somebody else's world, it gives you a structure to work within. Does that feel like it was useful for you to learn your craft? Yeah, I think, so I've always said the thing about tie-in writing is it's like, if you're writing poetry, you can do things that are free verse, you know, that aren't constrained by the form. But when you choose something that has an established form, it's forcing, it forces your creativity to sort of work around it. So tie-in has a lot of what I call, I would call it movable pillars. There are things that are true because the thing you are working with wants it to be true. There are things that are like that. Like there's things like that because the game needs it like that and sometimes you're like this Was not what I would pick but now I need to work around it and whether that means don't go Don't even get me started on kender who can do magic. Hahaha!

Remember, I did DragonLance: 19:29

The New Adventures. yeah, the fans were not happy with Sindri. Some of those things like forever and ever, right? Still when people say demon when they should say devil, because this is very important in D &D that these are very different. I correct them, even though I feel like 5e is a lot less concerned with it. But it's just like, no, I got hammered about this. We're going to do it. But yeah, so so there is this. confession I have not played 5e yet. yeah? Well, you're just in time for... I'm in a Pathfinder game but whatever 6E is going to be with AI, don't even get me started on that either. about that. so like you have to figure out how to work around these things. the but which doesn't mean that you're not world building because I did do a lot of what I would call think of as like lower level world building. And then there are the things where you're sort of like tying the pillars together, right? For Brimstone Angels, like fourth edition had this big change where all of the tieflings are now descended, they're all devil born. And before it could be like all kinds of fiends. All kinds of evil outsiders, right? And this was a big deal and it was like it was like that because they wanted this to have a little more structure to it and it made sense in this other setting. So I spent a lot of Brimstone Angels coming up with reasons why that would be the case. And so that kind you can do that kind of thing and stuff like there were this this news new people the Dragonborn. There was not a lot of Dragonborn culture built out. Dragonborn was the one that was new. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. So I did a lot of building the Dragonborn culture, which is a lot of fun. I, you know, honestly, when I went into doing my own stuff, like more specifically, cause I had, you know, noodled on things. I thought, well, I've done world building stuff. This is fine. But what struck me was you don't have everything is a movable pillar. Everything can be changed. So I feel like, right. It's because I had just sort of learned to say I have to bounce off. So developing that gut instinct of I want this to be an immovable pillar, this thing I have to work around and trusting that it's okay, that can be the thing that we're sticking with was a weird adjustment. Because there's a point in the first thing I wrote after I did Brimstone A-Dolls, I looked around and I was like, something's not working. like, it could be anything. It could be everything. You can't go! well, you have to stick with the dragons being like this because marketing beat is dragons and that's how they work. So that was fun. Well, that leads us to our next question because in your own writing, I'm curious, are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you just start like Tolkien and just start writing the history of the world first before you ever come up with a character or what is the seed for you and and what is your process? I am bad at fitting into categories. I'm none of these things, but that's okay. My philosophy is truly, truly, truly, you should do it the way that gets the work done. And for me, what that usually looks like is I will kind of come up with a concept, is usually around a character, and I will need to write a little bit. I will need to write what I sometimes call a kernel scene. So like, okay, let's see, who are they and what do they do and what's happening, because that helps me understand like, where is this story gonna go? I tend to not come up with things where I'm like, here's the monolith of the idea, because they never feel full enough. So like for Empire of Exiles, I was like, I really wanna write a mystery novel, except I really love writing secondary fantasy. So I wanna do that. think that's perfect. It hit all my favorite things. So go ahead. I want to write a magic system that feels like an anxiety disorder. And I kind of miss writing D &D people who make no sense. Like, here are these bipedal dragon people with no tails for reasons. It doesn't matter, right? So I was like, I'm just not going to strike. Because I had just sort of written a... I had a trunk novel that was like this very rigorous epic fantasy based on the Bronze Age collapse. And I had spent a lot of time justifying all the things. And I was like, you know what? There are people in this that are like octopus centaurs, and I am not going to even think about how that happens because it's not the important thing. Well, yeah, and have you ever seen the first page of the Muppet movie script? It says, this is a world or I'm definitely paraphrasing. This is a world in which people will see frogs and bears driving cars, pigs walking into a bar, and it's just the way it is. No one is surprised. Worlds like that. You just develop the rules and you're like, that's it. Yeah. So it's like, okay, these are the people. And the thing I care about more is how do these people move in the world? How do the Ashtabari function if you want to just meet up at a restaurant? Well, restaurants are going to have to have special chairs if half the people, not even half the people, the chunk of the people have like tentacle legs. And if some restaurants don't, you know, that's not the one to go to, right? But there's something wrong with those people. So take it, and then there's this historical thing which is like kind of the twist. so the book's been out for a while and so I'm like, I shouldn't say, but this Lambert Simnel, like I just thought this was a very interesting event and I was like, okay, so I wanna like, none of these things alone are a story idea. You talking about the wall itself, the wall coming up? The wall? Why did I think of the wall? I think that the wall came later. I didn't know what you were talking about the Lambert. Lambert Simnel was this kid who the, like after the war of the roses, Yorkist sympathizers found him and were like, he looks like one of the princes in the tower. What if he is? He's one of the princes in the tower. I know the part point you're talking about. Yeah. And, and they like crowned him King of Ireland. And the thing that was really wild was they, that you hear a story like that, you're like that kid died. 100%. But he didn't. He got a job. He became like a servant and eventually was the King's falconer. And I'm like, that guy has a cool story. That is a really interesting story. Cause yeah. So, you know, there's this, this person, the Grave-spurned Princess, and everybody thinks they know what happened and. Like I just thought that was an interesting thing to go with. So again, like all of these are sort of partial ideas. So I'm kind of like folding them together. And so like, who's this person and how do they move through this story? I'll write like that kernel scene. Once I kind of have a sense of who the main players are, I will go through and start outlining. Sometimes I will kind of outline until I sort of hit a wall. Cause especially like for a book that's the first in a series. But sometimes I will get to the middle and be like, I don't know if I know these characters well enough to decide what happens at this point. So I'll kind of like start writing into it until I feel like I have a better sense of them and then finish the outline, which is not something I feel like I generally recommend to people, but it is a thing that I have noticed works. Well, I mean, sometimes people will outline and do exactly that even if they've outlined something because they've figured it out in the middle and they're like, that outline doesn't work anymore. Yeah, that is honestly most of my outline. So if you write tie-in fiction, you must do an outline. And you must finish the outline. can't be like, I'll figure it out when I get here. Because they're like, no, no, make sure you know an ending, even if it's not the one you use. And so my outlines would tend to take the form of almost like a stream of consciousness draft, because that was the best way for me to sort of get my way through the story. And yeah, every time it was like, get like, halfway, two thirds of way through and I'm like, yeah, no, the rest of this doesn't work anymore. you ever have any when you were writing or when you were editing any situations like I once in Dragonlance the New Adventures had three authors working in the same trilogy at once so one author on book one I mean of course you did too and that's not that's not the question so in book two that author killed the dog in book three that author working at the same time used the dog throughout the whole thing. my god No, because no, Ree just decided to, Ree Soesbee decided to kill the dog. She was so annoyed by that dog by the end of writing it. She's like, I did you a favor, Book 3. I did you a favor. And Dan Willis is like, but I wrote the dog in! There's a whole lot of like, did you ever have any situations like that where either you were working parallel or you had other authors working parallel? No. Okay, actually there was one thing I can think of, which was actually for Brimstone Angels. So when I was working on it, it's the story of Farideh who is a teenage tiefling who kind of accidentally makes a pack with a warlock, or not with a warlock, makes a warlock pack with a cambion, a half devil, both because she feels powerless and because he's very, very cute. And... When I started working on it, they said, hey, never winter, the MMO is coming out and we want to tie this book into it. And so I added some, I changed the story up. I added a villain who would be Rakhini, who was a succubus, who was the foulspawn prophet in the game. And so this would be sort of the story of how she, actually, I think originally, yeah, how she became a foulspawn prophet. But I had her sort of like manipulating this priest. whose name was Brother Anthus. what ended up happening was R.A. Salvatore also had a book coming out and he was kind of given these two characters to use in the background. And nobody told, showed him my outline or something. I don't know. He didn't really seem to know that they were in my book. So the draft came in and I think he killed Rohini. I'm not positive about that. But he just like, had written them very different than me. I was like, hey, this is a problem because this is my primary antagonist. What we ended up doing was I gave, and it ended up thematically working a lot better, was I was like, okay, what if Rohini has a sister? What if there's this other succubus, you know, we'll call her Arunika. Arunika is her sister. And Arunika is dead and she's come to find out what happened. And so Rohini can kill the... I actually might be mixing them up. I went through so many names trying to these guys, right? So now there's two... There's two succubuses. And so they're connected now between these two, but it doesn't require, you know, the two books to make significant changes. But there was a moment there where I was like, no, this was supposed to be so, like so... great, right? I'm going to get tied into this big game and this huge novel. And then it was like, no, I'm caught in the middle and I don't know how to fix it. So Bob was very gracious. I think it didn't end up being too much to do. He just had to change the name. So that was helpful. That's it's just when you're working on those kinds of schedules and having people have to work parallel, it is a lot to coordinate. Go ahead. I was gonna say, I remember there was like a map and they'd have like where everybody was writing and so you couldn't write over, you couldn't go in other people's areas so that this wouldn't happen too much. It was just the case of like the game that takes place in Neverwinter. So we need you all to write in Neverwinter. But there parts of the map I really wanted to go explore and it was like, there was always somebody else there, so. Ben Roe knows what he, we've got a comment from Ben Roe who said, Arunika became the sister who died in his book and Rohini is the one who had to stay alive because she's in the game. See readers sometimes will remember. They're very handy. Thank you. After decades of of editing various books, I'm like, I don't even remember which character is in which book anymore half the time. Yes, I do. But you remember getting yelled at about Sindri. That stinks. Those stay with ya! I have taken all my questions are out of order. So listeners, while you're, we only have like, well, we have a half hour left, but feel free to be asking questions in the, in the live stream chat. But let me find where my next question went because I've lost it. I am trying to remember. Were you in our Eberron game? Yes, yeah, I was in it at the very end. So we, of the non-gaming before working at WotC variety to explain to our listeners, so many of us working in, especially on the children's books, had never played D &D before. So one of our coworkers took it upon himself to run a game at work for us so that we would know what we were doing. We all played D &D. Because I've got pictures somewhere in a folder of our Eberron game. Like three pictures. labeled Eberron and I keep moving the folder around. Yeah, do you remember like, I feel like learning how to play the game really helped me to be a better editor of even if it was a completely different world to know how the game worked. What do you I'd agree. Yeah, I have I have definitely gotten much more into playing playing D &D and other role playing games too. So like I mentioned, I'm one of the cast members of a Twitch channel called Dungeon Scrawlers. I'm sometimes a player and sometimes a DM. Lately, I'm also I'm also co-hosting I co-host a co-writing show called Concentration Check. And then I've just started one of my co-host on, one of my co-hosts on Writing About Dragons and Shit Trevor Bettis, is we are doing Trevor and Erin play The Return of the Obra Dinn, which I have played and I adore. And so it's Trevor playing and me giving history facts and also reminding him, trying not to give him too many clues because I have played it already. it's a video game. Yeah, we're branching out a little into that stuff. But generally, you know, it's a channel that's mostly writers, and so we kind of try to put a lot of story emphasis on the things we do. But anyway, I do agree that learning the game makes a big difference because there's like, for up on both sides, because when you do that, you want to create a novel that stands alone is a good story is an interesting read that honors the game, right, but doesn't necessarily try to replicate what you do. You don't want those moments where you go, I can hear the dice rolling. Yes, exactly. When they do something and you're like, yes, they made their dodge action, right? Like this is not the same. But understanding the mechanics underneath it can kind of help you, if you're a writer, help you figure out like, what is it you need to describe? My favorite example has always been in Brimstone Angels, there's a point where this was fourth edition D &D, where certain creatures had abilities that would trigger once they were at half their hit points when they were bloodied. And I have this character Lorcan. So Lorcan had this ability where if he was bloodied, he could basically launch into the air and do some sort of area effect, like attack. And he was being attacked by a couple of ironies and these creatures called Hell Wasps, which are like fiendish giant wasps. It's like Beedrill, but if Beedrill was from Satan. But I was a Pokemon. See you have kids and I don't I They didn't they would it would wash over me their explanations That way you're like, I'm so happy you're happy about this. I'm not observing it. So I need him to, he's going to use this, he's going to escape and he's going to get away. And I did a bunch of research about how wasps hunt and it's actually they're very much by sight. So he has another ability where he can make himself look like a human, right? But he can't use that if he's bloodied. So I'm like, okay, so I'm going to have him do the bloodied thing to escape. then while he's going, he needs to do a healing surge and then he's going to land and change his appearance. And so then it's like, okay, well, how do we describe that? Because like, there's a certain amount of, you know, the hit points go up, the hit points go down that we understand with like, you drink a potion or you do a spell, but they've added this, they had added this mechanic where someone can do it for themselves. And so it's like, okay, well, he's gonna like pull his armor tighter. So it's pressing against the wound. He's gonna give himself a little pep talk. You know, he's gonna like, you know, make just check his wounds injuries and know where they're at, right, just to kind of give him a little bit more like confidence and like, you know, energy to go forward. And that's what that's going to look like. So being knowing what I would do in the game if I were playing this character or running this monster really. than sort of working backwards and being like, well, how do you describe what that is meant to be replicating? And I think that's the important part, because you're not trying to describe what you do in the game, you're trying to describe the thing it's standing in for. Representing exactly and I think that that is a really great way of describing like I always got frustrated with being a little bit too rule bound I guess is a word. Yeah. Because you want to be able to narrate whatever the story is and so for getting back to the whole idea of kender being able to have magic. Right. We had a reason a dragon gave it to him. Dragons could do magic. They can do all sorts of things. Why not? so people got upset about that but there was a reason in in world for it to happen and it's really more about telling a really cool story and having fun with it yeah and being able to like what you're talking about the actual physical experience of it yeah And that's too is like, I feel like this is an interesting thing because I think when you are telling a story, particularly in an IP that is for other people to tell stories in, there's always a little bit of tension of your your the way your story brushes their story, right? like you cared about it enough to give a reason that wasn't like whatever there's wizards now just deal with it. And to show the ramifications because if I remember correctly people were a little like that's suspicious and really like this isn't this isn't a normal kender thing. yeah In world they were like this is the weirdest thing ever and I think he's evil Right? But there's that piece where it's like, I know this detail and I care about this detail. And so my knee jerk reaction is no. So I'm thinking of, going back to your Books of the Usurper, so you've got this tangled murder mystery. You've got a deeper mystery behind the crime. You've got a little bit of a puppy love and all these wonderful complex characters who have their own reasons for doing things. You've got backstories that get revealed over time. It's just excellent storytelling. No spoilers because I haven't started a book two yet. I'm just saying to everybody who's listening, if you haven't read the series yet, definitely pick it up. at Curious Cat Bookshop. Absolutely. And I just lost my question. But so you're talking about how you kind of just, you start with the seed of things and you just kind of build and build. And I think that that really makes for a wonderfully complex story because you're not just starting with one thing where you have to complicate it as you go. So I'm wondering what I don't know if I have any question for you. on either writing process or how readers are responding to it or any. say this is one thing that I think works a lot for that style, like if we're starting, just kind of making it kind of complex from the go. I really love writing multiple points of view. And I really love it because it encourages you to put a lot of focus on relationships and shape the character because of not just who they tell themselves they are and who they tell the reader they are, but who they are in interacting with other people. So you get this, like there's a character in here, Tunuk, who is, I love him very much. He's also quite a fan favorite. Tunuk is a specialist of the Imperial Archive, which means he is an archivist. He takes care of a collection that is sort of bone and ivory, the bone vault, they call it. And the specialists have a kind of magic, which gives them an affinity with worked materials. So Tunuk can touch something made of bone and he can tell you things about like, like mineral content. He might be able to tell you where it's from based on that. He can kind of give you ages and be very specific about these things. He can't, you know, necessarily like say, well, this is what they were thinking when they were dying because it's not a person, it's just bone. And he's very grouchy about people thinking that he's like, this isn't, this isn't somebody, this is bone. or you know for it could be animal bone or things like that. So in the first book Tunuk is not a point of view character but I do think watching him interact with so the story begins with Quill who's a he's a he's a scrivener which is sort of like a magic legal clerk well he's not magical but he functions kind like a legal clerk. kind of also a cleric, right? It's got a religious structure. I definitely had a lot of fun with these sort of like non-government orders. Basically the Empire, most of the sort of services in the Empire function sort of like religious orders or guilds in a way. the Scriveners of Parem are basically the lawyers and the legal clerks. And they do use... like a monastic or priestly titling system to emphasize that. So he comes to facilitate the loan of these artifacts, which are connected to this coup. And while he's there, his best friend, who's a sweet cinnamon roll, kills a politician and injures some people and then says, those who sow deception must reap only death and cuts his own throat. And everybody's like, well, that was a very weird assassination. And Quill's like, he wouldn't do it. They're like, we literally watched him do it. He's like, he wouldn't do it. So he becomes kind of obsessed with figuring out what happened. The way that Tunuk interacts with Quill is very like, what are you doing here? And why are you what are how are you going to disrupt things? Well, because the politician that got stabbed is like Tunuk's kind of like his stepfather,ologians have like a polyamorous system. So this guy married in after Tunuk was born, and they never got along. But so it's complicated here, right? You see Tunuk be very prickly, but also very, like you can tell there's like a vulnerability there, I hope. But in the next book, he's a point of view character and you really get to crack him open and see why is he like this. But you can see him interact with the people he works with, you can see him interact with his friends, you can see him interact with talking about interacting with his parents. And we are slightly different to all of these people and all of those relationships define us, right? So having that multi point of view means that even for a character who isn't a point of view character in that book, Tunuk is not one note. He's not just the grouchy guy. is somebody with a lot more complexity just from seeing who he is within all of this network of relationships. And that is like my, don't, I, every time I've ever tried to write something with just one point of view, I slide into adding more because that tool is so fun to work with. And I feel like it helps make such a good character. Well, and I think that that's the thing that I love and what you've done, I don't know if you know, I was really into Robert Jordan in the nineties. really into Robert Jordan. But the thing that always drove me nuts was that there was a lot of one note to it. The women are always pulling their braids and, you know, men were staring at their braid between their breasts or, you know, things like that. Thank Multiple POVs annoy a lot of readers. And I think that that is why. Yeah. Because you get a lot of writers who don't play with the complexities and really let you see why people have different points of view. And you've got, you've got the perfect milieu to make people have completely different points of view because they're forced together because of this empire formation, like completely different nationalities who have to learn to get along with each other. Yeah. It's really fascinating and then you have a mystery on top of it. This is an, I, I had a friend do a thing where she said, this sounds, this is going to sound like me bigging myself up, but I really love it. She was talking about like, if people in our writing group were different composers, who would they be? And she said, Mozart once wrote a piece and whoever was looking at it said, people can't, the human ear can't. perceive all of these notes. And Mozart's like, I'm doing it anyway. And she's like, this is what your world building's like, because a normal person would stop, but you go, I'm gonna do it anyway. And I don't think I think because I think honestly, when you read my stuff, you should not try to like, memorize all of it, you should go through it the way you go through, you know, like just life, like sort of understanding the stuff around you as you go, but not necessarily. Yeah, it'll it'll fill in around you. I liked this idea. I've always loved this sort of fantasy setting where it's like, this is the, you know, the cosmopolitan city. This is where there's a little bit of everybody because the fantasy tradition of here is the border between these two nations and there is no, no cultural trade. There is no like blurry border. It's just boom and boom, monolith, monolith. It's like, that's not how people work. So in Samilla, Too often the way that I feel like fantasy sees it because you have to have these people are this kind of race and they have these personalities and this kind of people have this personality and never the twain shall meet and that's why the conflict is. I think people are way more complicated than that. just yeah, yeah, you're missing out on everything that's really cool about people in general. And what makes those, what makes those conflicts, you know, not simple and heartbreaking and interesting. And so yeah, wanted, so Samila is basically if you picture the Iberian Peninsula, if like, there was a catastrophe and, as many people from Europe and North Africa and Asia as who could get to Spain got there because there are these sort shape-changing creatures that cause the civilization collapse. put up a wall to block them made of salt and iron and dead Wizards because it was definitely going for a fey vibe there. And so now, okay, we're going to make a new empire here and figure out how to all live together. the thing is that that was 100 years ago. So there's nobody who lives in Simila now that's ever been on the other side of the salt. So it is the process of, you know, when you go somewhere new, right, you have this like generational trauma happening. You have this like, what are we gonna keep? What are we gonna hold on to? What is the story we're gonna tell about ourselves? I just finished a draft for the third book, which is gonna be Season of Sacrifice. We had to the title so many times. just like, I think it's that now. And one of the things. Do you have a... I don't know, I don't think so. I mean, maybe I forgot. Part of me is like, no, they want to look at it and make sure it's good. But I think I'm overreacting. Yeah, I actually don't remember when it's coming out. the like part of it is kind of finding out there's this story that you that they tell, you know, that that someone might tell of how this this went down. Like, how did did how did the the king of Kiraash like arrive in Samilla? And and like, what's you know, what's told here and what's told there? Like, These, the history is so much the story we tell about ourselves today, right? It's like, how do we sort of, how do we construct our identity within, with what we want to be, right? And so there is a little bit of like, how do you reconstruct it when this horrible thing happened? What do you hold on to? What do you let go of? What do other people pick up and go, that's really interesting, right? And what do you lose entirely because you just don't know? Yeah, like one of the things, this is in Relics of Ruin, it's not really a spoiler, but it comes out like, what is the religious culture of the Elosians? So Tanooks people. Well, Tanooks people, they lived in the mountains and the gods were connected to the mountaintops. They were locational deities. And so they left the mountains. Well, we don't have gods anymore. That's just how that is. And they're like, that's a very sad thing, but literally there's no point in trying to make it work because we, the mountains are way over there. Yeah, worship over there. Right? And so they like, we contextualize all of this, which also you have to, you can believe like, like, you might have these sort of religious shifts when you know, the world falls apart. Some people might root down and be like, this is it, we got to, we just got to do it harder. And some people will be like, you left us hanging, we're done with you. Things like there, I don't know if it, I don't know, in my, in my back, because I did make some brief notes, I do a little bit of back to the process question. I did a little bit of world building ahead of time. I defined all of these people and sort of like what, they all have sort of like bits of different real world historical cultures kind of mixed together so that they're their own thing. And there's one group, the Dato'ogu, who in the world before practiced human sacrifice. And so they come to Samilla and they're like, you can't do that anymore. Right. So now, okay, we have to change our traditions. How are we going to manage this? I think Quill makes a joke in Relics of Ruin about how if his mother thought she was getting grandchildren, she might literally strangle a horse like in the old days, which he's not allowed to do. instead, the Minsean like burn a paper horse instead. So like these sorts of adaptations, like what do you do when you can't do the thing or when suddenly you're in a place where the thing is like not cool? Yeah. We've got a question from our live stream chat, not screen. Ben asks, Erin, you've written tie-in for D &D and tie-in for RuneScape. What were the biggest differences in those two experiences in terms of working with those immovable pillars? Okay, so the biggest differences were, I honestly, the thing that's the biggest difference is for D &D, you know, it's been around a long time, longer than RuneScape, but I should say they both been around for a long time, but D &D even longer. And the materials are very widespread with lots of people working on them. So for a lot of things, there's some way to do that. RuneScape is narrower. has, it is, one kind of experience. So one of the most difficult things was I wrote about basically Wizards discovering how to do rune magic again and the foundation of this particular kingdom and then it's fall. And so the Wizards are doing magic. Well, in the game, a lot of the magic is either like crafting kind of stuff or it's like, I'm gonna do a blast and it's gonna be level one to four difficult or like intensity. And it's going to be one of these elements. And that's it, right? And so, you know, coming from D &D where it's like, you want to do a thing with magic, there's probably way to do it. Or, you know, like I have a scene where the main character, Ilma, and her friend are trapped outside of a city that's about to be attacked. And they're like, we have to get back inside the wall. And they won't open the gate because the front edge of the army is coming. So how do we get inside? Well, in D &D, they do pass wall, or they could do shape earth and lift themselves up, or they could fly or something. And none of these are available because the purpose of the magic is narrower. So I ended up using the magic in an un-game-approved way, but it was still within the storytelling, so that was OK. but you needed a storytelling way. I'm like, okay, you can do an air blast down and launch yourself up. That's gonna be a thing. I really have enjoyed seeing the RuneScape fans response to it, because while they are very good at finding things that are inconsistencies, they are generally happy finding them. D &D fans can sometimes get a little snarly. Yeah, you can't do that. My favorite was I had with a guy when the wizard who's like pitching this whole scheme of like, we're going to rediscover rune crafting. He's like, just imagine it. And he says, there'll be like runes of fire and runes of ice. And I did that out. There are no ice runes. I'll be clear. I did that on purpose. Like this guy is basically going off of like things he's read in books and he is. No, he's not. Yeah. He does not know what he's talking about. He is like, just got an idea and he is passionate about it. that might've been a little subtle because they're like, there's no ice rooms. But the lady loved is that the conversation immediately went, what if there were ice rooms? That was fun. That's so awesome. Any other questions from our live stream audience? I think there's a little bit of a delay. So I just want to make sure that if anyone has any last questions because we're almost out of time. While this is Gigi, she has been trying to open things and I don't know if you've been hearing her yell during the last thing that's why I picked her up because I was like, stop it. is big pretty eye. She has decided that anytime I'm at my desk talking to somebody on zoom that that is the time that she needs to sit right here. She's like, the camera's ready for me. I'm talking so I must be talking to her, right? Because I'm little alone, so who else would I be talking You But anyway, this has been such a delightful conversation and I'm just going to reiterate if you have not yet read Erin's books, here are two of them. We start with the mirror thing on so there's the third. Okay. I forgot to the mirror thing on so I'm having a hard time. Empire of Exiles is the first one. Relics of Ruin is the second. What's the third type? This is the RuneScape book, the gift of Goofix. Season of Sacrifice! Season of sacrifice. We do have a question, thank you. Two questions. You've said you died, like I said, there's a delay on these. You said you died pretty deep into lore. Do you think that's why your fans were so happy about your book? Oh yeah, I think that in general, like when you're doing tie-in, you have to risk, like I firmly believe you don't have to be a fan of the material, but you need to respect it and you'll be rewarded by really digging in and finding those fun little references. and treating things, like RuneScape for example is a game that's, It's very tongue in cheek. It's very lighthearted a lot of the time. And I wrote a fairly serious book. It's probably the most tragic thing I've ever written. But finding places to keep that kind of fun, lighthearted tone while at the same time, like, tailing a fairly serious story is pretty fun. there's, I mean, there's things like, there's a, there's like a cabbage god in it called like Brassica Prime, which I was told like you don't have to use. tell me that you also have a merchant who wails about his cabbages. Probably, right? I like make this reference to like a leafy forest god worshiped down by the verge. And, and, like, just as a little wink to it, which, you know, they were because when I asked, like, what is the deal with this? They're like, do you don't need to mention it? It's a joke. And I was like, well, but I think people like it. So I'm gonna try to slide it in there. And it's very rewarding when people recognize like, it's like you have a little shared joke. You're saying to them, got you. Yeah. And one more question. How much time did you spend on the research? on the research. for research. So just for every book, so much, so much right. That's, I feel like, I feel like for D &D, it was, it would be a lot because I would I would have stacks of books, I would be sending emails to my editor, was sending emails to Ed Greenwood, because I want to make sure I got things right. And what that I knew where I didn't have to worry about it, it was gonna be what it needed to be. For the for RuneScape, I mean, similar. lived with the Wiki, the RuneScape Wiki, both of them, because there's two kinds of RuneScape open. The whole time I was working on the book and I was sending questions to the story developer, Tim Fletcher, like pretty regularly. But yeah, no, I turned it in, I closed that tab and it was like, it was just like, I'm going to just close off this part of my brain for a bit because I lived on that website. So thank you to all the RuneScape fans who keep that updated because holy moly, that is helpful. yeah, so it, I think it's just a case of like, you know, you're finding the, like finding all the, and little things like for RuneScape 2, there's this, there are lots of people doing playthroughs and being able to watch like YouTube videos of people walking around the spaces that you're trying to turn into a novel description. so useful. you don't to play through the entire game to just describe one route. Yeah And that was a thing too, I was like, should I play the game? And they're like, you're not gonna be able to play enough of it for it to be useful. Like, no, don't do that. But then I be finding those because it's because things to like, okay, you know, it's gonna be in the wizard's tower. And and what that looks like in the game is one thing. But so how do I make sure I describe it so that it feels like it could be the same place while being, you know, a little more grounded? making sense as a narrative versus a game, because those are two very different things. Yeah. It's been wonderful. Thank you for chatting. It's just good to see your face and to hang out with you again. I know. What? I know right. I said I know right. Let's not go so long next time. Definitely. So here's the books and curiouscatbookshop.com is where you can order them. And if you are local to us in Northwest Connecticut, be sure and check out curiouscatbookshop.com slash events where you'll find out all the things that we've got going on. Storytimes, like I said at the beginning, if you missed it, we have kitty storytimes periodically in which we bring real kittens into the store. And it's for all ages. If you've got kids, great. If you don't, you can still meet kittens. It is totally great. So, and we do that with a local rescue to talk about fostering and adoption and just basically make people more aware of how they can help out. So anyway, thank you so much, Erin. It has been lovely to talk to you and thank you everyone for joining us on the live stream. See y'all later. you