SPFBO Author Interview: J.Davis & K. Grierson

What inspired you to write your SPFBO entry? Is there a particular story, personal experience, or idea that sparked this book?

Love.

Katy and I have been playing in the world of Sul since meeting in 2007.  The world is built upon the foundations of our long running text-based role-play. Over the years we’ve met many characters, visited many places, shared some fun and sad and exciting moments.

Since there is so much history, we didn’t want to lose it and we thought it would be fun to share it with others. Sul: From Gold to Iron and Rust, is a novelized take on just one of our story-arcs. We chose to start with this moment because it’s the time when our two most prominent cultures meet for the first time.

How would you describe your writing process? How did it evolve during the creation of this book?

 Because this is based on an RP we already had we had our framework built-in. The first draft of the novel version was written in 2017. We realized then that it was something of a chonker and would probably work best split into 3 books. Due to house moves, etc it was put on the back burner and picked up again in 2021. The break did us a world of good! Looking at it with fresh eyes we could see what needed fixing.

 I wrote the final, using the original draft and the old RP docs as source material, and passed it onto Katy for an alpha read. Book 2 is progressing in a more streamlined, but similar manner, with me compiling everything together and Katy providing the feedback.

What challenges did you face during the writing or publishing process, and how did you overcome them?

 I think one of our major writing struggles has been trying to write for an audience outside of ourselves. Being as entrenched in the lore as we are, Katy and I don’t need a lot of exposition to understand what’s going on. But, unfortunately, a lot of our world building is in Skype chats now lost to the aether. Trying to decide just what, and how much, info to give readers has been tricky. What helped was giving the story to beta-readers who didn’t know the world at all and when they came to us with questions trying to fill in those gaps.

As with painting, there is an ugly phase  after the first draft, but before editing, where the story seems a mess and you just want to stop, but we’ve found you need to trust the process and push on.

Who are your biggest literary influences and how have they impacted your writing style?

Perhaps a bit of a curveball, but I’d have to say K.A Applegate. As a teen I adored her Animorphs series and started writing because I got into Animorphs fanfiction back in the day. She has a neat way of being concise and clear but still emotional with her characters. You knew exactly whose head you were in without too much waffling.

How do you approach world-building in your fantasy novel? What elements do you think are essential for a compelling fantasy setting?

Our world building came naturally over years of RP-ing. It happened over a lot of Skype chats where we would decide what we wanted to do, then discuss how we could make that fit with what we had already established. Of course this evolved, and we often forgot or altered cannon if a more interesting idea came along. In later years we’ve gone back and amended anything we’ve decided to change.

(Side note: I wish we had kept all of our chats! So much lore minutiae has probably been forgotten, but thankfully a lot made it into the story)

I think the best thing about fantasy is that anything goes, so there isn’t one thing I’d say that has to be included. As long as the world makes sense internally, I’m happy to go along for the ride. In our story we’ve included magic, immortals, angels, demons, gods and vampires as our main players.

If you could give a piece of advice to the main character in your book at the start of their journey, what would it be?

 Take people’s advice, Elmes. You’re not as smart, or as untouchable, as you think you are. And maybe lay off the wine.

As a self-published author, how do you navigate marketing and promoting your work?

Ah, well. Not very well is what I’d imagine the answer to be, lol. For our Kickstarter campaign we did send our a few physical copies to the bookstubers and bloggers we knew of and liked engaging with ourselves. Short of that we mostly post out art on Twitter and Facebook and try to build a community naturally. We should probably learn how to use ads and SEO, but then when will we have time for creating?

What made you decide to participate in the SPFBO competition? How do you think this experience will benefit you as an author?

I first heard about the contest after finding out a book I’d read, (Sword of Kaigen), was a past winner. After doing more research I thought it would be fun to enter Sul, we knew we’d done our jobs right on the art, but wanted to see what people would think about the writing.

I think SPFBO is helping to educate us on the wider world of fantasy fiction. I tend to read mostly historical fiction/non-fiction so have little idea of where our book fits into the wider scheme of things. Thus far we’ve learnt we’re dark fantasy, and somewhat on the shorter side of things.

If you were to win SPFBO, what impact do you think this would have on your writing career?

I think it would help us to know if our story has an audience. As mentioned earlier in the interview, this world has been only ours for over a decade. We’ll probably continue to write it up for posterity either way, but it would be lovely to know if there are others who could enjoy our characters as much as we do.

What's next for you after SPFBO? Are there any upcoming projects you can share with us?

Book 2, of course! That is currently in its ugly editing phase, then it’s off to the beta readers and our copy editor. We’ll be illustrating this one too, so keep an eye out for sketches and work-in-progress shots ;)