Review Fix chats with author Steven Drake, who discusses his new book, The Demon’s Blade Saga: Fallen Star. Breaking down the creative process and his goals moving forward. Heavily affected by video games, Drake discusses their impact on his narrative.
About Steven Drake:
Steven Drake is a life-long lover of fantasy literature raised on J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. With an undergraduate degree in telecommunications and an MBA from Murray State University, his knack for writing is for his own enjoyment and to entertain others. Drake enjoys and draws inspiration from video games, science fiction & fantasy novels, music and anime, which can be seen in his debut series, The Demon’s Blade Saga. He lives and works in the Jackson Purchase region of Kentucky, just a few miles from the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers.
Fallen Star will be available on December 20, 2017 via Amazon and other major book retailers.
Review Fix: How was this book born?
Steven Drake: The Demon’s Blade series started with the characters. I think most books do. I start with a character I want to write about, then explore the world he lives in, have him meet other characters, develop those relationships. The Demon’s Blade started with the character of Darien. I used to daydream a lot to pass the time in high school, and I had a lot of characters. Darien reflects a lot of what I thought as a teenager. He’s jaded, cynical, and doesn’t much like the world he lives in. He’s a rebel who doesn’t accept anyone’s authority, and has the strength and will to back it up. He is very much a 90’s style anti-hero, not unlike many of the video game heroes of that era. There’s a little Cloud Strife in Darien the Executioner, though he’s a lot older and wiser. I suppose you could say the Demon’s Blade series was born with him.
Review Fix: What inspires you to create?
Steven Drake: I draw on a lot of different sources. Obviously, I’m inspired by what I read. I grew up on Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and I think you can see those influences in my writing. That’s certainly not my only source of inspiration. Writing is, really, just one form of storytelling, and not necessarily the best. It just happens to be one of the oldest, most versatile, and most easily accessible to someone who doesn’t possess millions of dollars and lacks both the desire and ability to kiss the butts of those who do. I draw a lot of inspiration from those more expensive forms of storytelling. Gamers will notice a lot of elements drawn from that world, especially in the first book, where I made a point of putting in several easter eggs, but there’s a big one in Fallen Star, book four, as well. Recently, a lot of my inspiration comes from anime. I’m an admirer of eastern culture in general and there are a lot of concepts and ideas in anime that I just have never encountered in my own culture. My next book series, assuming I get around to it at some point, will be a more YA oriented series, draws heavily from those influences.
Review Fix: What did you learn about yourself through this book?
Drake: There’s still a strong thread of anti-establishment, teenaged rebellion dwelling down in my subconscious. I enjoy Darien’s determination to challenge authority, to eschew civilized society. In Fallen Star, the city he finds himself in is a frontier settlement with only a bare minimum of law and order. Darien fits in here, and actually becomes comfortable. I think I’m part of a subset of people that, a few hundred years ago, would have found myself exploring the world on the edge of known civilization, fleeing the strictures of established culture. I’ve learned a lot of my personal dissatisfaction with the world as it is now is that there’s really nowhere to go anymore. There’s no frontier, no unknown oceans to sail, no unsettled lands to explore. We’re stuck with each other. If interstellar travel is not possible, people like myself will eventually die out.
Review Fix: How did you feel the first time you read it post editing?
Drake: What is this ‘post editing’ that you speak of? I have a difficult time taking off my revision cap. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve gone over a passage in my mind and on the page, I’m always thinking of ways to say it better. If I revised a story until I couldn’t find anything to change, it would be published posthumously, because I’d be changing something every time I went through it. In all seriousness, though, I felt a lot of the same emotions that led me to create the character in the first place. I am a social critic at heart, just read my blog. All my writing is, at some level, a philosophical criticism of society in general. There are no direct allegories, mind you, this isn’t the Wizard of Oz, but a lot of the issues in the book correspond to concepts that should be readily understood by people in our own world.
Review Fix: Bottom line-why must someone read this book?
Drake: I think it’s a perfect book for someone that enjoys Tolkien style fantasy. I don’t claim that level of mastery but more than one person has stated that my writing reminds them of Tolkien. The thing I loved about Tolkien was that, as compelling and immersive as Middle Earth was, and still is, the characters were the most important part of the story. Characters like Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, you remember. Characters like that, you feel have their own personality, that you could talk to them without knowing they came from the same author. That’s what I aspire to, and that’s why I would like people to read, and tell me how well I’m doing.
Review Fix: Why is this book perfect for gamers?
Drake: First, it’s very dialog driven. If there’s one difference between my work and most of what I read, it’s that I use more dialog, more often. r. In fantasy, world building is important. There’s a ton of information about the world, its history, its people, its mythology, even something as basic as physics is pliable in fantasy, and there’s a need to establish boundaries so readers will understand. There are many tactics for getting this information across. Mine is dialog, and it’s a form most gamers will be familiar with. In a video game, you don’t really have a lot of avenues to explain the world to the player. There’s no narrative, no internal character insight, no direct way to convey information about the world. Everything that the player has to know about the story has to be in the dialog, one character talking to another. It’s familiar to me, and it comes through in my writing. Second, there’s a lot of action and battle sequences. I take pride in making my fights original and compelling. I think that’s where a lot of my creativity comes through.
Review Fix: What games did you play as a kid and how did they affect this book?
Drake: I played a lot of RPGs. Final Fantasy VI and VII, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, the Legend of Zelda games, Diablo I and II, the same list any RPG fan from the 90s would give you. There are a few names that gamers may recognize, and some of the races and creatures are heavily influenced by creatures from gaming worlds. I don’t want to get specific because part of the fun for readers is finding these things for themselves. Beyond that, my writing style should feel a lot more accessible to gamers because as I said, much of the story is told through dialog, characters speaking naturally to each other, in ways that reflect the character’s personality and personal knowledge rather than just the author’s. The characters tell what they know, but they may be misinformed, or deceived, or just plain wrong. They sometimes discover later how wrong they are. That’s a concept used extensively in RPGs as well. Part of the fun of exploring a game world is that a good game doesn’t explain everything front. You discover it as you play through, and that makes the ending, where everything comes together, all the more compelling. I like to think my writing accomplishes something similar.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Drake: I’m currently working on book five of the Demon’s Blade series. I expect to have it ready sometime in 2018. I have released the first four about 6-7 months apart, but there may be a longer delay this time. With the first four, I had a substantial head start on the next book when I published the one before. This time, I’ve spent more time working on promoting Fallen Star and less time delving into the next book. Once this series ends, I’m considering a YA series that is a sort of sci-fi/fantasy fusion. I still have a long way to go on that though. We’ll see.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Drake: I’d love to make writing a full time occupation, so if any independent game devs are looking for writers, I’m available.
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