How a Recent Read Affects My Writing Plans

Hi everybody,

With a bit of time on leave, I’ve been catching up on my reading at night. One of the books I finished was by Brian McClellan, entitled Wrath of Empire which rounded out his second powder mage series. Over the last several years, I’ve enjoyed reading a number of different fantasy books. One of those authors is Brian McClellan’s books about powder mages, including this one:

All of his books are well-constructed with characters struggling with their present and past. It has several sub-plots, two involving more military fantasy and one an espionage fantasy. The shifts between characters and the type of fantasy is seamless and offers variations of character perspective. Shifting circumstances and actions often lead the characters to change their own plans as would anyone in real life.

I’m interested in writing more sub-plots into my books as the stories allow so this series offered some instruction for me about how to approach them. Likewise, it offered an excellent example of shifting between sub-genre effectively. It leads to some complex plotting between the POV characters, something which was required with the end of my own book, The White Arrow which wrapped up The Bow of Hart Saga. However, I was still writing within epic fantasy. Now, I’m inspired to create a story which shifts between such differing sub-genres as military and espionage while using POV characters as the distinction.

Additionally, McClellan’s series leads me to consider doing a more military fantasy someday. My newest series, The Cursed Mage Case Files is something of a gaslamp fantasy but also uses elements of such sub-fantasy genres as mystery, detective and espionage in varying degrees so I’ve already begun to dabble in other fantasy forms. I will continue to write in more variation of fantasy with each new series. As an example, the upcoming opening novel of the loosely titled Black Glove Chronicles is a western fantasy (maybe sagebrush fantasy?). However, I do intend to return to the more traditional epic fantasy again with the sequel series to The Bow of Hart Saga and the planned bridge series, Empire’s Deception. All three are referenced in last weeks post about upcoming titles.

By the way, I rated Wrath of Empire a 5-star read so give McClellan’s books a look if you’re interested. Thanks for stopping by today and pleased feel free to share or re-blog this post.