Tales of Weirderland follows royal siblings who go on magical adventures throughout their kingdom and a journey of self-discovery, learning what the future might hold. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The short and somewhat uninspired answer is my children.

The more interesting answer is their imaginations and somewhat mischievous ingenuity. These stories originated from improvisational bedtime stories. They both loved hearing stories, and we loved reading to them, so it didn’t take long before we ran out of books we hadn’t read several times over. I couldn’t say who began growing bored first, them or us. So it began with a question: “If you were in a story, about you. What kind of adventure would you have?” Make us a princess and prince. Make the king sillier. We need a pet dragon. Make the ‘squid-o-pus’ rhyme.

I had three goals: to make them laugh. To tell them stories they inhabited and could help direct. And to wear them down until they could sleep. It wasn’t until they outgrew story time and being read to that I committed some of these stories to paper, so they could revisit them on their own as they learned to read. Later, as they grew, I wanted to give them fresh stories. Reflections of themselves, how I saw them growing, learning, and confronting the challenges that come with life.

I find the world you created in this novel brimming with possibilities. Where did the inspiration for the setting come from, and how did it change as you wrote?

Both my wife and I are fantasy nerds. It was only natural we fostered that in our children. The settings were of our home and places we loved to visit. Like a park with a playground built like a castle, the woods, and streams of the Rocky Mountain Foothills. Augmented with hints of films like Labyrinth, Spirited Away, and books by Bill Peet, or Terry Pratchett. Then, in the later stories, the settings were kinder incarnations of a hospital and hospice. Schoolyards and principals offices. Courthouses and Pride festivals.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Kindness. That meeting adversity head-on with kindness first should rarely be the wrong choice to make. Asking for help can be one of the bravest things any of us can do; too often, we are afraid or ashamed to ask. Fear of embarrassment, of appearing vulnerable or incapable, stops many of us from asking. And so, when someone asks for help, we should meet them with enthusiastic empathy.

Kids are far stronger and more resilient than we know. We should trust them to solve some problems and figure things out on their own.

Families grow, shrink, change, and should be cherished. They can get lost, but also chosen and found. Life is ridiculous and we should treat it as such. Otherwise, you risk taking life more seriously than life takes you. After all, no one escapes alive.

Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?

Perhaps. Our children are all but grown now. Their adventures look far different going forward, as does our world. While I know there are many more stories to tell, I don’t know if their stories are mine to tell now. But, I know if I decide to the stories and adventures would be darker. How might Weirderland and the Wilding family survive a plague-riddled kingdom or a new tyrannical monarch?

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