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We Don’t Have To Wait For Heroes
The Final Sundering follows unlikely allies whose separate quests collide as ancient weapons, hidden civilizations, and the truth behind the Sundering threaten their freedom. What do you hope readers take away from the characters getting to choose what kind of lives and communities they want to build?
One of the reasons I like very real characters is that I have a secret hope that people will see the world around them and maybe believe that they, as just a regular person, can make a change. We don’t have to wait for heroes. We can be that hero. Struggle is as real as dreams; contending with one can bring the other, and I believe anyone can do it.
Bear, T’az, Thervan, and the other characters often deal with ordinary concerns alongside enormous fantasy events. How important was it to keep the dialogue and relationships grounded and conversational?
It is critical to me that the huge events are almost secondary. These people have lives, friends, and families. The events define the story and the reason these characters exist, but to survive, they have to ground themselves. I’ve been on patrols in the jungle and had the oddest conversations about life and the universe with the soldiers around me. One night, a storm caused the bank we were walking on to fail, and we all ended up sitting chest-deep in a muddy stream by a field. Lightning crashed around us. Someone started singing I Wish It Would Rain Down, by Phil Collins. There you sit. Just soaked, tired, and almost overcome, carrying a machine gun and six hundred rounds of ammunition, but singing and laughing at just how silly it all is. Maybe it’s weird, but all these characters were sitting with me in that stream.
The novel gradually reveals that much of the accepted history of the world is incomplete or false. How did you decide when to reveal those larger truths without giving away too much too early?
Easiest question. They have no answers. They live in subsistence farming societies where the aristocracy and the priesthood have all the money and power. I asked myself that question: when would you know? In a way, as the author, I’m sitting in Mirsha’s position. I know, and I want them to know. Dumping it on them too early could cause overwhelm and failure. What if a soldier on the field of Trenton, Gettysburg, or Waterloo suddenly knew everything about the universe, aliens, and space wars? Would they do anything? Would it change anything? Or would they freeze and do nothing? The last one has been my experience. You can’t just lead a horse to water and force them to drink. Mirsha points them at things. The Tablets of Marikinet, Valereth, Onterach, and lands across the desert and seas, in an effort to get them to go voluntarily into change.
Mirsha wants a new world. Could she just snap her fingers and change it? Maybe. But wouldn’t they be more likely to just put her on the pedestal and bow to her? What if people made the change? What if they led themselves to freedom and victory?
That’s what Mirsha wants.
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For generations, ancient forces have ruled from the shadows, shaping kingdoms, feeding on conflict, and keeping humanity small. Now, for the first time, those forces face something they never anticipated: people who refuse to play by the rules.
A reluctant general holds a fragile new society together against impossible odds. A cursed warrior carries a sword that offers her everything — and takes a little more of her with every battle. A scarred knight wields a weapon that has destroyed every man before him, armed with nothing but the stubborn refusal to become what it demands.
Across deserts, uncharted seas, and mountains older than memory, unlikely allies converge — warriors and witches, pirates and princes, dragons and outcasts — drawn toward a reckoning that has been building for thousands of years.
Some fights cannot be won by strength alone. Some transformations cannot be undone. And some sacrifices, once made, echo across eternity.
The Final Sundering is the thundering conclusion to the Metamorphosis by Decree series — a story about power, love, and what ordinary people are willing to give so the world can finally change.
I Like Nightmares
The Nightmare follows a young priestess as an ancient mage weaponizes her fears, forcing her to confront a corrupt religious order, buried truths, and the nightmares her choices may unleash. What were some sources that informed this novel’s development?
Some of it is just from my life, but things like Rush’s 2112 influence me in the background. It’s hard to say current events, but that can’t be denied. I want to show characters overcoming the past, the forces that be, the rich, whatever, and finding their own paths.
The novel treats nightmares not simply as supernatural attacks but as fears that influence characters’ choices. How did that idea shape the story and its title?
I like nightmares as a response to the raid on the Black Tower. It has the deviousness I expect the Black Mages to excel at. The desire to have an enemy create the environment in which they suffer. It leaves their hands, arguably, clean, and yet promotes their mystique. Since I’m delving into characters and their responses to stress, fear, love, and everything else, this is going to fail. In the end, even though the bad guys win, the characters cement their beliefs and push forward even stronger.
Kate discovers that the Code governing her society is built on lies, yet she wants reform without becoming another tyrant. What interested you about exploring that tension through her character?
You can’t tell by her fate, but I love Kate. She’s what every system wants. A young, vibrant person who believes and wants to believe. That’s why Haervan cuts her so much slack. She’s the perfect junior priest. Devoted. Knowledgeable. Vocal. The system, like most things, is at best a two-sided coin, and as she sees the other side, she has to reconcile that and still believe. I find her compelling. Kate’s belief, knowledge, and determination are what will drive a world to change.
The story combines intimate moments of friendship, romance, and family with gods, political upheaval, and epic battles. Why was it important to give ordinary relationships space within a large-scale fantasy story?
I like real people. It’s one of the genius parts about hobbits in all the Tolkien books. They aren’t heroes. They have lives and families. I like to show that people are people, and that makes them amazing. The solo hero stories have never interested me. I don’t like Superman-type characters. People have reasons they do things. One reason Mirsha has Kate suffer is so that T’az (a mercenary) will commit and go through hell to win. Would someone who fights for coin, even if they’re good, risk everything if the one person they loved didn’t die? So I ask myself while I’m writing what a character is doing, and more importantly, why. They could all fold up and fit in. It makes sense, and it is safe, but that why is always there. Once it comes to the front, change is going to happen.
To have people be real. Tangible. They have all the things we all have. Thoughts, doubts, love, rejection- all of it makes people who can stand in front of a charge of knights and not break. Those things are the why.
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As revolution ignites across the land, T’az must navigate impossible choices while wielding a mysterious magical sword that hungers for battle. Torn between conflicting loyalties and haunted by her own demons, she discovers that some bonds transcend death itself. With unlikely alliances forming between humans, mythical creatures, and forces beyond the grave, our heroes must uncover long-buried truths about their world’s forgotten history. But ancient powers are stirring, and sinister forces manipulate events from the shadows. In a realm where everything that once existed still endures, the fate of all may depend on understanding the deepest mysteries of the past—before the gathering darkness consumes everything they hold dear.
A Vision Of The Last Scene
Metamorphosis By Decree: The Beginning follows a young priestess chosen by her goddess to recover sacred tablets, forcing her to confront forbidden magic, buried history, and a religious establishment determined to preserve its power. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The Beginning was actually a dream or a vision of the last scene in the Emperor’s throne room. I had to write a story to get there. That was the last time that happened. In every other book, I have a beginning and struggle to find the end. Because I love characters and how they interact, overcome obstacles, and grow, I sometimes worry.
Kate’s faith in Mirsha remains strong even as her trust in the religious establishment collapses. What interested you about separating personal faith from institutional loyalty?
This is essentially my background. I grew up believing my parents’ religion. I’m an American, so as a kid in the seventies and eighties, we really bought into the propaganda. It turns out, nothing is really like that. I’ve served my country, worked for decades; none of it meant anything. So, it influences my characters. They have to find what’s real.
One of the things I love is the underdog. Not a fan of the hidden hero, secret jedi, or whatever. I like real people that do incredible things for love, or friendship. The sacrifices make sense to me.
The Black Tower connects magic, sacrifice, family betrayal, and generations of hidden history. How early in the writing process did you know what Verig, Theris, and the Tower would ultimately reveal?
The end of that book was the beginning. It made sense, and the world it existed in spun into being as I tried to figure out what I was writing down and why. I like thinking about the worlds from a character’s perspective. They wouldn’t know how big the world is. They wouldn’t know other things exist. They don’t have the internet and live in an isolated society. Discovery is fun.
Later in the Danagors, one of the characters convinces Mirsha to let her try again. The God isn’t going to start the whole world over, so Pelwin is sent to our world to try again. In that scenario, suddenly everything changes. She has the internet and an education. So, a very similar story becomes completely different because the world changes.
Kate, T’az, Hestal, Bernard, Bear, and Thervan gradually become a community of outsiders. How did you approach giving each member of such a large traveling party a distinct personal arc?
This is the key to everything in everything I write. All of the characters have stories. I’m fond of NPC’s. Building a world requires them, unfortunately. A book in which everyone’s story is told would be huge and probably boring. To make a group work, the dynamics have to work. Everyone has to give and compromise. At the same time, they need to find the lines they won’t cross. That’s the dynamic that interests me, and for me, that’s what drives a story. You can put characters into any situation. If you’ve built them and rounded them out, their reactions and motivations are a lot clearer.
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But as Kate’s small company faces undead horrors, soul-stealing demons, and creatures beyond imagination, she begins to suspect that her sacred quest may not be what it seems. The deeper they venture into the cursed lands, the more the foundations of everything she’s believed begin to crumble. With her companions dying around her and enemies closing in from all sides, Kate must discover not only the strength to survive the ultimate evil—but the courage to question everything she’s ever been taught about the gods, the Code, and the very nature of truth itself.
Metamorphosis by Decree: The Nightmare
The Nightmare is a dark fantasy novel that mixes epic fantasy, fantasy adventure, political intrigue, and horror into a story built around fear and the damage people can do when they’re pushed toward their worst impulses. The story begins in the aftermath of the raid on the Black Tower, with the ancient mage Galen looking for a way to punish Katelarin, better known as Kate, and her companions without openly attacking them. His answer is clever and cruel: find their fears and encourage them to create their own nightmares. That idea gives the book a strong organizing theme, because nearly every major character winds up confronting some version of the life they’re most afraid to live.
Kate remains the emotional center of the novel even as the story expands into several points of view. She’s a young priestess with genuine divine power living inside a religious and political system that has become obsessed with authority, tradition, and control. Her growing realization that the Code governing society is a lie turns the book’s dark fantasy conflict into something much larger than a struggle against monsters and Black Mages. Kate wants change without simply replacing one tyrant with another, and that makes her clashes with the Council especially compelling. Her friendship with T’az, her feelings for Hedlvin, her devotion to Mirsha, and the constant physical pain of her scars keep those larger questions grounded in a very personal story. When the Council finally moves against her, the resulting sequence is brutal, emotional, and central to everything that follows.
The second half broadens into an epic fantasy adventure about grief, revenge, survival, and a world whose history has been deliberately buried. T’az becomes especially important as anger over Kate sends her down a violent path while her bond with the magical sword Thoradon pulls her toward something much bigger. Bear and Thervan develop in different directions, with battles, refugees, haunted fortifications, witches, spirits, undead soldiers, and old magic steadily widening the scope. Pigg spends a lot of time on relationships and ordinary camp life alongside the supernatural material, which gives the world a lived-in quality. Characters argue about loyalty, sex, religion, family, leadership, and what freedom actually requires, often in the same chapters where they’re fighting monsters or trying to survive political collapse.
What makes The Nightmare interesting as dark epic fantasy is the way its title keeps gaining meaning. The nightmares aren’t simply visions or magical attacks. They’re fears turned into choices, and those choices reshape nations. By the closing chapters, the conflict has expanded beyond the Council, the Code, and even the Black Mages into revelations about the Sundering, the Emperor, the High King, the mysterious powers manipulating entire civilizations, and the Stone of Onterach. The ending deliberately points the fantasy adventure toward a much larger struggle while still giving the characters meaningful transformations along the way. It’s a sprawling, character-driven fantasy story full of gods, demons, magic swords, political rebellion, buried history, and people discovering that the world they’ve inherited is far stranger than anyone taught them.
Pages: 362 | ASIN: B0FNR8ZDHY
