DELSAR follows a girl who’s on a quest to save her village and searches for the notorious Champion to help her, but she must first save the Champion before he can save her village. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

My inspiration really came from what I see around me. So many people are trying to fix other people’s problems without first addressing their own. Elidria recognized that and knew if she helped him, he could better help her. Where the story came from will be better answered in the next question.

I appreciated how grounded and authentic your character felt. Was this intentional or indicative of your writing style?

My opinion on storytelling is a story is only as good as the characters that drive it. If the characters don’t feel real then readers will have a harder time relating to or even feeling a part of their world. Because of that, I crafted the characters first and built the world around them instead of building them around a world. I could have dropped them in a sitcom, a drama, or even a comedy. I chose a simple premise for the first book to really help establish these characters. Now that they are, the world can start to really grow and become more complicated.

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

Solidarity, fellowship, and forgiveness. So many stories try to capture the forgiveness aspect of life, but I wanted mine to be slightly different. There’s still forgiveness, but just as important, there’s forgiveness of yourself. That’s something we all need to be willing to do, lest we bury ourselves in our own worlds of darkness and regret. Moving to the solidarity and fellowship aspects, those really come from the major pandemic we’ve all been going through. I never realized just how much people need each other until COVID hit. The importance of fellowship I really wanted to capture in these characters. Sometimes even a hero needs a hero.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

The next book will be the sequel to this one. Though the first one could easily be a standalone novel, there are plenty of things going on in the background to suggest something more and even a few unanswered questions. The characters are trusted into the mysterious world of magic and things they knew to be true get challenged as they see things first-hand. This causes them to really question who the good guys actually are. I’m working really hard on this one and want it to be a huge improvement over my first one. I’m taking extra time with editing and really making sure I show as much as possible instead of telling. Because of these things, I predict it to be available by the summer of 2021. Also, the second book is going to be a bit longer, so prepare for that.

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