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A Game of Chess
Blood of Iron follows a desperate king trying to save his kingdom who seeks to use an ancient blood-powered weapon to defeat his enemies, forcing his children to choose between loyalty and conscience. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This is a very good first question. I always wanted to write my very own sword and sorcery story, where good and evil are not very clearly defined, and each character has a motive for his or her actions. Working on this story, I was paradoxically inspired by vampire movies, particularly by the first Blade movie with actor Wesley Snipes in the title role. The idea of using blood as an awakening catalyst, was inspired by a scene of a final battle where Blade faced a Blood god called La Magra, a powerful vampire entity summoned by an evil vampire Deacon Frost through a blood ritual that involved the sacrifice of vampire elders and use of Blade’s own blood. And while the inspiration came from a vampire movie, I think I managed to create a good story involving blood and dark magic.
While the king sees salvation for his kingdom, his children, Prince Hares and Princess Alesta, begin questioning the morality of his plans. How do the characters’ relationships challenge their assumptions about loyalty, authority, and the responsibilities they owe to one another?
King Herman the Ironfist, crown prince Hares and his sister, Princess Alesta are the three very important characters in the story. The King, facing a massive invasion of his lands by an enemy coalition, cares about his children, his dynasty and his kingdom. His motive is a mix of desperation, mixed with desire to crush his enemies once and for all. For him, awakening the ancient super weapon named Sanger is a necessity, and the sacrifice of one thousand men to have it, makes him fully believe that the end justifies the means. In contrast, Prince Hares and Princess Alesta have less influence and power than their father, and while Hares is a warrior and Alesta is a scholar, both of them have a strong sense of justice and morals. In their minds, there are lines powerful people should not cross if it means the deaths of innocents. That makes them people with a strong moral compass, who would rather seek an alternative solution.
What interested you about exploring the conflict between loyalty to family, loyalty to one’s country, and loyalty to personal principles?
All fiction takes its inspiration from real historical events. I read many interesting books about powerful people forced by fate, destiny and circumstances to make very hard choices. In some cases, life, just like war, is a game of chess, where players are willing to sacrifice pawns and then even more powerful and important figures to win the game. An ordinary person with little or no power or influence can do little, but a person who has the power to command men, economies and armies sometimes is faced with hard choices he or she has to make. As far as the loyalty to family and loyalty to one’s country, it is often a Catch 22, because love for the family must save the family, while love for the country can save millions. In regard to personal principles, I think that every good person has them, and will only be willing to compromise them to save the people he loves.
Do you envision returning to Tarkonia or expanding the world of Blood of Iron through future stories?
To be honest, the thought had crossed my mind in regard to the Kingdom of Tarkonia and the world I built around it to create this particular story. I believe that there is a lot of food for thought, and there might be a possibility to do just that. In order to expand the world of Blood of Iron, I would have to rethink a few things in regard to the events I presented in Blood of Iron, and create a time frame where another expanded the story will take place. Since Tarkonia is just one of the countries that has an important role to play, other countries and dominions must be created, explored, and given their own history, motives and conflict outcomes. The story is definitely worth thinking about, but for now, I will put it on a shelf, until I get inspired again to expand this unique world. I will probably draw a map of the realm, give it life and work on the people who inhabit it. There is much to think about, and I will patiently wait for an inspiration to write a new novella.
Blood of Iron
Blood of Iron is a dark fantasy novella about a kingdom under pressure and the dangerous appeal of a weapon that promises to solve every military problem. Tarkonia’s rulers face rebellion, disputed borders, and rival powers, while an ancient source of magic offers a tempting shortcut to security. The story opens with battlefield maneuvers, then moves into royal chambers where arguments about territory and survival carry their own threats. If you enjoy military fantasy with court politics and forbidden magic, there’s plenty here to hold your interest. What gives the setup its bite is the royal family’s confidence that force can deliver lasting peace. You can understand their fear of invasion while also questioning the decisions that fear helps them justify.
Prince Hares, Princess Alesta, and General Tarnak Bars give the story its most interesting relationships. Hares has been trained to command, Alesta brings an interest in law and history, and Bars offers the perspective of a veteran who knows what warfare asks of people. Their conversations put competing ideas about duty into practical terms: how should a ruler protect a kingdom, and what does that ruler owe its inhabitants? King Herman’s authority hangs over these exchanges, making even family discussions feel politically charged. I found the tension between the characters’ stated compassion and their acceptance of harsh customs especially interesting. They’re comfortable with privileges and punishments that deserve scrutiny, and that makes their judgments worth watching. The book’s questions about leadership grow out of the society these people inhabit.
The worldbuilding has an appealingly physical quality. Elaborate breakfasts, training weapons, royal insignia, guarded libraries, and carefully arranged military formations make Tarkonia feel like a place organized around rank and routine. Magic belongs to that same system of bargaining and control. Wizards negotiate payment, rulers weigh strategic advantages, and old records become resources for present conflicts. That combination gives this sword and sorcery story a clear political dimension, with supernatural power treated as something people want to acquire and manage. The frequent meals and private conversations also establish how comfortably the royal household lives alongside public cruelty. Those details can be unsettling, and they give the book an atmosphere that suits its dark fantasy themes. Some of the strongest imagery comes from the sheer scale and menace of the ancient magic.
Dialogue often states a character’s beliefs directly, which makes the central conflict easy to follow but can leave the exchanges feeling stiff. The pacing spends a substantial stretch preparing for events, with the most forceful action concentrated toward the close. Still, I stayed interested in how the story connects military necessity, personal ambition, and responsibility. Blood of Iron has a compact, earnest approach to fantasy, and its strongest appeal is the pressure it puts on the idea of a protective ruler. It’s a worthwhile choice for readers drawn to dark fantasy about royal power, dangerous magic, and the human cost of seeking security.
Pages: 75 | ASIN : B0HH85TMJT
The Fade Whisperer
The Fade Whisperer by T. P. Robins is a youth-oriented portal fantasy centered on thirteen-year-old Raven Carter, an isolated but perceptive girl who discovers that an ancient grimoire has been bound within her since infancy. Pursued by the authoritarian Lord Voros, Raven crosses into the magical realm of Ny’vara with Logan, her fiercely protective Guardian, and Alex, the mysterious friend behind many of the whispers she’s heard since childhood. The novel combines a coming-of-age quest with political intrigue, family sacrifice, and a conflict spanning the worlds of the living and the dead.
Robins gives the story an imaginative magical system grounded in distinct sources of power, visible “tells,” enchanted objects, and the dangerous use of human souls as fuel. Raven’s gift, Fade Whispering, allows her to communicate with the dead and inherit fragments of their memories and abilities. Its deeper purpose is captured in the line, “The Fade was just the battery. The true power was the wisdom behind it.” This emphasis on listening to silenced people gives the magic an ethical dimension and turns Raven’s power into a means of restoring agency to those whom Voros has exploited.
Raven is an appealing protagonist whose intelligence, humor, and determination develop naturally as her circumstances become more demanding. Her affection for books and musicals keeps her personality present even during the novel’s darkest episodes, while her relationships with Logan, Alex, and Bultun provide warmth and playful friction. The alternating viewpoints also give dimension to Ny’vara’s political struggle, particularly through Theon, whose loyalty to Voros gradually collides with his conscience. The novel favors extensive description and frequent explanation, which makes its complex world accessible, though repeated character observations and reminders occasionally slow the otherwise energetic pace.
The Fade Whisperer is a story about the choices people make when grief, fear, and power threaten to define them. Alex’s observation that “A person is defined by what they do” becomes a standard by which Raven, Theon, Voros, and Skáth can all be judged. Raven’s eventual strength comes from empathy, practical intelligence, and her willingness to act for others, qualities that give the climactic confrontation genuine thematic weight. With its expansive mythology, lively central cast, and final chapter opening a larger divine conflict, the novel offers a substantial beginning to what feels designed as an ongoing fantasy series.
Pages: 402 | ASIN: B0G4HKZ5FS
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 Final Sundering
The Final Sundering by Brian Pigg is a sprawling fantasy adventure built around war, family, ancient mysteries, and a group of characters who keep discovering that their world is much stranger than they were taught. The story follows several connected threads, especially Thervan’s effort to protect a new community from his brother Daerval, T’az and Lacern’s search for the Stone of Onterach, and Bear’s journey into unfamiliar lands with his companions. What starts as a conflict involving knights, priests, outcasts, and rival armies gradually opens into something much larger. The mysterious swords Thoradon and Valadeer, forgotten civilizations, dragons, dwarves, witches, and the beings behind the Sundering all become pieces of the same puzzle. The novel makes that expansion feel central to the experience. Characters who think they understand their history repeatedly learn that the accepted version of the world is only part of the story.
The characters are what kept me most interested through all of that worldbuilding. Thervan is especially compelling because leadership is something he grows into while dealing with fear, injury, responsibility, and the aftermath of battle. His community includes people who once would’ve been pushed aside by the society he came from, including Minotaurs, Southerns, Wild Men, gypsies, witches, and others. That gives the political conflict a personal dimension. These people aren’t following him because of a title. They’re building something together because they’ve found a place where they’re accepted. Falkon even points out how unusual it is for Southerns and Minotaurs to find somewhere they’re genuinely welcomed. Bear, T’az, Giselle, Aeshwin, Lacern, Roark, and the rest bring their own personalities to the story, and the friendships and romances matter as much as the battles. The book is at its best when huge events are grounded in smaller concerns such as protecting a partner, worrying about family, recovering from trauma, or wondering whether everyone will make it home.
The most interesting idea in the novel is the tension between power and choice. Thoradon and Valadeer are tremendously powerful, but that power comes with an attempt to control the people carrying them. T’az can actually feel Thoradon pushing her toward domination, showing her how easily she could force others to obey, and her repeated refusal becomes its own kind of battle. Bear faces a similar danger with Valadeer. By the time the two swords and their bearers are drawn toward each other, the question isn’t simply who can win a fight. It’s whether these characters can remain themselves when something vastly more powerful is trying to determine their choices. That idea connects nicely with the novel’s broader treatment of religion, law, class, prejudice, and tradition. Daerval and the established order talk constantly about honor and authority, while Thervan and the others keep asking a more basic question: what actually helps people live freely and decently? Thervan’s confrontation with Daerval makes that divide especially clear, because the brothers aren’t simply competing for military control. They have fundamentally different ideas about what gives a leader legitimacy.
The book reminded me of Brandon Sanderson, particularly The Stormlight Archive. Both stories enjoy starting with recognizable fantasy elements and then steadily revealing a much larger history beneath them. There are powerful artifacts with their own rules, forgotten truths that change how characters understand the past, multiple groups whose separate journeys eventually connect, and a final conflict that depends as much on understanding the world as on being able to fight. Pigg’s style is more conversational and rough-edged, though, with characters joking, swearing, teasing each other, talking about sex, arguing over plans, and complaining about the everyday annoyances of adventuring. T’az even jokes that boredom is an “adventure tax,” which fits the book’s attitude toward heroic fantasy surprisingly well. That casual dialogue gives the enormous mythology a human scale. Dragons and ancient conspiracies can enter the story, but the characters still sound like people who are hungry, tired, scared, in love, or irritated with each other.
By the ending, The Final Sundering has grown from a story about surviving a war into one about breaking cycles that have shaped entire civilizations. The final confrontations bring Bear, T’az, their companions, the Stone, the swords, and the hidden powers behind the world’s history together, which makes the conclusion feel like the payoff to the book’s long process of discovery. I also liked that victory doesn’t erase what everyone has been through. People are injured, some are lost, communities still need to be built, and relationships still need a future. The book ultimately seems most interested in what happens when people who’ve spent their lives being told where they belong finally get to choose for themselves. That’s why the quieter parts of the ending work for me. After all the armies, monsters, magic, ancient technology, and world-changing revelations, Bear and Aeshwin are thinking about finding a home, while others are figuring out how their new society will actually function. The adventure gets enormous, but it ends with people looking toward ordinary life, and that feels like the right destination for this story.
Pages: 366 | ASIN: B0GSMSNWXC
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
