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Tellest:<\/strong> Welcome to the interview.\u00a0 It\u2019s great to have you here.\u00a0 We\u2019ll start you off with one of the questions that I ask all our interviewees, because I think it\u2019s always such a fun discovery for fans and readers.\u00a0 What inspired you to start writing?<\/p>\n Eric K Barnum:<\/strong> I have an analytic mind; it\u2019s my professional career at the moment. When I found myself analyzing books, movies, comics, and games in light of this idea for a novel, world and universe, I realized it was time to start writing. I wanted to tell a story where magic and gods made balanced sense. The confusion between what is magic versus divine is something I address as a core theme in all my writing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> Surely you\u2019ve had some works and authors that helped to inspire you along the way.\u00a0 Do you have anyone you\u2019d be able to specifically reference as an influence?<\/p>\n EB: <\/strong>About 10 years ago, I decided to find and read as many of the \u201cold stories\u201d as I could get my hands on. Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Grendel, Cantebury Tales, Diary of Genji, Art of War, Bhagavad Gita, Way of the Pilgrim, Apocrypha, both religious and enduring stories. A common theme, for me at least, was a story of balance between the divine and our world\u2026 that then gets thrown off somehow. Contrasting this to the high fantasy genre where the hero and main characters are either out of balance or trying to restore balance, I realized that if you interject \u201cmagic\u201d \u2013 or in scifi \u201ctech\u201d \u2013 into those same stories, they kind of fall apart. Gilgamesh and Enkidu just aren\u2019t the same story if, when they go to Upanishaptim\/Noah (of Noah\u2019s Ark), they get magic. That whole story wouldn\u2019t exist with magic. So, how do you balance them? I started making notes and jotting thoughts down from the stories I had read. Not critique, but if from this lens of magic being out of balance, is the story still epic? The Forsaken Isles started taking shape.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> The Forsaken Isles world that you\u2019ve built has a huge focus on magic, religions, and of course dragons.\u00a0 How did you manage to keep track of everything?\u00a0 Do you have a Forsaken Isles bible you made for yourself?<\/p>\n EB:<\/strong> I do. It\u2019s a collection of now-ratty notebooks with handwritten and printed notes, sketches, and spreadsheets. Tolkien\u2019s Silmarillion really drove it home to me that organization of stories, characters, and places is key to a great tale. I also have pictures from various Dragon magazines cut out and taped into various parts of my notebooks for fun too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> The Silmarillion eventually found its way into the hands of the people.\u00a0 Martin\u2019s got the World of Ice and Fire.\u00a0 Do you think as your world and the stories therein continue to grow, people might see a fleshed out version of those notebooks to help understand just how vast everything is?<\/p>\n EB: <\/strong>In the 1980s, Marvel Comics released this campy series around an evil book called the Darkhold. Characters would interact with it, get magic, and clash with the superheroes. It was goofy fun. What you\u2019re asking, I think of as my Darkhold Project. Much the same way you have Tellest, I plan on eventually releasing \u201cThe Darkhold Project\u201d, which will be a story of the multiverse incorporating notes, but told from the perspective of souls trapped in the Darkhold. Bomoki\u2019s Gate<\/em> introduces the Darkhold where it is used to try and determine why Bomoki wants a certain objective. In my next book, Syliri & Bruce<\/em>, the Darkhold is introduced in more detail. It\u2019s a book that is also the middle realm of the Abyss. Rather than being a demon lord, like Lolth or Orcus, it\u2019s a sentient book that influences and participates in the world through the pages of itself. It knows things through soul capture. As it finds something new and different, it manipulates its readers to the soul it next wants by sharing fragmented bits and pieces of knowledge. It\u2019ll have awesome artwork where my sketches, like this one, will be fantastic. I do sketches like this for all combat scenes in my writing.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> Your books have some familiarity with\u00a0the Forgotten Realms books that a lot of fantasy readers have grown up with.\u00a0 At the same time though, Dar Tania and the subsequent stories invoke a breath of fresh air in the genre.\u00a0 How did you toe the line between something that\u2019s been established in writing before and a brand new, powerful story?<\/p>\n EB:<\/strong> To the extent that my stories are about clerics and paladins in a dragon-based religion, I can see that. The similarity ends there. The Dragonlance Chronicles<\/em> and War of the Twins<\/em> are some of my favorite books. How did Raistlin become so evil? Yet, even when reading these, the interaction of magic and the gods felt weird to me. Hickman and Weiss were probably too bound to 2nd<\/sup> Edition Dungeons and Dragons<\/em> rules on the heels of TSR\u2019s Deities and Demigods<\/em> publication. It\u2019s the story of a mortal mage, Raistlin, who opposes an evil god, from whom he seems to derive his magical powers. Magic is either presented as a limitation to being a god, or somehow not accessible to its worshippers. In a world with non-godly magic, what does anyone\u2014god or mortal\u2014get out of worship? Is it really just healing, as The Forgotten Realms suggest? Why wouldn\u2019t everyone just worship and practice Magic?<\/p>\n I also explore the paladin archetype in depth and it is unique. The archetypal characters of mages, fighters, etc. are familiar to all high and dark fantasy. The inclusion of dragons as a key element and the way they interact with the world can be explored on my blog at darmalcor.weebly.com or through the stories themselves. Like angels serving a goodly god, dragons worship and serve their own gods and their own agendas. There are micro and macro-scale battles of peoples, ideas, and religions. The Isles<\/em> are Forsaken<\/em> not because they needed a name, but because they are populated by refugees from the ancient empire of Merakor, which fell to the dark elves during a nexal inversion. The refugees forsook Merakor for the isles.<\/p>\n A nexus<\/em> is a concept different in my world. They serve as travel points between planes in the multiverse. The world of the Forsaken Isles is in the center of the nexuses of Creation\/Good, Chaos\/Abyss, and Warp\/Evil. When thing happen, like the dark elves wiping out the good empire of Merakor, it actually moves the entire world closer to the nexus of Chaos. This creates a cascade of destruction, cataclysm, and change. Similar things can happen if the world moves closer to Creation or Warp with the results you\u2019d expect. Time flows because of these nexuses interacting with the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> Speaking of the flow of time, Dar Tania, Malcor\u2019s Story and Bomoki\u2019s Gate all came out within a short amount of time and the latter two are fairly expansive.\u00a0 Can readers expect to continue seeing your books release at an accelerated pace like this?<\/p>\n EB:<\/strong> Yes. My fan reactions and reviews on Amazon have suggested that there might be more appetite for the 100 page books. I personally prefer large books in my own reading. I find them more satisfying and immersive. As such, my initial publication goal was to have Dar Tania<\/em> and Malcor\u2019s Story<\/em> release within sight of Bomoki\u2019s Gate<\/em>. My next two books will be shorter ones, like Dar Tania. One will pick up 5 years after Dar Tania<\/em>. The other will pick up after Bomoki\u2019s Gate<\/em>. Following that, I have 10 candidates for another larger (400 pages +) book, but want my writing to be more informed by reader feedback. So far, these characters in Dar Tania<\/em> have been very popular: Dar Tania, Princess Alaura, the ranger Bruce, and the white dragon patriarch Ynt\u2019taris.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n T: <\/strong>Your character names are so exotic sounding.\u00a0 How do you come up with them?<\/p>\n EB:<\/strong> The people of Dar Tania\u2019s tribe began as barbarians. This book is about their transformation into a \u2018modern\u2019 magic-wielding empire. The nations around them came from Merakor. They have more traditional names. Part of this comes from having played a lot of RPGs where players could not come up with cool fantasy names. My concession to such players was, \u201cOkay, fine. Name your warrior Stephen. Your character\u2019s family came from Merakor.\u201d I also try and come up with names suggestive of how a character is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> The Forsaken Isles books are a bit darker and focus on some heavy dramatic elements.\u00a0 Do you think it\u2019s also suitable for a younger audience?<\/p>\n EB:<\/strong> I first read The Hobbit<\/em> when I was 8 years old. I imagine my writing as PG13 with R-Rated themes. As a movie, depending on how graphic some of the violent combat scenes became, I can see my writing being R-Rated. This is not my desired goal though. I want readers to appreciate brutality as the tactical expression of ideas at war. To that extent, I have had a few younger readers enjoy Dar Tania<\/em>. They have all been prolific readers familiar with the fantasy genre. I certainly never attempted to write for a younger audience. But, when I started seeing a few reviews and emails from young readers and their parents, I decided to incorporate them by using easier names, like instead of \u201cmain gauche\u201d for an off-hand blade, I would write \u201clong dagger\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> What do you find challenging in writing fantasy?<\/p>\n EB:<\/strong> Interviews with my test readers have shown that the more I struggle with writing a character, the more they love it. As my readership expands, I\u2019ll be curious to see if this remains a theme. In Dar Tania<\/em>, one of the hardest characters to write was Prince Rowland. I thought for sure that readers would see him as a trope, a foil for other \u2018good\u2019 characters at best or a decadent noble staid in his inheritance. I was shocked when readers told me they saw him as a tragic character. I use my blog at darmalcor.weebly.com to explore some of these ideas in more detail.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> Because your books take place in vastly different time periods in your world, you\u2019re forced to leave some people behind.\u00a0 Has that been difficult for you?<\/p>\n EB: <\/strong>Time is kind of relative when you have some races, like elves and dragons, living forever. It matters to shorter-lived races but, in all fantasy, it\u2019s stretched out. Because gods are actively involved and exist in a different sense of Time, I actually have fun with it. When Time first started moving, the immortal Eldar reacted to it differently but universally considered it a lethal poison. As such, writing in the contemporary time frame of Malcor\u2019s Story<\/em> and Bomoki\u2019s Gate<\/em>, there are enough references to the foundation era of Dar Tania<\/em> that I view Dar Tania<\/em>, not as a time gapped story, but as a story-version glossary and history of Morbatten. Even though it\u2019s set many centuries before \u201ccontemporary\u201d time, for those with magically-lengthened lives like the priestesses, you\u2019re only talking about four generations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n T:<\/strong> You\u2019re a father of three.\u00a0 Do your children ever influence your writing, in or outside of the Forsaken Isles?<\/p>\n EB:<\/strong> I have three daughters, who love different genres.\u00a0 But, we bond over anime like Full Metal Alchemist, Studio Ghibli movies, and Bleach. I like to imagine that, one day, they\u2019ll read my stories. Until then, they ask and I share the stories with them storyteller style around campfires. The other thing is that the fantasy genre struggles with women characters sometimes. I blame the 1990s for sexualizing everything. I want my stories to have strong female characters who approach things on the same\u2014but different where being female makes it different\u2014footing as male characters. The reviews by women appreciating strong female characters tells me I\u2019m on the right track. Having more female participants in the fantasy genre would be a good thing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Dar-Tania-Front-cover.jpg\")
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