Welcome back, friends, to our podcast, Unlocking Your World of Creativity. Today, we're delving into the enchanting realm of epic and dark fantasy novels with a unique blend of tabletop role-playing games and strategy games. Joining us is the talented J. V. Hilliard, the author of the captivating Warminster Saga.

Exploring Epic Fantasy Foundations:

In our interview with J. V. Hilliard, we uncovered the foundational elements that make a great epic and fantasy novel. Here are the key ingredients discussed:

1. - World Building: Creating a believable and immersive world is crucial. Whether it's Middle Earth, Westeros, or Shannara, building a world grounded in realism with fantastical elements allows readers to escape and believe in the existence of the created realm.
2. Tropes: Themes such as struggle, redemption, forbidden love, and the hero's journey resonate with readers. Incorporating relatable challenges into characters' journeys helps readers connect with the narrative.
3. - *Recognition and Familiarity: Including recognizable elements like the hero's journey, coming-of-age stories, and enemies-to-lovers dynamics provides readers with something to identify with, especially in entirely made-up worlds.

Series Structure: Fantasy novels often take the form of series because readers, once invested in a richly built world, want to explore it further. Series allow for a more in-depth exploration of the intricacies of the world and characters.

J. V. Hilliard's Warminster Saga

We discussed the inspiration and world-building vision behind J. V. Hilliard's Warminster Saga, a four-part series. Originally envisioned as a standalone book, the success of the first installment led to the decision to expand it into a series. The series, rooted in J. V.'s decades-long experience with Dungeons and Dragons, explores the fantasy world of Warminster.

Crafting the Story

J. V. shared insights into his creative process and how he organizes the myriad elements of his stories. He uses a whiteboard to visualize plot interactions, events, and character developments. His approach blends planning and flexibility, ensuring a detailed and cohesive storyline.

From Page to Screen and Beyond

Excitingly, J. V. Hilliard has expanded the Warminster Saga into new mediums. He's licensed the intellectual property for an augmented reality video game and a virtual reality version, both set for release in the coming years. Additionally, a graphic novel adaptation is in the works, providing a visual and interactive dimension to the saga.

In closing, J. V. Hilliard emphasized the collaborative nature of the writing process, acknowledging the invaluable role of editors, beta readers, and the feedback loop with readers. He encourages aspiring authors to embrace constructive criticism and engage with the writing community.

To stay connected with J. V. Hilliard and explore the Warminster Saga, visit his website or find him on various social media platforms.

J.V.'s Website

J.V. on YouTube

@jvhilliardbooks on Instagram

J.V.'s Facebook page

Copyright 2024 Mark Stinson

  Welcome back, friends, to our podcast, Unlocking Your World of Creativity. And today we're going to explore a world of epic and dark fantasy novels with a unique blend and a twist of tabletop role playing games, strategy games, all mixed into the work, which has created a great series for our guest today, J.

V. Hilliard. J. V., welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to come on and speak

with everybody. . And you're doing some great work and it's a lot of fun. And as I mentioned to you at the outset, it's not my straight up genre of reading, but I know it's very popular and I'm looking forward to exploring this with you, what are some of the.

Foundational ingredients in a great epic and fantasy novel that you've said, for definitional purposes. .

So first of all, it's world building. And what I mean by that is if I'm writing a contemporary fiction novel and I say that Mark got in the car and drove down the street, I don't have to explain to them that the street was paved.

The car had gas. There's gravity. The sky was blue. Everybody knows that when you're building a world, whether it's Middle Earth, like Tolkien or, Westeros, like Lord of the Rings or any of that stuff, any using any of the the other great Shannara, for example, with Terry Brooks You have to build that world and people have to believe that world exists somewhere.

And in order to do that, there are things that they need to be familiar with. So it's grounded in some form of realism. And then there's stuff that's mystical, right? That fantastical, magical stuff that they can escape into that makes the world what it is, right? And people love Middle Earth because the hobbits and the culture and and things like that.

But there's also Mount Doom and, Sauron and the two towers and all that kind of stuff that makes it what it is. Same thing for Westeros. If you look at what Martin had been, had done for Game of Thrones, he basically pitted in many respects. A Chinese versus American kind of buried behind the scenes sort of political commentary, whether he wants to admit that or not.

It's very allegorical on. You see some realism in that too. And so it starts with world building. The second part of it is tropes. There are things that people like to read about, they'd like to see when they watch TV and movies and stuff that they can cheer for. So part of it is thematic, right?

And that theme, those themes come in things that people can identify with. So struggle, for example, whether it's struggle because of physical conditions, mental conditions, sociological conditions, whatever that struggle is, someone's been there and they want to identify with that character or that, or something like redemption.

Or forbidden love or all of the above, right? And so you want to give your characters one or more of those challenges to overcome, but that, because now, not only am I cast in a world that, like the Realm of Warminster, which is brand new to me, and I'm learning that on the fly, but I also can now identify with these main characters, so before that, I didn't know who they were and I didn't know what was going on, but now it's Oh, there's this forbidden love where this, thing, something that goes on where this character does something that they weren't born inherently evil, but they did something bad like Darth Vader and would turn from Anakin to Darth.

And then at the end is redeemed, do my characters. Choose the path of redemption or that or don't they and then the last ingredient I mentioned before is the other side of tropes Which is stuff that people recognize and they'd like to read over and over again so like the hero's journey which started with Odysseus and Homer and all of those kind of things and we see it repeated over and over again with Star Wars and Luke Skywalker Or Harry Potter, it's the same stuff.

We might not see it because it's clouded and, shrouded and, what I would describe as camouflaged sometimes with new characters and new situations, but we all want to cheer for that hero or a coming of age story or, enemies to lovers and stuff like that you see.

So you want to give people something that they can identify with, especially when your world is Entirely made up, there's nothing that they can identify with because they're not there. They don't live there And so those are the kind of things that ground it and just enough realism that they can buy into it But also it gives them something to keep reading further and further those characters become interesting because they see something of themselves In them, and then they want to see how it turns out, and the rest of the stuff is that's the fun part.

But those are the three main ingredients. Thanks

for framing that up for us. We've got a great series that you've launched called the Warminster Saga, four installments. But what was your inspiration and your world building vision for that saga?

I am a long time geek. And as any good nerd will tell you playing Dungeons and Dragons is a rite of passage.

And I started playing D and D when I was 10 years old. And I've been playing now for a couple of decades. I still play on Sunday nights with a bunch of friends that are scattered around the country. We all zoom in and Skype in and, and play six to 10 and get our nerd card punched for that week.

But, as part of that. You learn how to tell good stories, either as a dungeon master, the person who frames up the adventure and the campaign and the game scenario for a bunch of characters that are being played by your friends, or you're on the player side, and you're imagining everything that the dungeon master is coaching you to imagine, and then you're making decisions based on your character's role.

What would they do? And so if you make a very goodly character, how do they react to a certain situation? If you make up a very evil character or chaotic character, how do they react to a certain situation? So some might run into battle, others might run away from it, but, in most instances, the Dungeon Master puts together and weaves a story over a period of levels.

Which are basically graduation points and the same thing in video games, where you level up when your character clears a board of all the enemies, or you beat a big boss somewhere, and you get treasure and experience points and things, and all of a sudden your character becomes more powerful, and then you fight the next round of stuff.

Same thing happens in Dungeons and Dragons. And so by playing, for as long as I have, and dungeon mastering for most of that time, I've become a good storyteller, and all I did was, Take what I was vocalizing and weave it into words. And the good news is as many of the stories that were good were already battle tested.

These are people that I've been playing with that, that love the genre. Yeah. They love the game and they read my stuff and or watch my movies or watch my TV show. The same kind of stuff, not mine, but the genre of fantasy adventure in general. And they know what's good and not what isn't good. And so I take the bad stuff that didn't work.

Throw it out. I take the good stuff and write stories around it, right? And a lot of that stuff has, I think, helped me in really You mentioned inspiration earlier. It's inspired me to memorialize many of those strong campaigns that we all loved or enemies that we love to hate or fun times that we had because we shared that group delusion with one another playing the game.

And then we were able to train. I'm now able to translate that into a book. So a lot of my books, Have a little Easter eggs in them for my friends to find that no one else would know, but it was situations that happened to the characters. And when they get there, they laugh about it or they'll text me and they'll be like, that was my guy or that happened to my friend, Chris or whatever.

I see, I know what you did there. And it's just for them. It's fun because they're Easter egg searching for everybody else. They're enjoying it for the first time.

Love that. So it's a four part series. Two were released earlier. One just this summer and you've got the fourth coming up. Did you envision this as a four part story at four installments to begin with?

Or is that how it got laid out over time?

No, I was absolutely wrong. I mentioned off air that I was a COVID author. And I had no experience writing, fantasy adventure stuff. Save for my D and D play, and that's not really writing. That's more note taking and verbally storytelling.

So for me, I put together what I thought was going to be a bucket list thing. I wrote a book, I didn't waste time sitting at home doing nothing. Silver lining. I'm going to do this book. Kick it off my bucket list. anD then I shared it to, with a couple of friends, one of whom was an associate professor at a local college.

And she said, what you have here is pretty publishable. She introduced me to my development editor who would then eventually introduce me to my publisher. And my publisher said to me something that was so blatantly obvious that I didn't understand it until she said it. Which was look, this is a good story, but fantasy novels are always series.

They're very rarely standalones. And in part it's because, your readership, by the time you build out a world, you don't want it to end at the end of a book. Yes. You just can't leave it like a James Bond novel and go on to the next thing. And it literally has to be what's the next step.

So they expect the series. And so she said, I'll publish you, but I want a three book series. And then when we got it. Through book one, and when it found the commercial success that it had, we then said maybe that third book really becomes four books. What we did was we took book three and four and split them up, and then I added a bunch of juice to each of them.

And, we're now at the end of the the four book series here by year's end. And then hopefully we'll go on to the next series after that, which will be a follow on for many of the characters who survive books one through four. Yes.

I often wondered what created that expectation that all these fantasy novels are series.

You go into the bookstore and the whole shelf is lined with them. And now I understand what you're saying. It's you built the world, you built the characters, let's keep this thing going.

Yeah, and you don't see it until someone says it and you're like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. Cause it's not Lee Child, he has her Jack Reacher thing.

He doesn't have to build a world. It's just the character. Yes. So every book is a self contained thing. He just says, build a series around that. People that write my stuff are sci fi. Or even some dystopian and what I mean like I'm talking about like hunger games or things like that Oftentimes when you build that word, you just don't want to leave it at the end because people are like we want more of it We liked it enough that we want show us everything We want to learn everything about it the politics the currency the magic the religions the things that You spent all this time building up that makes sense.

You just can't leave them with just one book So I learned that by accident but now it makes so much sense, and I just wonder why I didn't think of it in the first place. Because all the books I read were all series, right? And I was like, I don't know why it didn't hit me until that moment. It was like crystallized for me.

Of course it's going to be a series.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I started this. I got to keep it going. You just listed off a few of those elements. Even mechanics and ingredients that found their way from the games into your story. And I'm curious from a craftsmanship standpoint, how you began to organize all these elements and maybe even how you began to track the story.

Did you do that with a storytelling tool? Did you have index cards on the wall? Post it notes all over your house. These are different things that different authors use. And I'm just curious how it became organized for you. Yes. And he got

all of those. All of the above. Yeah. So it happens. So I, there are the takeout that you want, like I literally have a notebook in my car that I carry with me. You can't see it cause I have my fake screen up, but the notebook stuff that you just have just in case something pops into your head or you use dictation on your phone or whatever it might be because ideas come to you in the strangest of ways.

And I will say that, for me, I'm always a bit of a planner. I know that authors are often. Baked into two categories. There's, there are the plotters like me, or there are the pantsers, those that write by the seat of their pants, and they can just sit down and start writing something and they don't know where it's going and they're just as curious where it ends too.

I'm not like that. I'm exactly what you described. I use a whiteboard in my den with, which has, it looks like a. You described it as it, like all these plot, interactions. If you could imagine like a sweet 16 March madness poll with characters meeting and then different seminal events happening and all this other kind of stuff.

And it pops up. And then what I do is I, as a done. With them and they're baked into the story. I'll erase them from the board so I don't have to worry about them. I know that they're there and I didn't miss anything. And that's how I plan. So I am a regimented planner, plotter, whatever you want to call me as part of that.

And I don't necessarily use any tools. Save for that simple whiteboard. And I also have notes that I just keep that I, if I don't use something and I want to use it down the road, I drop it in or something gets cut and hits the production floor in editing. I might want to use it down the road for something else.

I grabbed that and, drop that into a folder, for most of that's how I keep it organized. That's how I keep it connected. And then it looks right because, as again, I'm going to harken back to my dungeon mastering days, as a dungeon master, you're. Telling a story on the fly, and even though you want it to go in a certain direction, and you could try to lead your player characters in that direction, at the end of the day, they don't always do that.

And so sometimes they veer right, veer left, veer down, veer up, and you gotta be prepared for that, and so you have to learn on the fly. For me, I've already put these, I don't want to call them rubrics, but almost these regimens in place that allow me to keep the story tight and detailed without missing anything or leaving stuff out so there's plot holes and I'll see that visually and then I'll know that I'm done.

And I guess what about the editing and the, beta reader process, especially with this genre? It's do you get my world? Do you get all of these elements? So you're not just changing my writing. If you're not careful, you're changing the whole story. How did that work out

for you? It's the hardest part of writing.

To be very honest with you, it's easy to write a book compared to go through an editing process and survive it. And what I mean is you hit on beta readers and such, if I were to write something, even if it was well written and I handed it to my mother to read, she's going to say, it's the greatest thing ever, right?

Cause it's my mom. But when you hand it to someone that's a beta reader, someone who is consistently reading within your genre knows what's popular now knows what's what was popular before understands. Plot cycles has seen other worlds and says this is too close to that one, or this is exactly like that one.

Those are errors you might not see. Cause I don't, as much as it sounds crazy, you read, but you could never read as much as beta readers do. They love reading. That's a, it's a hobby. Some of them get through two or three books a week, like a ridiculous amounts of stuff and they leave reviews and they have blogs about it.

And people depend on them to. To tell them what's good and bad. So when you share it with them, you're offering them this advanced reader copy. You realize that iron sharpens iron, right? And you want that difficult, constructive, and I underlined the word constructive critique, you don't want them saying, I didn't like it.

And they're not telling you why what's their reasoning behind it. I liken it to a way that a producer or director shows a couple of screenings of a movie. And whichever one has the most positive outcome for the end, that's the end they choose. That's for the same things happen for me.

There are characters I've cut out. There are scenes that I've cut out that I love. I love them. And I can't get them in because it makes a better story. And what I found is writing through editing is a team sport. It's never just a writer writing and it's that's what they did. For me, for example, I go through a development editor who looks for plot holes.

Then it goes to a copy editor who looks for grammar problems. Then it comes back to me to fix it. Then it goes to my beta readers. My beta readers read it, come back and tell me what they like and they don't like. Then I go back and fix that again. Then it goes back through my development editor, goes back through my copy editor, and then the final version goes to my final editor who hasn't read anything yet, revives him, comes back to me and then goes to my publisher.

So by the time it gets to my publisher, it's gone through 12, 15 people and you have a better story. You might not want to admit it. You may not want to admit it. I'll be the first one to say during my first story, I didn't. And I learned the lesson the hard way that literally my final editor Phil said, your story needs to end here.

And he literally. Bang the table and said, yeah, like this is what, this is your end. These two chapters, push them in the book to fix it. And later, this is the ending of your story. The rest of that stuff took me away from the end and I want to leave ready for a page turner. And I was taught, people don't want cliffhangers anymore.

He's wrong, they do. They say they don't, but they do. They say it's a cliffhanger because they know they're going to buy the next one. And so it doesn't have to be cliffhanger all the time, and it just has to keep them turning the page. And that's what he meant. And so my ending to book one, that's when the light went on the editing process for me.

And I realized that it's better that it's a team sport and not just an individual sport where the book at the end and the series in the end came out better than it would have if it was just me writing In my den and sending it off to my publisher and not talking about

really debunked this image of the, click, clack, clack on the typewriter until the last page comes out, put it in an envelope and send it off and it becomes a book.

Never, not that way. Never. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. And for all the right reasons, I was gonna say it probably should not. Yes. Yeah. And on the other side of it too, and people don't think about this, but once you're out in the public domain and people are buying your books, the next stage of that is your...

Your reviewers, people that you meet at conventions and or book signings or at a library or a book club, and they come up to you and they say, this is what I like, didn't like, or why did you kill this character, or please don't do this for your next one, and then you see you might have an idea of the story going this way, and all of a sudden someone has a better idea, and you're like, now we're going this way, and so you have to keep an open mind, and that doesn't happen Unless you're out in the public meeting people, and people are telling you what they like and what they don't like, and it's okay for them not to like something, as long as they keep reading through.

I have some favorite reviews that were two and three star reviews that were like, I didn't like this and this three stars. But I'm waiting for the next. Yeah. Yeah. Then it's not as bad as you claimed it was. And so you let them off the hook a little bit and, and it's okay.

I don't mind. You have to have a thick skin in this business and just understand that, critics are who critics are, but. They're good for you. They make you a better writer. Yeah. And so I appreciate it. Don't agree with it.

That's right. I want to pursue that point in a moment, but I was going to ask you JV, if you had one of the books handy, I'd love for you to read a little excerpt.

Yeah, sure. Do sure. Do you want me to read the prologue from the first?

That'd be great. That way we can, the

tone is the last keeper. And you can see it. It blends in with my background pretty well, but this is prologue. So I'll just start with it. The blade of betrayal, the sharpest of weapons, is wielded not by your enemies, but by your friends.

Warminster the Mage. The sun was beginning to show red over the horizon as the wooded hollow in the shadows of the Dragonbreath Mountain stirred. Light streamed into the valley, illuminating the dew that clung on the long blades of grass, turning it into a sea of little stars. The first song of the morning echoed out of the trees and was soon supported by a chorus.

The soft, steady rush of a stream lay beneath the sound of the birds. It was a new one that had survived the flood of the last rain, and that might someday carve its own valley out of the mountain. Overhead, a breeze gently rustled the leaves of the treetops, seeming to whisper wordless secrets over the forest.

In an instant, a single ear splitting sound drowned the valley in a thunderous clap. A white hot blaze of magic twisted in the air, charring the ground beneath it. Birds fluttered into a frenzied cloud while woodland creatures scattered in all directions. A human figure, hunched and bleeding, tumbled out of the rift and onto the blackened ground.

After a long moment, the figure A man finally stirred. His burnt hands pressed into the scarred landscape, and with an excruciating difficulty, he forced himself into a seated position. He drew a long breath, and before he lifted his head, the man's face was dirty, his countenance heavily obscured by soot and ash.

From the slow movement and hunched posture, he could have been taken for an old man, though in truth he was barely beyond 40. Two dark rivulets of blood flowed over the grubby mess of his cheeks, dribbling like tears from hollow eye sockets. The man's head cocked abruptly to the side, alerted by some instinct, and he listened intently.

The faint sound of horses hooves and the shouting men's voices issued from the magical portal, which still hung in the air. He cursed himself and lurched unsteadily to his feet. The man swayed briefly, as if unsure of his balance, and then began stumbling deeper into the woods. He reached out with his hands and felt his way between the trees.

A loud whinnying of spooked horses suddenly echoed through the valley, followed by more shouting and the noise of armored feet hitting the ground. The man in the woods slowed, his shoulders slumping. This was a confrontation he wished to avoid if he could. We couldn't get them through, a voice called from behind him.

The horses. Nervous Beast. Horrible with magic. I suppose you knew that would slow us down. The man came to his halt, his head turning. He made no reply. Then again, said the other more quietly. I suppose you also knew we wouldn't need horses to catch you. What a state you're in, old friend. Still better looking than you, Captain, the man answered.

His pursuer sighed. You can stall all you want, Great Taurus. We have to take you back to the Cathedral, and you're in no shape to run any farther. Do you see me running? Great Taurus replied, and with a sharp gesture of heat, uttered a single word, and the door in the air disappeared. At least your horse is confirmed free without you.

Why are you trying to force my hand? The captain was beginning to sound frustrated. We could reopen the portal at need. You're only drawing out the inevitable. Oh, is Radu there? Poor fellow. You ought to be back with your books, Gray Taurus said, raising his voice and turning his blind eyes toward the crowd of men flanking their leader.

There was no reply. Really, Rone? He's been rubbished with a sword. The Great Keeper must be desperate. I volunteered, Radu replied, revealing himself. His voice trembled, and Gray Taurus sensed fear and adrenaline in his words. What a piteous fiend you've become. Gray Taurus shook his head and cackled. The words stung true, but he refused to let them know it.

His old teacher must have been pushed to the edge to ride here in his condition. You should have stayed there, Precept. He said, pushing himself defiantly away from the trunk and taking a blind step in the direction of his pursuers. You know I have orders to kill you if you refuse to come, Roan said. His tone had turned flipped and professional.

I'm asking you one last time. Don't make me do this. Don't make my men do this. They're as much your friends and fellows as I am. Kratoris just stood silently, resolute despite his weakness, his mouth flattening into a proud, angry line. Rone's armor rattled as he jerked his head, and his troops moved to flank and surround their target, drawing their swords with a cacophony of hissing steel.

It's over, Rone told him. You must surrender to the will of Erud. This great Taurus's expression hardened further. He said the all knowing God such as Aru Otto have seen this coming and resolved it before it happened. Aru has no will heresy, radus snapped from the ranks of soldiers surrounding him?

No. Radu is true. Great. Taurus went on Unbothered because of Aru had a will. One would think logically speaking that they'd do something to stop what I'm about to do. The night shifted toward Gray Taurus as Roan raised his gauntleted hand to give the kill order. All of them moved a split second too late.

Only Radu, quick witted and poor with a sword, had either the cowardice or the presence of mind to stammer out a protection spell. Drennering, odor fueled goat, the blind man uttered. All the men surrounding him winced in agony, grabbing at their chests and throat. A pain grew in Kratos arms, pulsing through his veins.

A magical necrosis drained the energy from the trees and grass around him. The waver of energy inside of him morshed from life to death, temporarily becoming one. The spell was working. Try to ring under Fjord or don't. He repeated again with some difficulty. The troops writhed and collapsed to their knees, as did Rone.

The Radu had evidently escaped. Grey Taurus did his best to ignore their groans, as well as their brutal, scorching pain that wracked his entire body, as the spell took effect. Almost unable to stop himself, Great Taurus repeated the incantation one final time, completing the spell. He fell to his knees, trying not to faint, but the spell had taken something from him too.

He realized that Roan's knights were dead, as much from the rising stench as through his own magical senses, but the spells kept moving onto the valley itself. leeching life out of the flora, filling the limbs of insects, seeming to even deaden the noise of the nearby stream. He felt the stolen strength of all the living things in the hollow rush into his limbs.

The pain was still there, but as the seconds passed, it became less intense, and he found that he could stand tall. Before he knew what he was doing, he made his way to his former friend's corpse, where it lay in the gray, nocified grass. The plants, once green and pliant, now crunched harshly under his feet, and once or twice even broke his skin.

Gray Taurus knelt among them, feeling for Roan's body. When his fingers found the male covered torso, it rose slightly under his hand. He started. One hand flew to Roan's mouth to check for breath, and he felt the faintest gust touch his palm. Stunned, he sat back. The captain was clearly on the edge of death, but by all rights should already or should have never survived the first wave of the spell, let alone the last.

Gray Taurus paused, listening to Roan's quiet, labored breathings. Apologies and explanations sat just under his tongue, but his lips twisted against them. You brought this on yourself, he told a dying man. The two of us must make a grim picture, he thought, sitting in the middle of stillness born of death rather than peace.

Surrounded by petrified street trees and scorched earth, this hollow will never be a natural place again. He skipped a His heart skipped a beat, then slowed to a deathly pace as the spell continued to exact a toll on his body. The pain returned with a vengeance searing through his flesh like hellfire.

In his agony, a single wild thought suddenly entered his brain, and he quickly spoke the incantation of another spell. One that would both save and damn Roan. One that would preserve their friendship, even if in the most twisted possible form. In that moment, his only wish was not to be alone. Though still unconscious, Roan drew a harsh breath, followed by a loud, keening scream.

The cracking of bone met Graytaurus's ears as the man beside him began to transform. At the same time, his own pain intensified so that he, too, was unable to keep from crying out. His strength finally drained to its limit by the necrotic ravages of the spell that had petrified the hollow. Graytaurus lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground.

Moments later, the nameless beast that had once been roaned Talamere stirred and wolfed quietly, sat back on its haunches and waited for its master to awaken.

Thank you. We've been listening to J. V. Hilliard read it from the prologue of the first book in the installment of Warminster's saga. It's called The Last Keeper. Thanks for sharing that got a good sense. Oh, of the style and pleasure. The wor my and their and your voice. Good things are happening with the the book and the series.

What do you see ahead, to coming full circle from a game back to a game perhaps .

Saga through that will help me offer this in the form of a sort of an adult comic book. So as you can tell by the prologue even though I think advanced young adults would be able to read this, it has some dark. Fantasy to it. The good guys don't always win. And for those fans of the genre, they're going to get a little bit of that Dungeons and Dragons feel with a bit of Brooke Stoker twisted into it.

It's like this dark fantasy that he put into it. So if you like that kind of stuff, you like the Gothic, you like Dracula, you like cryptids and monsters you should like the Warminster saga.

That's exciting. You've also I think provided not only a background of your work, but you've inspired some other authors who might be working on their own stories, their own novels, but also you're the owner of the altered reality magazine, and you give a voice to a lot of authors there with some different kinds of fiction and poetry.

What is that for you in terms of your role or your desire to really give a platform of creativity to

more storytellers? Yeah in this day and age of writing traditional publishing has really been challenged by the independent authors, right? And there's a lot of good indie authors out there that just can't get traditionally published.

And in some cases, they don't want to be traditionally published. Amazon, among other outlets, have provided them a forum in which they can share their art. And, altered reality magazine is just one of those platforms and I used to be them. I was a novice writer who had never stuck more than a toe in the writing waters.

And so for me to be able to provide a portal to publication for folks that might struggle because of the way the traditional publishing houses. Transact business. They're very selective. They look for people that have major followings. They want to see something in a story that flows the way that their AI technology tells them it needs to flow, like all those kinds of things, where it's someone that just has a good story and wants to put it out there.

We're there to be, that portal for them. And so we work with. primarily speculative authors and speculative poets who'd like to write in sci fi, fantasy, dystopian, stuff about cryptids, gothic, horror, things like that, to allow them a platform to not only get published for the first time in many instances but also, have a track to using that to, that might be something they can add to their resumes if they do want to go down the traditional publishing path, as well as make them available.

We, we recommend a lot of the work that comes through us for awards, right? That's another way that you can gain recognition as an independent author. People will buy that stuff. And there is a movement out there that that folks like to buy from indie authors, especially at conventions, because they know that these are really the starving artists that are out there these days.

And they're, yeah. That's right. And so for them, this is a way for them to get recognition by their peers, recognition in their communities. It will encourage people to buy their stuff without having to buy it off of Amazon's platform, or to go to a Barnes and Noble, or in some cases, find people they wouldn't necessarily find because other, publishing sources had turned it down outright.

And so this for me, I think is a way to give back to that community. I'm a success story that came from it, and for me it's a way to help other authors give them that handout that they may need to get into get into the game and see if they want to make it a career or if it's something they just want to do as a hobby to, we have a lot of people that just are hobby authors like, Hey, I like to do this, it's cool if I get, but I'm just doing it because I like to tell stories and it's fun and you put stuff out there.

And so we have. Thank you. We have stuff from serials that look exactly like Kendall's Vela all the way down to short stories to quarterly magazines that we put out that people submit to because thematically is something they want to write about. So it's a lot of fun and you get to meet a lot of people.

That's great. It's very admirable, the hand up that you're talking about. So

I used to be there, right?

We all have that. So it's good that you're giving back. JV, how can we find out more about your work and stay connected with you and follow along?

Yeah, I'm really easy to find. You can check me out at JV Hilliard dot com and that'll take you to my website and you can find all my work there or, find out what's coming up next.

And or if you're a social media person, you could find me on Twitter slash X, whatever it is now tick tock Instagram and YouTube at JV Hilliard books or on Facebook and discord just at JV Hilliard. So pretty easy to get to me. And I respond to joe at JV Hillier dot com. So if you've got a question about the novels, you got a question about writing.

You just want to talk to a, an author and get an idea of, what it's like to jump in, feet first, whether it's into your publishing. I always try to respond within 24 hours. Love to chat about it and I appreciate the opportunity to share

that with everyone out there. And with the fourth installment coming up just before the holidays, do you plan to be out touring?

Do you plan to go to any conventions? What

are your thoughts? Yes. This is a contact sport, in order to be successful, you got to be out there meeting with folks. And the book will come out right before the holidays. The big year end conference for me is GalaxyCon that'll be in Columbus the second week of...

Of of December. And, but, I make this, I do the circuit. I'm around at Comic Cons, Galaxy Cons. You can find me at libraries. You can send me an email and ask me to speak to your group, whether it's virtual or come and meet with you. I try to make to as many book fairs as I can and get out and really have a chance to talk to people, promote the series and, hope to find, new readers at every turn.

I love it. Thanks for coming on the show. What a great conversation. I've learned a lot about the genre, but I've also learned a lot about your process and what contributes to this.

It has been my absolute pleasure and thank you very much for having me on today. It was obviously I was going to say it was all the thanks and gratitudes on this side of the

table.

Thank you. And my guest has been JB Hilliard. We've traveled to Pittsburgh, PA today, but we're going to continue our around the world journeys to talk to creative practitioners in all creative fields. about how they get inspired and how they organized. I love the way JV described the process and somewhat of the chaos.

It always is, right? It's creativity is a little messy sometimes, and it always good, but ultimately we gain the confidence and we make the connections to launch our work out into the world. And that's what it's all about. So come back again next time. And until then, I'm Mark Stinson and we'll be unlocking your world of creativity.

We'll see you next time.