One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.
This week, we bring you fantasy writer Todd Sullivan, who is sharing the inspiration behind his two series: The Windshine Chronicles (the third and latest book, Blood Stew, will be out in 2021!) and The Vampire Series of Extreme Horror.
An Inspiration Most Mundane
I’m currently working on Blood Stew, the third book in The Windshine Chronicles. Many themes tend to be the inspiration for my fiction, but for this book, the first novel of the series (Books 1 & 2 being novellas), my inspiration was simple and universal: money.
More specifically, financial debt.
I, like many Americans, have fairly significant student loans I’m supposed to pay back at some point before I die. I also have two credit card bills that have grown in size over the last six years. When I started writing Blood Stew, I wanted to bring the concern of money, or lack thereof, to a fantasy setting. The first title that I played around with for this novel was Dearth, which means to lack something, or to be lacking. Though I do like that title, I feel it’s not as impactful as Blood Stew. When you promote, having something that makes people sit up, and is also memorable, is crucial.
In Blood Stew, which takes place in a fantasy setting of the Middle Ages in South Korea, the characters are all without something. The universal lack is money, though for some of the individuals who populate the novel, there are other things essential to their life that they do not have enough of: lack of power in a dangerous world; lack of support when trying to accomplish their goals; lack of food to keep their family from starving. The characters in this novel are all in desperate need of something, and they are all trying to figure out the best way to get it.
This builds up to the second theme of the novel: sacrifice.
In order to obtain what they want, the characters are forced to decide what they will pay. This, too, is a universal theme taken from real life. From America to Korea to Australia to Africa, we are all faced with similar dynamics: working long days and commuting long hours to make ends meet; doing spiritually numbing jobs, or physically strenuous jobs, or stressful and frustrating jobs, or dead-end jobs, so that you can maintain a roof over your head and food on your table.
In every country around the world, we must pay a price to get what we want. For many, the price is high and the rewards are small. Often there is little choice, for if you don’t work for what you need, you probably won’t get what you want, as few will give it to you for free.
The characters in Blood Stew discover and rediscover this universal truth from one chapter to the next in Book 3 of The Windshine Chronicles.
I am a genre writer, and my two current book series are fantasy and horror. When I conceive each new volume in the series, I often start off with what’s universal; some concern shared by the people of the world. In The Windshine Chronicles, young men go on quests to become heroes. The overarching theme is humans trying to achieve significant goals, and all the ways in which they may fail along the way.
In The Vampire Series of Extreme Horror, the story is essentially about having a bad job, except for the characters in this nightmarish universe, their employment is forever.
By infusing the everyday into genre fiction, the scenes and events are given a feel of the real and a higher level of verisimilitude. Dragons and giants become metaphors for the trials and tribulations ordinary people must face in their daily lives.
When your financial debt grows until its size dwarfs you, you may feel like Frodo and Sam at the foot of Mt. Doom. You may wonder how you’re ever going to become free of the ring of bills that weighs you down with every step you take towards your final goal — the deep crevice in the sheer rock where you’ll be baptized by fire and freed from your burden.
Todd Sullivan teaches English as a Second Language, and English Literature & Writing in Asia. He has had numerous short stories, novelettes, and novellas published across several countries, including Thailand, the U.K., Australia, the U.S., and Canada. He is a practitioner of the sword-fighting martial arts, kumdo/kendo, and has trained in fencing (foil), Muay Thai, Capoeira, Wing Chun, and JKD. He graduated from Queens College with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Georgia State University. He attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camps. He currently lives in Taipei, Taiwan, and looks forward to studying Mandarin.
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