Author Interview: Crownfall by Michael Vadney

Your hosts are joined by Michael Vadney to discuss his debut novel, Crownfall. They talk about the different flavors of Dark Fantasy, character arcs in the New Adult genre, and how the different types of trust form the core of Crownfall’s story.

Find more from Michael:

https://michaelvadney.com/

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Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Transcript

Lilly 0:04

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. And Lily.

Sara 0:09

And I'm Sarah, and I'm very pleased to welcome Michael Vadney onto the podcast to talk about his debut novel Crown Fall.

Michael 0:17

Hello. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Hope you guys are doing well today.

Sara 0:21

Yeah, thank you for joining us.

Lilly 0:24

Well, we're so excited to talk about your book, but we have a couple of intro questions. First, starting with something great that happened recently.

Michael 0:32

Yes. I actually have two. I'll start with the less heartfelt one. You can't see this because we're not on video, but I have shelves up. I've, I've been talking about putting shelves up in my office for months and it's just been this like teal wall behind me and I love the color, but we need to break it up, so I'm glad to finally get those shelves up. But the other one that I'm honestly much more excited about is I have a 15-year-old dog. I've had her for a very long time. She's doing much better now, but she was having a bit of a rough time, and she's finally on the, the recovery and it's just so good to see her scampering around and eating and actually being a normal dog. And it's just like, oh, thank God. I'm glad you're okay.

Lilly 1:15

Oh, that is wonderful. Good PET news is always like the best feeling in the world,

Sara 1:21

It is.

Lilly 1:23

less heartfelt. My good thing is that I made a really good salad yesterday.

Michael 1:27

Ooh, that's, do not underestimate a good salad.

Lilly 1:31

I mean, I'm still riding that high. It just doesn't quite have the same emotional impact,

Michael 1:37

I don't know. A good salad can be life changing.

Lilly 1:40

Yeah, a good garlic and herb feta is pretty emotional, so.

Michael 1:45

I will agree.

Sara 1:47

Similarly, my good thing is also less heartfelt but we have finally. Broken our heat wave. So it is in the much more moderate seventies today and not the nineties.

Michael 2:00

Yeah. That, that feels good. I'm expecting the temperatures to go up for a while. I'm down here in Texas, so we don't get a very long spring.

Sara 2:10

Yeah, it's and temperatures will go up here eventually, but it's not usual to, to have 90 degree temperatures in March. So

Michael 2:19

It is a little early for that. It.

Lilly 2:21

What's everyone drinking today?

Michael 2:23

Right now I am drinking coffee. This is my second cup of the day. There's this company called Black Rifle Coffee in, I think they're based here in Texas because they're all over the place and they have really good blends and really good roasts. And so I've been enjoying a lot of that lately.

Lilly 2:41

Nice. I also have coffee.

Sara 2:43

I feel like coffee is the right vibe for this book. Maybe not necessarily good coffee To be clear, I feel like, I feel like strong bitter coffee fits with some of the things that that happen in the novel.

Michael 2:56

I can't wait to hear more about that.

Sara 2:59

I'm not drinking coffee. I'm drinking tea.

Lilly 3:01

You are the odd man out today, but that's all right. You're still invited?

Michael 3:06

is wonderful. I'm a big green tea fan, but I also like black tea.

Sara 3:09

Yes. This is a, a nice oolong tea.

Michael 3:13

Nice.

Lilly 3:14

And has anyone read anything good lately other than of course, crown Fall, which we are about to discuss at great length?

Michael 3:21

I, I am definitely reading Crown Fall again right now as I like, have the physical copies here and just reliving this journey that I've been taking. But I'm also reading right now, or I'm listening on audiobook A Drowned Kingdom by PL Stewart.

Sara 3:36

Nice.

Lilly 3:37

wonderful.

Michael 3:39

been on my TBR for a while. I'm finally getting around to it and it's really good. I'm also confused by it, not by the story. The story is great, but it is, it's 90% narrative summary, but at the same time, the, the narration of the main character is just so good that I'm enjoying every single step of it.

Lilly 4:03

Yeah, that book, because it is such like a strong character, first person perspective, you have to like fully commit.

Michael 4:13

Yeah, like he, he can be a, a bit of a righteous bastard, but he is just so fun to watch being a righteous bastard.

Lilly 4:20

Yeah. Sarah, you got anything better than me?'cause I, mine is bad. Is it pug noises? Have you been reading pug noises? Was that your answer?

Sara 4:30

Yes,

Michael 4:30

It do be like that.

Sara 4:31

I have been reading pug noises. No, it's just been.

Lilly 4:35

Oh my goodness. You know, I'll actually honestly say they're usually not this ramped up.

Sara 4:42

They are not usually this bad.

Michael 4:45

You, you can blame it. On my presence,

Lilly 4:47

Well, I got the Mayo Clinic's Guide to Your Babies. First Years in the Mayo this week, so I've been reading that. I like it a lot better than some of the other baby books I've read lately. I just appreciate its tone and it's very straightforward and it doesn't, both sides things too much, which some books are like, Hey, you know, if you wanna have zero medical interventions, that's totally fine. And it's like, no, no, that's not fine.

Michael 5:18

I was gonna ask like, what, what makes a good baby book? I am kind of curious.

Lilly 5:23

Yeah. Not trying to stroke everyone's ego. Like, any choice you make is fine. No, tell me the right choice. You're a doctor. I'm coming to you to tell me what the choice is supposed to be

Michael 5:35

Yeah. You're, you're here to get guidance not to have more options.

Lilly 5:40

I don't wanna hear about how effective essential oils are during childbirth. That's just not the information I'm seeking out.

Michael 5:47

Yeah, there, there's a lot of things like that where like, especially in like medicine where I get it, this stuff can be very helpful. There are a lot of things outside of like traditional like medical practice where you can be like, Hey, this helped me and that's great for you. I'm glad it did. But those things just smell good to me.

Lilly 6:06

Yeah. And yeah, like looking for a book. To be an authority and not just like, here's all the options. No. Evaluate them. Please have an opinion. I need you to have an opinion for me.

Michael 6:19

Yeah, because you just don't have that background of information.

Lilly 6:22

No. So it's, it's good. But also very dry. It is a nonfiction book, so. not nearly as fun as crown fall, which I sure hope is not nonfiction. I assumed it wasn't.

Michael 6:36

Oh my God, that would be one spectacular with the things that happened into it, I would love to visit that world. I don't wanna stay because of, you know, there's not a lot of great things that happen to people there, but, you know, that would still be cool to see a, a giant city, like powered by cite and everything. I would love to see that.

Lilly 6:56

So, what genre would, would you define Crown Fall as? I know that's genre definitions can get really personal and specific. So from, from the author's mouth.

Michael 7:07

Yes. So I have been calling Crown Fall, a Noble Dark. Fantasy, and you can tack on a lot of things that go with that. It is an action adventure. It is a political intrigue story. It is a little bit on the darker side of fantasy without being like grim dark. But yeah, there's, there's a lot of boxes that you can put it into, but there are noble, dark fantasy is my favorite one to call it so far.

Sara 7:32

so I'm not super familiar with the noble dark. Genre. What would you say defines that? Is it like a little grim light, grim, dark, but people are noble and not just unrelenting bastard the entire time.

Michael 7:47

That's actually pretty spot on. It's, it's a flavor of darker side of fantasy. So there's these four, I'm gonna call'em flavors because I can't even say they're really genres because there is the one that everybody knows Grim dark. There's the one that I'm writing in Noble Dark, and then there's Grim Bright and noble Bright, and it's just a different spectrum on an Xi of how light or dark is your world and how light or dark is your characters. So the intersection of Noble Dark is we have a grim, dark styled world. The world is unfair. There are institutions in place and power that. Are corrupt or not doing the best thing by the people or what they're supposed to be doing. But there are still individuals within this world who are noble, who are still trying to do the right thing, even if they mess up along the way. I think the most popular author of this style of writing would be like Brandon Sanderson kind of stuff, where you have like Dnar Colin, who is a man who is a warmonger in his youth and then trying to be a better person. Trying to rectify the mistakes and trying to stick to his moral code. And it's about, it's stories about people who are just trying to do the right thing in bad situations.

Lilly 9:09

so is that your favorite of the flavors? Is that the is noble dark what you prefer to read or.

Michael 9:16

Generally yes, I like to dip my toes into the other types of stuff. I like to occasionally read a good grim dark. Mark Lawrence is my favorite grim dark author, even though not all of his stuff is grim dark. But his his broken Empire series was. My first grim dark read when I was younger and I was like, holy cow, this is bleak, but god damn, I gotta keep following this shit. It's amazing. And then every once in a while I like to read something that's a little on the noble bright side as well, where it's like it's lighter. There are still some like serious things that we're dealing with, but it's generally a noble, bright would be a story where in general the world is good and in general, people are good. But there is this evil force that is coming to corrupt it all. Like that's very noble, bright, very like classic fantasy.

Lilly 10:06

Yeah, it's, I haven't tried, so maybe I shouldn't say that. I don't think I could do a grim dark series. I love, like give me the dark, fucked up shit. But like in a short story, in a novella.

Michael 10:18

Yeah.

Sara 10:19

I, I think for me, grim dark is usually too much, so I really appreciated the balance in this book of, yes, there are a lot of terrible things in the world, but the people are generally trying to do good. Because I, yeah, I have, trouble when, when the main characters are are also unrelentingly grim.

Michael 10:38

Yeah, it, you gotta be in a good mindset, or at least me personally, I have to be in a good mindset to dive into a grim dark story. I can't live there. For most of my reading, I need to, every once in a while go in and then I need to wash myself clean with some good characters that I can root for.

Lilly 10:55

Yes, variety.

Sara 10:57

Yes,

Michael 10:57

Yes, most definitely. I, I also just like noble dark because it really reflects my view of the world. I always think that as a personal model that I can either improve myself or my situation. I am always at least in that level of control of everything that is happening in my life. And that's the kind of stories that I wanna write. I wanna write stories where, yes, there are a lot of things you cannot control. There's a lot of things that are unfair out there, and you feel small and powerless to do anything about. There is still stuff within your reach that you do have an effect on and that you can improve, like I said, either yourself or your situation

Sara 11:36

So you've shared a little bit of your writing journey on your podcast author adjacent. How did that project affect your writing process?

Michael 11:46

a lot. I was very fortunate. I started out doing audio only as like a podcast and it was just me. I was just. Pretty much repeating the things that I was learning about writing. I would be like, oh, how do you outline something? Because I'm definitely a plotter. And I would do a bunch of research on it, and then I would practice it, and then I'd be like, okay, I can do an episode on that to teach people what I've learned and just try to make it ingestible and accessible for, there's a lot of stuff to learn about writing. Here's a small piece of it if you need a little bit of a deep dive. And then I got more and more into like the book community into other podcasts and YouTube of like a bunch of people doing book stuff. And eventually I met Adrian EB Gibson through doing an arc read for him. And he's been. Hugely encouraging for both like my podcasting journey and for my writing journey. And he eventually encouraged me like, you should do interviews. And I was super scared to do them. Like absolutely terrified. The first time I got CM Kaplan as my first interview he was very kind and I reached out to him and I was just like, Hey, I've never done this before, but I'm trying to build this thing. Would you be willing to be my first guest? And he was like. Hell yeah, man. Let's do this. He was super cool, but as far as like how that has affected my writing, as soon as I got into doing the interviews, the amount I was learning and how fast I was learning about writing, not just the the craft of itself, but like how to package a book, how to publish, like what kind of things you should be looking for in editing and how to make a good cover. I learned so much, so fast, and it was just so much easier to make these kind of episodes where I was just sitting down having a conversation and then sharing that conversation with the world. And God, I learned so much doing these interviews and even if I put out an interview and only like 20 or 30 people watch it, I still learn so much about it.

Lilly 13:48

I feel like we're always trying to balance, uh, you know, we should ask questions in an interview that the listeners are gonna care about and wanna hear. Or we can just ask questions that I wanna know the answer to. Luckily, those are usually like overlapping quite a bit.

Michael 14:04

yeah, because you are readers as well, you are fans of authors and stories, so there's going to be people out there that wanna know the things that you wanna know.

Lilly 14:13

Sometimes it feels very self-indulgent though,

Michael 14:15

and those are always percent. Like there, there, there is a, a bit of selfishness that comes with like, doing these interviews, especially like, as an author doing these interviews because they also. Full transparency. They open up a lot of doors for networking and such because now if someone's got a project going on, they remember, oh, there's that Michael Vadney guy who had a podcast and had me on a show. We had a good time. Let me reach out to him. Maybe we can do another podcast episode or maybe we can do some kind of collaboration. And you just build this network of people you can call on to do a bunch of cool things.

Sara 14:54

Well, it's interesting to hear you talk about how much you were learning from these, these interviews that you were doing, because something that immediately struck me about ground fall was how polished it felt, particularly for a debut novel, particularly a self pub debut novel. And so I, I think that, yeah, the, the amount that you learned is definitely evident in Crown Fall.

Michael 15:16

Thank you. I, I wanted to create a book that you could not tell. It was indie published like that, that, to me, that is the goal, that is the bar bare minimum that I set for myself. So I went through it with 10 drafts and I wanted to make sure that every draft was significant. Was constantly improving the story, and if it wasn't doing those things, I pivoted and went in a different direction because I wanted people to pick it up and not be able to tell that, oh, this is just some guy that put it together and threw it out onto the internet.

Lilly 15:50

So diving more into the content of Crown Fall, how did you manage introducing our independent main characters and sort of managing their plot lines before they start getting woven together?

Michael 16:05

That was definitely a delicate balance that I had to shift gears pretty hard about halfway through the process of making this book initially. So I have three main characters. There's Amara, KDE, and Jeller, and. At first, I thought, okay, I'll take these three characters and I will map their story across the three act story structure. It's good enough for Aristotle, it's good enough for me. And then I wove those three together like a braid, and I was like, okay, inciting incident. Inciting incident, first plot twist, and just try to bring them all together. This was a mistake. Going about it this way, it was much more complicated than I expected and I ended up having a very repetitive pacing for inciting incident. Inciting incident. Inciting incident. All right. First plot point. First plot point. First plot point for each of the three characters, which doesn't make for a very engaging read when you blend that all together. So it was probably about draft three or four. I took it all apart. Slapped it all back together in a way that the pacing was much more enjoyable as a full and cohesive story where you get tidbits from one POV about the other POVs, where not everything has to be on the page. If I can tell you about it as a little aside over here from someone else's perspective, and just trying to narrow it down to what is the most important thing I could be telling the reader right now.

Sara 17:37

Talking a little bit about kind and jelled and Amara to, to a lesser extent. But something that struck us about all of these characters is how young they are and how. They're doing their best while in over their heads, but they don't always make the best decisions because, because they're so young.

Michael 17:56

Yeah. That honestly, that's a lot of people, uh, as you're growing up, you're just trying to figure out how life works, but at the same time, you have things that you want and you also have, these are all young people that have a lot of responsibilities on them. Like KDE is the youngest out of all of them at 19. Amara is supposed to be, I think about 22 and gel is around 25. So they're all in their like early twenties kind of age. like either. Roughly college or post-college age. And it's around that time that like most of us experience this huge shift in, we have a ton of responsibility and not quite the skills to deal, deal with that responsibility and not the emotional intelligence to deal with a lot of these things. And so I kind of wanted to tell a story about this time, about learning how to become the person that you wanted to be and achieve the things that you wanted to do. While not having all the tools to do it.

Sara 18:56

Well, and not gonna go into, into spoilers because we are still in the spoiler free section, but it does make their character arcs really rewarding to see them grow as they're dealing with all of the shit that's thrown at them.

Michael 19:09

Ah, thank you. And I, I hope I threw enough shit at them because man, they go through the ringer a little bit.

Lilly 19:16

It is almost like a second coming of age. Right? Because it's, not a coming of age story. They're young adults, but they're adults. But it is that like second level of maturing and kind of adapting to the world around you.

Michael 19:31

Yeah, I've been labeling it as a new adult which is kinda like that middle ground between ya and adult fiction, where it's usually featured around protagonists that are about college age, which is what I'm rolling with right now, where you could enjoy this story if you are 16, but you can also enjoy this story if you are 35. It just kind of hits that middle ground with, yeah, maybe you can enjoy this story when you're older as well. That is great. There are a bunch of people in their sixties who are reading ya and that's awesome. But it is, like you were saying, secondary transition of I have all these skills, I have all these responsibilities, and I have no idea how to do any of them.

Lilly 20:12

One of my favorite bits of flavor around world building is slang and the different words that people invent for their fantasy worlds. So in Crown Fall, the one that struck me, it was Thorn or thorning as a curse word. Can you tell us a little bit about developing that?

Michael 20:30

Yes. So I like in world slang like that too. I like in world cursing, and that was something that I kind of wanted to. Straddle the line a little bit with as far as like cursing goes, because I wanted this book to be widely accessible. I wanted it to be something that a parent could give their high schooler and be like, Hey, this is okay to read because we're not saying shit, fuck damn all the time, like you would find in a grim dark and stuff like that. But I did still want it to be. More adult leaning. So we say whore, we say bastard, but I, we needed a bunch of other in world curses to cover the things like fuck and shit. I know I'm cursing a lot while I'm talking

Lilly 21:13

This is not a YA podcast. It's okay.

Michael 21:15

Thank goodness. But then, so I needed words for these things and that, so I started thinking about like, what kind of words would they use instead? And a lot of cursing originates from religion, what the things that they believe in and the things that people find sacred. So whatever you find sacred. Give it that dirty little twist and that is what you're probably gonna be cursing about. So in Crown fall where the story takes place on the island of nt, they worship a the EL tree, which is like a tree of life. Very classic kind of, God worship for a religion. So a lot of their curses are plant-based or tree based. So we got thorns, we got bent Branch. One of my favorite ones very early on is there's a character named Lefty where he talks about ELs Left Nut. And that's just funny to me because like there's nuts on a tree and nuts as in the genitalia. I love that. It's so funny to me.

Lilly 22:16

It's a great double entendre.

Michael 22:18

What's not to love.

Lilly 22:20

Well, we have a lot more questions, but they should only be listened to by someone who has read the book or does not care about spoilers. So we're about to head over there. But first I have a question for Sarah who should read this book?

Sara 22:34

Honestly, I think if you are a fan of Mistborn, you're gonna love Crown Fall.

Lilly 22:39

Yeah, great comp, no notes. That's exactly it.

Michael 22:43

Hey, that works. That that is very much what I was aiming for was those fans who were looking for that light and dark, easily accessible kind of story.

Sara 22:53

I, I think you nailed it.

Michael 22:55

Thank you.

Sara 23:00

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Lilly 23:03

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Sara 23:10

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Lilly 23:18

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Sara 23:25

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers.. So we talked a little bit about the three main characters and how, how you intertwined their their storylines. I really enjoyed the, I'm gonna call it a subversion or because it was a subverting my expectations of when the book starts out, I was sure that Kindle was going to be of the three main characters, he was going to end up being like the central one. And then as the story progresses, we still see him, but the, other two characters, Amara and Jeer, start to really kind of take over the story for me in a, in a good way. And so, yeah, I, I really liked how, how that played with my expectations.

Michael 24:12

Yeah, thank you. There was a lot that I wanted to say in this story, and I knew I couldn't do it from a single perspective, so I made three, and each of them are part of the bigger story, but each of them is also telling a different part of it with. Ell, you get your action adventure like that is, that is his embodiment. He is an mostly a revenge story of going through the slums and rising to towards his goals and trying to achieve his dream of sling his enemies who have destroyed his life. Classic. A lot of people like that. And then with Amara, I wanted to tell a political intrigue story. I wanted to tell the story of a young woman who was capable and ruthless and. Was trying to do the best by her family. And then with Jeller, I wanted to talk about the world and the magic, and learning how to trust your values and trust your morals when they have been tested and broken. And for each of them, that's what I wanted to focus on. I wanted to focus on a different aspect of trust. Geller is about trusting himself. Amara is about becoming trustworthy. ELL is about trusting others. That's like a big theme throughout the whole thing that I really wanted to focus on.

Sara 25:31

And it's, interesting too because Kindle's revenge arc kind of gets cut short in a way. He's not the one to kill. I've pronounced his name Gian. I don't know if that's how you would envisage it.

Michael 25:43

I've been envisioning it guion, but Gian is also good. I will take both.

Lilly 25:48

That's the downside with not listening to an audio book version is then, I don't know.

Sara 25:53

yeah. If Guillen is the official, the official version word of Word of God version, then then I will go with Guillen. But yeah kind isn't the one to kill Gian. he is just kind of, they're killing other, well, not killing other people, but making, making sure that Jer has enough time to save the city. And it means that that Gellard is the one who kind of inadvertently kills Ian which was another really interesting subversion for me.

Michael 26:20

Yeah, because that's, where their stories kind of cross is. Jailer's whole story is about. Not wanting to build weapons. He is this, this genius engineer of this, magical tech that exists in the world. And his whole thing is he does not wanna make weapons. He doesn't want to negatively affect anyone or anything. And as he goes through the story, he kind of, at that final moment, he is put in a position of, if I do not harm, everybody dies. At the same time. On the other side of that, every revenge story is about how revenge doesn't solve your problems. It doesn't fix anything. It might, a lot of times it doesn't even feel good in the moment because it's just, you've built this up for however long that you've kind of carried this chip on your shoulder. So I wanted to. Really lean into that by taking away from that entire element. In earlier drafts, he a hundred percent kills gion and it is brutal and bloody and cathartic. But as I was going through the story and like really figuring out what my themes were and what I wanted the characters and through them, the readers to learn was like, Hey. I'm gonna take this away from kde. He's not gonna get it even though he's worked so long for it. Even though he thinks that is the thing that will bring him happiness, it won't. That is, in my mind, a very true lesson. And so I wanted to put that Yeah.

Sara 27:50

a reader, it felt much more satisfying almost for him to not get that satisfaction because it, it did feel very true to, yeah. Revenge doesn't, it doesn't solve your problems. You're not gonna feel better.

Michael 28:03

Yeah, the ending to ELL story I didn't realize this until retrospect, like afterwards writing the whole thing, but it reminded me of Murtaugh in the inheritance cycle, how his story ends, where it's just like, Hey, yes you have been through a bunch of crap and you are definitely better now than when you started. You still got a lot of shit to deal with. Like this is not the end of your road. You still have a lot of growing to do, but this story only covers this part of your journey.

Lilly 28:36

Well, we had a question about the themes of technology and progress getting exploited for war, but you already covered that.

Michael 28:44

I'm just an overachiever.

Lilly 28:46

So then we get to transition directly into how cute Gellard and Damara are together. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a fan of love stories.

Sara 28:55

No, that was actually my note on the document, and I'm not usually a romance fan.

Michael 29:00

Yeah. I wanted it to be very subtle. So my three favorite genres to read, like in order our fantasy sci-fi and romance. I love a good romance story. Uh, I will sink my teeth into one. My favorite one of all time right now is the invisible life of Addie LaRue and huge fan and romantic subplots are also some of my favorite parts of stories. So I knew I wanted to put one in there, but I also knew that I am inexperienced in writing this kind of thing. So as far as like Gel Alert and Amara went, I wanted it to be slow. I wanted it to be subtle. It is pretty much spiceless. So if anybody's worried about that, don't be, and I just wanted this like kind of cute, quirky thing to happen and build organically between them. And I will definitely say my wife helped a lot on that. My wife is my editor. She is my many things for this story as. It would not have existed without her. But she was really good at pointing out these opportunities of like, Hey, you could have a little moment right here. And I was like, oh my God, I should add a moment right here. Let's write that moment. And it just turned into a bunch of like little cutesy moments that just slowly built into this relationship that burns in the background until it's like, oh, this has been there the whole time. And I really like it.

Lilly 30:22

Yeah, despite having a relatively small amount of page time, it does not feel like an afterthought at all.'cause sometimes, especially with books for younger folk, love stories can kind of just get tacked on.

Michael 30:35

Yeah. I wanted to avoid that because like I, romance is such a big part. Of everybody's lives, like finding a partner is a big goal and motivator for a lot of people and for a lot of things that you do. So I didn't wanna take it idly. I wanted to be very intentional.

Sara 30:52

Well, and it's also, I think a testament to the skill you brought to it that as a reader you do feel so invested in their relationship, even though it is very subtle. There's not a ton of page time devoted to the deepening of their relationship. But like, I was all in.

Michael 31:11

I'm glad to hear that. Someday I will write a more romantic, heavy, heavy story. I have a few ideas. Very excited to get to them at some point.

Lilly 31:21

So I was almost as surprised as Kindel was to find out that Leanna or Le yeah. Leanna was alive. How did her inclusion, like actual presence in the plot affect his character growth?

Michael 31:34

Oh, it's huge because, so in earlier drafts, she shows up much earlier into the story as a, kind of like a Geraldo, uh, and. As I was going through the story in the sequential drafts, I was like, this is too early. I need kde loses so much before the story starts. But I needed something to anchor the reader to kind of pinpoint all of that misery and that sorrow that he has been through and bring it to the page. So I ended up pulling Leanna out of her Geraldo's crew and making her one of the red arms. And that he has several interactions with before it's revealed that it is her. Because as a classic fantasy, revenge story goes like, his parents are dead. He has no family. He's lost everything to the antagonist. But one of the things that like brings it closer to the reader is that he lost Leanna. He's constantly thinking of Leanna, this young girl that he grew up in, this hellish prison with. Who he lost and then eventually found his own escape from that prison. So he's constantly thinking about her and thinking like what could have been, even like speaking to a token that he has of her and all of that is kind of just to represent and pin down. This is the amalgamation of everything that he has lost. And then we bring it back. We bring her in and be like, we have the twist of, oh. She's not dead, but she is now the enemy, unwittingly, but still the enemy.

Sara 33:13

And then you break our hearts by killing her again.

Michael 33:17

I know. That, that part was so hard to write. So I am an emotional person, but I also do not cry very much when it comes to media. There are like, there's like one play, one book, and one movie that has ever made me like. Bring me to tears. but when I was

Lilly 33:35

Well, you have to tell us what they are now. Sorry.

Michael 33:38

oh, oh, I could definitely do that. So the book very easy blood Over BrightHaven by ML Wong, the end of that book crushed me. I just absolutely love, we're in the spoiler zone, so I'm gonna be okay with spoiling a little bit of something else. But it's just, it begins how it ends, and it's just that symmetry, just like. I've read it first thing in the morning. My wife wasn't even up yet and I finished the book and then she got up and I'm like, I need a hug, please. and then as far as the play, it is the dear Evan Hansen. It is a musical about a young boy who deals with this huge transition in his life and a suicide attempt, and it was just a very emotional story about how everything. Kind of just gets out of control for him and it becomes too much and it's very emotional. And I was moved, I love theater. And God, I actually, oh, it's not a movie, it's a show full Met Alchemist Brotherhood. Like no joke. The end of that when the brotherly sacrifice, I was just like, oh, I'm getting chills just thinking about it. Yeah, those three things are. The three pieces of media that like really have brought me to tears. I will feel things very often when I read stories and consume tales, and that's why I like to, because they let me feel things and experience things that I don't get the opportunity to in my normal everyday life. But I don't remember what tangent I was on before I went on this tangent.

Lilly 35:07

It was killing Leanna a second

Michael 35:10

Oh my God, yes. Yeah, when I, when I wrote that scene for the first time, I'm just like starting to tear up and just like, oh man, this is really tearing up my heart to do, but this makes sense and this is the emotional twist that the story needed.

Sara 35:25

were there ever any drafts where you didn't kill her?

Michael 35:29

No.

Lilly 35:31

Doomed to die.

Michael 35:33

Yeah. like very early on in the outlining, I didn't know what was gonna happen to her, but by the time I got to that stage in the story, I'm just like, This is part of the lesson that like seeking revenge doesn't get you what you want. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't make anything better other than to stop the bad guy from doing the bad thing, which is good and should be done and should be pursued, but at the same time, that's not what's gonna bring you happiness, and there are better attitudes to take in that pursuit.

Lilly 36:08

Speaking of the red arms, they were such a cool enemy that I feel like I as a reader went on a similar journey as kde when we're first introduced to them. You're really not sure, like, are they automatons? Like what is their deal? Everyone first. Refers to them as an it, and then kind of slowly finding out that they are like not just still people, but very much people who are aware of what's going on and happening to them was an absolute rollercoaster ride.

Michael 36:40

Oh, thank you. That, that was very intentional. I didn't want them to have humanity at first. Like the way ELL sees them, they are the enemy. They are the, the villain. And that is a reoccurring thing that happens with Kindel a lot, is he sees the. Less than human or more than human, depending on how he has built it up. Like Gion is practically a God in his eyes as the, the root of all villainy and in his pursuit of revenge. And the red arms are his dogs. They are his fingers within the city of control that he is constantly in fear of and constantly running away from because to be captured is to be taken back to that horrible prison that he grew up in. And to be continuously tortured for his power.

Sara 37:28

You've talked a little bit about some of the themes of trust and the different kinds of trust that, that the characters needed to develop. Over the course of the story as a reader, I really enjoyed the moments where the characters weren't. Sure if they could trust each other specifically, again, going back to J Niara. Even, even though like I, as the reader knew, that knew that they could can you talk a little bit about using the multiple POV format to control the reader's insight?

Michael 37:59

Yes. So one of my favorite things in stories is, especially multi POV stories, is when you get to see the characters, the main characters from another main character's point of view. Because as you are writing through the story, whether you are following ell, Amara, jailer, you have a picture in their, in your head of who they are, what they look like, what their mannerisms are, but you have a huge advantage of being inside their head. So you get, are filtered through their perception of themselves. But then when you filter that perception through a different character, looking at them. Mm. That is, that is my favorite part when POV characters meet and you're like, I have this picture of this character. And he is very insecure and he is constantly never knowing what he is doing, but he's just trying to do his best or trying to solve a problem. And then another character sees him and they're like, who is this tall, dark, and handsome, dangerous man? And I'm just like. Yes, I learned so much about both these characters at the same time with one line, and I'm just, I, I love that story. So I, I wanted to have a bunch of that happen. And it happens a lot. You get the most interaction between the POV characters between Jer and Amara because they follow into similar circles of attending these galas and these parties and going to the palace together. So they have a lot of overlap. So you get a lot of that with them. Then when KDE enters the scene with both of them and getting to see their perspective of this newcomer to their social circle is, was super fun for me. I love that stuff.

Lilly 39:44

Speaking of Amara, it was a really nice change to see her succeed in a conflict through resource management and logistics instead of just straight military strength.

Michael 39:56

Yeah. Like I said, kde is the action hero. he's the one that's gonna solve his problems by, like, I have a dagger, I'm going to stab my way through this, but Amara. Very early into writing this, I was with a writing group called Writers Anonymous in Dallas, Texas, and very early, one of the readers said, Amara is a spider queen, and that just clicked for me. I'm like, yes, that is exactly who she is. She is confident. She is powerful, and she knows that she is, and she has all these problems to solve and a lot of things stacked against her. She's gonna be ruthless and she's gonna do her best to solve those things while still being loyal to the people that she thinks deserves her loyalty. But she's not an action hero. She is not a combatant of any kind. Like she doesn't have any of this training. She doesn't have that upbringing. She's a merchant, she's a lord, she is a smuggler. And so she solves her problems with those things and. So much of battle and planning and war is not one because I can swing my sword harder. It's one because you positioned better than your enemy did, and you were supplied better than your enemy was. So I wanted to highlight that.

Lilly 41:14

especially in a world where we get this kick ass magic set up at the beginning, and you know, as a reader, we're so trained to go, oh, okay, so whoever has the coolest magical power will win.

Michael 41:26

Yeah. And that is fun. It is very anime, which I get. I am an anime fan. But it, it's also not as intriguing to read in a book because those things work really well as visuals that you can consume with your eyes and be like, look at the pretty colors. But you can't really do that in a book. You have to. Emphasize more how things feel and then how they look like. So much of writing is just trying to evoke an emotion in your reader. And so that's how I wanted to solve the problems as well is like, Hey, just because we have the coolest magic doesn't mean we're gonna win. Like there isn't really a lot of, I'm special, I have this special power because I am the chosen one, and because of that, I win. I don't really like going into that story. I loved it when I was younger and every once in a while I like seeing different ways that people handle it, but that wasn't the type of story that I wanted to tell.

Sara 42:22

You've talked a little bit about your process and the number of drafts that, that you had or that you made writing the story. Were there any scenes that surprised you?

Michael 42:33

Hmm. Yes. God, a few of them. Amara and Gellard. A lot of their couple scenes were really fun but difficult to pull off because again, I like reading romance, but it's not an area that I feel a, a lot of confidence in writing. So I wanted to be more reserved with that. So exploring that side, even in the little bit that I did was always a, what happens if I do this? Oh. I like that. That was cool. So it was a lot of like exploratory writing. I'm very much a plotter. I like having a plan, but there were a lot of the emotional scenes that I really had to just show up and just be like, you know what? We're just gonna throw words onto a page. We're gonna see how we feel about'em, and we're gonna throw away the first six and then see if the seventh one feels great. Because you have to try a lot of things when you're going into unfamiliar areas of storytelling. To see what works for you, what are you good at, what are you bad at? And I was surprised to find that the, the subtle building of romance and relationship was one, very fun to write, but two, I felt like I was pretty good at it. Like there's so many of these cute little moments and I'm just like feeling me with the warm and fuzzies. I had a good time.

Sara 43:50

So Crown fall is very much a self-contained story. Like, it, it doesn't feel like it is like there are any unanswered questions that I have necessarily at, the end of the book, but it certainly feels like there's opportunity for more stories. Do you have any more stories planned for the world?

Michael 44:11

For this particular world. Yes and no. So I very intentionally wanted to write a story that like with the buzzwords, standalone with series potential. And typically you do that in traditional publishing because you want to kind of snag a publisher that is willing to take a chance on your first book, but doesn't have to commit to a full series. And I kind of wanted to do it for the same reason, but for readers, this is my debut novel. I wrote a damn good book. I'm very proud of what I've made. I also don't have the trust of the audience yet because I am new. You do not know me, so I wanted to write a story that you could just read this one story and you would be fine. Like you have a full complete tale. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it has a conclusion, but it is open enough. That if the masses read Crown fall and they're, they go, we want more, I can give them more. I already know what the, the broad plot of that story would be. And because we're in the spoiler section, I feel like I can give that one word sentence of like, it would be the repercussions of leaving the Pika Empire. Like the Empress is not gonna just let that shit slide. But at the same time, I'm moving on. I am already started writing my next story, which I do plan to be a series and I'm committed fully to that being a series, and I'm working on a few short stories for some anthologies as well.

Lilly 45:42

Well, can you tell us a little bit give us a, teaser about one of those upcoming projects or maybe something on the podcast we have to look forward to from you?

Michael 45:51

Yes. I can't speak much of the anthologies yet because I don't know how much is public yet. But for my other project that I'm already started on so while I was working on Crown Fall, there was definitely periods where I wasn't writing, I wasn't editing because. The book, the manuscript was in someone else's hands and I just had to wait. So during those times, I was always constantly taking notes of the next story that I wanted to write, and I wanted to write Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood meets the Lycan Trilogy by James Erlington, and I'm in love with both those mediums. I love mixing time travel with fantasy. It is. My favorite niche, subgenre of all time. It just absolutely tickles me to see a story, pull that off very well because time travel is really hard to do well because you can write yourself into a corner and just be like, oh, we undid everything. Time travel's fixed. I hate that. I absolutely hate it. So I wanted to write a time travel fantasy story. And this one my quick pitch of it, I is about two half brothers who traveled back in time to save their mother from a car crash. They traveled back in time and discover she didn't die. She faked her death and left. So then they are yanked back to the present with questions of where did she go? Why did she leave? Now the story starts there with their adventure of trying to discover where their mother went. Where is she now? Why did she leave?

Sara 47:21

Well, now I have those questions.

Michael 47:23

It's very intriguing. I'm very excited to write this. Like I said, I've already started a lot of the world building. When I was working on crown fall, I managed to rack up 170 pages of notes. So I have a lot to go, go off. I'm very excited.

Lilly 47:38

Fantastic.

Sara 47:39

Thank you so much for, for coming on to chat with us about crown Fall. This has been just an utter delight. Where can you be found on the internet so that people can keep up with all of your news if they wanna hear more about this very intriguing new series that you're writing.

Michael 47:55

Yes so I can be found all over the socials. It's always Michael Vadney. You can also find me on X and YouTube for my podcast author adjacent. The best place to probably keep up with news about like my writing and the new series that I'm working on would be through my newsletter, which you can sign up through michael vadney.com.

Sara 48:17

Thank you. And we will link all of those in the episode description so listeners can easily find them.

Michael 48:23

Sounds great. Thank you so much for having me onto the show like this is my first conversation of digging deep with a stor, with my story, with people who have read it, and this has been an absolute blast. Thank you so much.

Lilly 48:35

Oh, thank you for joining us. It has been so much fun.

Sara 48:41

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Lilly 48:45

Come disagree with us! We're on BlueSky and Instagram at fictionfanspod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod at gmail. com or leave a comment on YouTube.

Sara 48:56

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Lilly 49:04

We also have a Patreon, where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.

Sara 49:10

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!