Author Q&A with Maryel Stone

A native Pittsburgher and retired High School English teacher, Maryel has since packed up her Terrible Towel and moved to the wilds of Northern Virginia where the gold and black has many admirers. She now splits her time between visiting wineries with her husband, cat-sitting for her doctor-daughter, and telling Matthias’ stories.

Maryel cut her teeth writing Stargate fan fiction, finding lifelong fandom friends, and learning how to create deep characters and tell their stories. She can still be found writing and posting on Archive of Our Own under the penname Marzipan77. Fandom rocks.

The Heir of Time Series is Maryel’s debut high fantasy series. Follow Matthias, the Heir of Order, as he learns about his powers, revels in his found family, and takes on the eternal responsibilities of half the world. Set in an alt-history ancient Middle East, Matthias’ tale can be described as Dune meets Harry Potter.

Find her work on Amazon, in Kindle, KU, and paperback:

https://bit.ly/ChildKindle

https://bit.ly/JourneyofBrothers

1. Have you always wanted to write?

I remember creating stories when I was very little. We watched a lot of television, and I remember lying in my bed at night telling myself more stories about the characters I’d seen. I’d come up with disasters for Johnny and Ray from Emergency to deal with. I’d get Colonel Paul Foster from UFO in a difficult pickle, needing rescue. Julie and Pete from Mod Squad would finally fall in love while taking down the bad guys. I learned years later that this was fan fiction.

Later, I had some black composition books set aside just for my stories. Lots of love stories, self-insert fics where the main heartthrob would fall for the new girl (cough, me, cough). I also went through a rather awkward poetry phase in high school. Unfortunately, a few of those “classics” still survive, one printed in my Senior High yearbook. Oy, the teen angst.

Summer before my first year in college, I started my first fantasy story. It was not the best of times to begin this epic adventure and my grades first semester suffered for it. I couldn’t afford to flunk out, did NOT want to return home in defeat (or at all) so I put the story aside and got my degree and got married and writing took backseat to life, earning a living, reality, etc.

Thankfully, with the bloom of the World Wide Web, I found fanfic again, and pounded out some stories about my newest favorite characters. I remembered my love of creating stories and sharing them. With sites like fanfiction dot net and Archive of Our Own, I could write and post and read and learn how to craft a story that grabs a reader and will not let them go. And I learned even more about what kinds of stories I wanted to read – and those I wanted to share.

The feedback from those sites encouraged me to believe in myself. I’ll always be grateful.

But that original fantasy novel was still simmering in the back of my mind. And, after years of writing someone else’s characters and settings, I longed to bring my own world, my own characters to life. Retired from teaching, I also had the time.

And Matthias and The Heir of Time Series was born.

2. Tell me about your main character.

Matthias. He’s the star of The Heir of Time Series. It’s Matthias’s story. Since he’s a boy in the beginning, and, for reasons that you’ll have to read the books to understand, he becomes a nearly immortal sixteen year old in Book 3, the series is considered YA. In the first few books, the reader learns about the world, about magic and Heaven, about the Balance between Kavvana (Order) and Orexis (Chaos) along with Matthias.

To throw off the trope of an abused/neglected/abandoned/orphan YA hero, Matthias has a loving family, doing their best for him. He’s the quintessential only child, so most of his friends are adults and he has a keen sense of his own importance. He’s not all-powerful, but he’s also not a complete idiot. He wants things he can’t have, has screwed up priorities, and is often stubborn.

The chapters from Matthias’ POV deal with him growing up knowing he’s going to be Avatar someday. That he’ll need to take on huge responsibilities, and that his decisions will change history. I think of him as half Harry Potter and half Paul Atreides.

Like HP, Matthias has powers he has to figure out, and an enemy that is determined to hurt him. But, like Paul, Harry is raised to know his place. He knows what he’s getting into. And his family and allies are there to help him.

I’m enjoying watching Matthias grow up, make mistakes, take care of the people around him, and figure out where the edges of his power and responsibilities lay. Which is a good thing, as I’ve got 5 more books to write about him before his story comes to an end!

3. Do you do research for your books? If so, what kind of research?

I’ve done a lot of research for The Heir of Time. Since it’s set in an alt-history ancient Middle East, I had to get some things right. The landscape. Economics. Transportation. Culture. Trade. Building style. Clothing. Warfare. Even though I inserted magic and a completely new religious system, I had to properly place Matthias and his friends and family into history. Because history is an important part of his story – one of the powers he shares with his Avatar father is the ability to change history.

Luckily, my husband is a history buff and a strategy war-game player. So, I learned a lot by playing some of his favorite games with him. Games that refought the Punic Wars, for instance. I learned about what warfare was like in the Roman Empire, how far a horse could reasonably travel in a day, or an army marching on foot. What kinds of weapons they used. How the terrain of the area changed how a battle was fought.

Warning: research can be the black hole of energy and time. I can get sucked so far down that rabbit hole that I forget that I’m not writing a history book, I’m writing a novel. You have to stop researching and start writing at some point.

Warning 2: I’ve also learned not to try to cram all of my research into my story. I’ve read books where the author did that. I’m not a fan of giant info-dumps, or chapter-long explanations, so why would I want to subject my readers to that?

4. Tell us about your writing/ published books.

I’ve published the first 2 books in Matthias’ saga:

Child of the Scales introduces the reader to Matthias, his family, and his world. Jonas, Matthias’ Avatar father, has been waiting for an Heir for over a thousand years. He’s devoted to keeping his son safe and teaching him everything he needs to know to take over for Jonas when his time comes. His mother, Cheftzi, just wants her son to be healthy and happy and as normal as the Heir to Kavvana can be.

Unfortunately, Nenet, the other Avatar, has also been waiting eagerly for Matthias’ birth. Her plan can’t take shape until Jonas has a living Heir – her plan to put her own son, the Shadow Heir, on the world’s throne. She’s just as devoted to her son as Jonas is to his. She’s just a little more ruthless. Or maybe a lot more.

Journey of Brothers, Book 2 in the series, introduces Matthias’ adopted brother, Sollander. Never before has an Avatar’s household included two children. Matthias is grateful and happy to have Sollander – but he also regrets the consequences his actions to save Sollander have brought.

As he grows up, Matthias feels the heavy weight of his responsibilities as Heir. Instead of having fun with his brother, he has to take on some of his father’s roles. He regrets every minute he can’t spend with Sollander, especially when his brother takes off on his coming-of-age journey and disappears.

So, Matthias decides to go after him.

I’m hoping to have Book 3, The War of Heaven, out next year.

5. Do you like reading the same books you write?

I love reading fantasy. YA fantasy that is well-plotted with well-rounded characters who don’t discard the plot as soon as they meet their love interest. Great world-building grabs me but it’s the characters that won’t let me go.

Tepper. Bradley. McCaffrey. McKillip. Rowling. Zelazny. Thurman. Lewis and Tolkien (of course).

I also love a good mystery. I wrote a mystery book once. In fact, my first original fic was contemporary mystery. Let’s just say that I learned a lot, and have it buried in an upstairs drawer, and it will never see the light of day again. The characters in that novel still hold a place in my heart, though, so, never say never again, right?

6. What advice would you give to someone wanting to write their first book?

Do it. It doesn’t matter the genre or the style. It doesn’t matter if “that kind of book” is popular right now. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve got a fully formed plot worked out or something more nebulous and fluid. Get your words down. Type them, write them long-hand, record them on audio.

Your words are important. Someone is waiting for them, yearning for them. At first, they won’t be perfect, or even close. Don’t let that discourage you. First drafts are notoriously horrid. Or, as the film industry says, you’ll fix it in editing!

Read. Read in your genre. Read out of it. Read fanfic – yes, there is excellent fanfic out there and it is FREE to read. You’ll learn so much about writing from reading.

Finally, when you’ve written and re-written, had comments from friends, editing and proofread, get it out there. Submit to agents/publishers or publish it yourself, whatever works for you.

I’d love to read your writing.

This or That Questions…

Short books or Long books

Always long

Romance or Fantasy

Fantasy

Bright book covers or Muted book covers

Muted

Ebooks, Paperbacks or Audiobooks

E-books

Writing in the Morning or Evening

Morning

Character Driven or Plot Driven

Can Haz Both?

Finally, what’s the best piece of advice someone has given you about writing, marketing, or just generally about life?

Be true to yourself. Yes, that sounds trite and useless, but it applies so much to my writing. All writing is a reflection of the author – I can’t separate myself from my work, and I think you’ll find you can’t either. I can only write what comes to my fingertips. What churns up from my soul. I can’t hide in my books. Instead, they seem to reveal more and more about me even if I don’t want them to.

Every time I try to “write to the market,” it feels forced. The characters turn into caricatures, the plot is stagnant, the mortal peril turns into papercuts. That said, we all have different sides to our personalities. Sometimes I’m funny. Sometimes I’m feeling romantic. Sometimes I want to watch Die Hard and other times I’m into Love, Actually. (Both excellent Christmas movies, BTW.) So, write what you know – write the things you love, the books you want to read, the characters you resonate with.

But, sometimes, with no thought to publishing or how it will be received, try something new. You might find your next true love.

Where can you find Maryel?

Twitter

Author Q&A with Maryel Stone