It’s time for another (the third) installment of Mages Behind the Pages, and I have to admit that I was greatly looking forward to this one.

Davin Madson! Author of We Ride the Storm and We Lie With Death, the first two books in The Reborn Empire series. As you all know, world-building is a passion of mine, and Madson stands as a supreme example of just how good world-building can be. If you haven’t already read her works, hopefully this interview will steer you her way.

As I’ve done with the first two Mages Behind the Pages segments, I’ll be giving away a Kindle edition of the series opener We Ride the Storm. To be eligible to score the free copy, all you need to do is leave a comment to this blog.

Now on with the interview!

Shawn: Let’s get the obligatory “Tell us a little about yourself!” out of the way. Who is Devin Madson?

D.M: Devin Madson is a fantasy author from Australia who does not usually talk about herself in the third person so will stop now. I write epic fantasy that edges toward grimdark, eat far too much chocolate, and have seen Interstellar more times than is probably healthy. (Although it has marvellously executed world-building, so there is that!)

Shawn: Okay, on to the really fun stuff—world building! First, have you learned much about real-world history during your research?

D.M: Surprisingly, though I know plenty of real-world history not a lot is due to writing research. I try not to draw too closely from history, partly because I doubt I could ever do any of it justice, and partly because I’m temperamental when it comes to history. When something piques my interest I will read about it as much as I can, but if I have to research something I get grumpy and bored and don’t do it. I’ve learned the limitations of my own attention span and try not to push it. Though I probably use bits and pieces of what I picked up on my own without really noticing.

Shawn: How much research went into the overall world-building for the setting?

D.M: That’s a bit of a trick answer, because the setting of Kisia already existed due to the trilogy that takes place entirely in Kisia a generation before this series. I started that seven years ago but I do recall I did quite a bit of research, a lot of which, as is so often the case, only shows its hand in small ways. These days I tend to only research as it’s required rather than doing a lot of research before I start because I never know where the story is going. I write on a computer that’s not connected to the internet so I make a list of questions during each writing session. How do you sever a head? What does burning flesh smell like? How far does blood spurt when you chop off an arm? Why are all my research questions morbid?

Shawn: Which came first for you with the The Reborn Empire : story or world?

D.M: As with the previous question I cheated by having the world already exist, but in general I’d say they come hand in hand for me. I don’t sit down and create either before I start writing, I just start and they both happen. Sometimes story influences world-building and sometimes it’s the other way around – a give and take as I make it all up as I go along.

Shawn: Do you feel your story is more character driven or more driven by the history and circumstances of the world it’s set within?

D.M: What an interesting and difficult question. While the world certainly informs a lot of my choices and that’s something I really like to do and feel it’s important to consider all the way through, I think ultimately Reborn Empire is more character driven. It is more about what the characters choose to do with the circumstances the world bequeathed to them, minor characters as well as POV characters.

Shawn: Did you approach continued world-building any differently in We Lie With Death ? How about with book three? There will be a book three, right?!

D.M: Oh, totally there will be a book three. And a book four! I don’t think I approached it any differently beyond being sure to build on what had been revealed in We Ride the Storm rather than rehash the same stuff, especially in regards to the elucidation of the magic system — I built on that a lot. If anything I also made a general shift toward highlighting the Levanti portion of the world-building over the other cultures due to it being where so much of the internal conflict comes from, and will continue to come from even beyond this series.

Shawn: Speaking of continued world-building—has there been a great deal more since We Ride the Storm ? Do you feel there’s a lot more world-building to come?

D.M: I try to add to the world-building with every successive book to slowly build up a detailed sense of the world and its peoples, so I have definitely expanded the world-building in book two, and as I’ve also got plans for a series that follows on from Reborn Empire set on the Levanti Plains, and have already written another book a few hundred years ahead on the other side of the continent, there’s A LOT of world-building still to come. I have made plans for this world all the way through the industrial revolution and out the other side, and Kisia is only one small part of it.

Shawn: What, if anything, do you find to be the most challenging part of world-building?

D.M: Remembering all the details! I try my very best to keep accurate records of names and places and descriptions, of dates and maps and all the other little things I create along the way, but I am not the most organised person. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as perfect, but it is so easy to get swept away in the creation and not log details, or log details you change in a later pass. I also love little interconnections between books and stories, little easter eggs if you like, which means certain names and places need to be logged under multiple projects and it can all get a bit messy. The fact that I’m not a planner and just make it all up as I go along only makes keeping notes all the harder.

Shawn: Do you have a favorite aspect of world-building, such as religion, magic, history, sociology, or what have you?

D.M: It’s always been magic for me, because in my world-building I treated it like science. Not just in the sense of having an unbendable set of rules, but in the sense that it could be studied and made sense of, that the people of my world could slowly discover how it worked and what rules governed the use of various kinds. And then they would find ways to use that knowledge, to exploit it, and eventually as the world moves in to the future, to commercialise it. And because it is such a huge part of my overall world-building, it had to impact almost every other aspect of life and those little impacts and connections are some of my favourite things. How does magic effect communication? Transport? Religion?

I’ve also always enjoyed world-building through time, too, as I write all my books in the same world in different places and different parts of history, and making all their little interconnections is marvellous fun.

Shawn: Did you have more fun developing any one culture from The Reborn Empire?

D.M: Definitely the Levanti, because I got to step away from my preconceived ideas and start from scratch. I was also able to create a culture that was not only shaped by the difficult terrain and hostile environment in which they live, but one that is as yet also unchanged by urbanisation. This creates extra tension with the cultures that live in cities and consider themselves more civilised for having left their tribal roots behind them.

And of course the Levanti do the head chopping. People often make a big thing about all the decapitation in these books, but it was interesting creating a culture that did something others considered barbaric for reasons of deep respect.

Shawn: Is there anything you’d like to tease us with regarding We Lie in Death ? Or things to come afterwards…

D.M: A lot of the fresh world-building in We Lie With Death is in the magic system. This system has been in place for every book I’ve written as it was the first thing I ever developed, but this is the first time in all my books the reader gets their first proper explanation of how it works, and how it is being studied. The study and increased knowledge of it will have huge ramifications in the future as the world goes through its own form of the industrial revolution. It’s my favourite thing to talk about and to write about and I look forward to writing many more books that explore this future — its study, its exploitation, its commercialisation, and the social backlash of it all.

Shawn: What method do you prefer readers use in order to contact/follow you? (Facebook, Twitter, blog, Goodreads, that sort of thing)

I hang out on Twitter (@DevinMadson) the most, though occasionally drop in to various fantasy groups on Facebook such as the Grimdark Readers and Writers group and Fantasy Faction.

And so ended my time with Devin Madson. These are some incredibly insightful and revealing answers! This is an author I’m excited to see grow in popularity as more of her world and story are revealed. Cheers, Devin! May your words take you where you want to go, and the rest of us on journeys we cannot help but take part in.