Goodreads asked Matt Heppe:

How do you get inspired to write?

Matt Heppe I read a really famous fantasy series in which the heroes kept getting more and more powerful, and it seemed that nothing could ever harm them. I began to think that the author loved his characters so much that he'd never do anything bad to them. The problem is, this killed all the tension in the novels.

I also thought Luke Skywalker should have turned to the dark side and joined his father in The Empire Strikes back. Of course, this would have been extremely unpopular, and George Lucas never would have done it, but it's what I would have done. Luke was too emotional and too rash to make a good Jedi. A good Sith, howerver...

Finally, instead of complaining about other works, I decided to create my own. I decided to write books where the good guys get beaten up and where, sometimes, the good guys aren't so good.

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