About the Author

Theo: It was back when I had a really long commute for my day job. It was about an hour’s drive door-to-door, especially if I got stuck behind a tractor! It was during these long journeys that my mind would drift, and I’d just let my imagination run wild. Then one morning Solar Carpenter – the protagonist of my novels – and her mentor figure popped into my head. I spent every car journey from then on dreaming about who they were, their backgrounds, where they were going, and it wasn’t long until I started putting pen to paper and writing it all down.
I was working as an international cheese salesman, which was fine as jobs go, but I think this daydreaming on the road was telling me I needed a creative outlet!

Claire: That’s awesome. But before we dive deeper into your writing and your world, can we double-click for a moment on ‘international cheese salesman’? Is that a real job?

Theo: It is! I had the business card with that exact job title on and everything! Thinking about it, it almost sounds like a secondary character from one of my world’s towns. Maybe for the next book I’ll introduce a Guild of Cheesemongers!

Claire: That would be brilliant haha! So, talking of your book’s world, it has a real medieval flavour to it. What drew you to the past as your setting, rather than a world more similar to the present?

Theo: I studied ancient history and archaeology at university, which I absolutely loved, and that fascination with the past has stayed with me. My course covered everything from ancient Mesopotamia right through to medieval Europe. I also grew up in a house full of not just fantasy books, but history books too: my dad had done archaeological digs in France as a student, and all three of my siblings studied history at university.
But, on a deeper level, reading and writing have always been about escapism for me. Fiction gives you that, especially fantasy, and a setting in a time other than our own takes that to the next level. When I write, I want to transport readers to another place, another time. And if it has magicians, magical creatures and absolutely no Wi-Fi signal, then all the better.

Claire: I love that. And I think I’m the same – if I’m going to sit down and lose myself in a novel, I don’t want to be reading about couples arguing over household bills, people going to their day jobs and dealing with terrible colleagues. I want a world completely removed from our own, somewhere I can truly get lost and forget about reality.

Theo: Exactly!

Claire: And what’s your approach to worldbuilding – do you start with the world, and then create the story, or the other way around?

Theo: For me, worldbuilding is something I get a huge amount of enjoyment from, but the characters, themes and plot always come first. I ask myself: what is the kind of story I want to tell? Who are the people in it? Where are they going? After I have those sorted in my head, that’s when the world starts to really come to life, and you get this really fascinating interplay where the world is shaped by the story you’ve already created to some degree, but then your world in turn starts to shape the story.

Claire: That must be a really exciting part of the writing process: seeing how all those different elements – the characters, plot, the world – start to influence each other and create something new and original.
One thing about your books that is really eye-catching is the covers. Can you tell me a bit about how they are designed and how involved you as the author are?

Theo: I’m really lucky to work with Tim Byrne, who’s an amazing designer. Basically, the process consists of me thinking about what style of cover appeals to me – but more importantly, what I think will appeal to my readers – and deciding what elements from my story I want to be shown, and then taking my ideas to Tim… who inevitably comes up with a concept that’s way better!
After that it’s a back-and-forth of Tim designing mock-ups, and me providing feedback, until we get something we’re both happy with. One thing I really like about the cover for A Legacy of Flames, a novella that’s available to my newsletter subscribers, is that the weapons on there are far more ornate than those on the cover of Witchcraft and Fury. This reflects not only that the main character of A Legacy of Flames is from a much wealthier background than the protagonist of the main series of novels, but also that it is set 100 years in the past, when fashions and tastes were different.

Claire: I think one thing I’m taking from this conversation is that there really are so many other parts to being a writer than just putting words on the page. What’s been the most rewarding part of the whole process for you?

Theo: It’s funny, people always say that writing is a lonely process. But actually, the part I’ve most enjoyed has been the interactions I’ve had with other people along the way. I run a fantasy book club in my hometown, and brainstorming with them design ideas and wordsmithing the blurb has been great fun.
Another highlight was popping round to my neighbour’s one afternoon to go through his personal library of books about medieval weaponry. Before he retired he was a weapons and armoury museum curator, and has even consulted on film sets, so when I started researching the weapons my main characters in A Legacy of Flames would have and how they’d wear them, the first thing I did was knock on his door.

Claire: That’s so cool, and what a stroke of luck having him as your neighbour! I also wanted to ask, what fantasy books shaped you as a writer? And what have you been reading recently?

Theo: An early influence was definitely Brian Jacques’ Redwall novels. I must have read many of the books in the series at least ten times as a child. His writing style was so immersive, and though written for children the complexity of vocabulary and plot means that they’re just as enjoyable for adults.
Harry Potter was another series that I read and re-read. They’re the two main ones from my childhood, but I was always picking up and falling in love with other series too: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Garth Nix’s Sabriel, Eragon by Christopher Paolini, The Hobbit. And anything involving found family or coming-of-age stories.
Nowadays I read all sorts, but it is usually YA or adult fantasy. Robin Hobb is a favourite, as are Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher short stories. As for what I’ve been reading recently, I just finished Annabel Campbell’s The Outcast Mage, which was excellent, and I’m about halfway through Trudi Canavan’s The Magician’s Guild, which I’m absolutely addicted to.