Michael DeAngelo's Blog, page 3

Goals

Well, it’s here again.  Another November.  Also known as the craziest month of the year.  I’ve run Kickstarters in November before, and I’ve done NaNoWriMo on two different occasions.

This year, I’m doing both—at the same time.

Truth be told, this year, I’m trying to see if I can reach three goals by the end of the month.  It’s going to be insane.  It’s going to be intense.

For the Kickstarter, we need to raise $15,000 in order to secure the minimum order from our manufacturer.  It’d be even better if we managed to pull off more than that, because I have so many cool things lined up that I’d love to see if we could hit.

In case you haven’t seen all the KS links plastered all over the site, here’s another one.

 

On the NaNoWriMo side of things, I’m also still working on Quantum Quest.  This year’s book is going to focus on a novelization for the upcoming game, and we’re including some pretty cool things from the Tellest universe.  One of them is a hero who wasn’t on the front cover of the game box.  When you’re thinking of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff, I know who you’re thinking of.  That’s right.  Rhys Oberon.

That was who you were thinking of.  Right?

Rhys has only had one small starring role so far.  He was the character who set a lot of time traveling shenanigans in motion in Keeper of the Void.  But he’s a huge character in the grand tapestry of Tellest.  I haven’t had a chance to write a follow-up story for him, but I’m definitely going to make attempts to get at least one more short out for him before QQ and its novelization release.

And even if you haven’t realized it, he’s had his hand involved in some of the other events in the Tellest books so far.

For the Quantum Quest book, I need to complete 50,000 words in 30 days.  I’ve pulled it off before, but never with so much else riding on my shoulders.  With two big convention weekends this month, it’s going to be interesting to see if I can pull it off.

I should probably abstain from writing big ol’ blog posts, huh?

Finally, this last goal is more for myself than for my creative passions.  I’m a little too old to be as pudgy as I am.  Rhianna and I found a lifestyle change that’s been working out for us pretty well.  I’d love to drop another 10 lbs by the end of the month.  So that’s it.  The third goal is a little bit of weight loss.

The conventions are certainly not going to help with that.

So that’s it for now, but I’m going to be a little bit more vocal on this site as the Kickstarter and NaNoWriMo go on.  You can actually see a sneak peek of the QQ novelization if you head over to the campaign page.  I think you’ll like what you read!

Cheers,

Mike

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State of Tellest, October 2017

Holy heck! I had no idea it’s been so long since I did a blog post for Tellest. It’s about time to change that up then, I suppose, and what a time it is!

I have got an awful lot to talk about, so let’s get down to business, shall we?

 

Tellest Legends Books

The Tellest Legends project ended up getting a lot bigger than I expected! While Tales of Tellest was a set of novellas, each of these Tellest Legends books is a little bigger. Silver Serpent, the next one up in the queue, is much bigger than the books I’ve done recently.  Intended only to be about 50,000 words for last year’s NaNoWriMo, it ended up becoming a 210,000 word novel. It’s the biggest book I’ve worked on since The Enemy Within, and is nearly as long as The Bindings of Fate.

Now, part of this is awesome news. In my opinion, this is the best book I’ve ever written—not because of the word count, but because of the time and care I put into it. The downside is that there is a lot of work there, and it needs to be carefully curated in order to be ready for release. It’s already put me at a bit of a delay. It’s gone through its first editor pass and come back to me, and I have to clean it up before it gets delivered to our second editor.

Originally, the plan was to get it released last month. That unfortunately will not happen, but it will be out soon. Unfortunately, its delay has impacted the other books that are also coming out—Arise, Heart of the Forest, Stealing Seramore, The Maelstrom and the second short story collection are all coming a little later because of Silver Serpent. I thank everyone for their patience while I get these stories prepared.

 

Quantum Quest

Another big culprit of the writing delays is our upcoming tie-in tabletop game.  Quantum Quest is a massive undertaking spanning almost three years, and we’re trying to give it the best chance it has to shine before we go to Kickstarter with it next month.  We’ve been holding playtests, gathering fans, working on new cards and so on all summer long. As we draw closer and closer to November, you can be sure I’m going to end up losing my mind a little more each day—I can’t wait!

Fans of Tellest are going to get an early preview of our campaign page in the next couple of weeks, but I can give you a preview excerpt right now:

“This is where things start getting really awesome. We’re offering up a pack of adventurer cards that you can only get here on Kickstarter or directly from us when we attend conventions—these will never be available at retail. And that’s just to start—the more we raise, the more you get. “

Suffice it to say, we’re incredibly excited for Kickstarter next month. I feel like we’re batting 1000 with this game, and I can’t wait to show it off some more.  If you’re at PAX Unplugged, definitely consider stopping by our table to play a game yourself!

 

NaNoWriMo 2017

This one ties into Quantum Quest in a big way because… it’s the Quantum Quest novelization!  Yep.  My aim is to get 50,000 or so words cranked out by the end of November that will add some lore and backstory to our upcoming tabletop game. Since we also have the Kickstarter going on, this is the first year where NaNoWriMo has to come secondary, so I’m not 100% certain that it’ll be finished, or that it’ll be 50,000 words.  That said, I’m going to make sure the book is complete and polished by the time Quantum Quest reaches backers in May of 2018.

Here’s another bonus: Everyone who backed the Tellest Legends Kickstarter is going to get a copy of the ebook since it’s pushing off the other books.

 

Short Stories

Short stories are going to continue to fill in the gaps between the big releases.  We have a couple of stories that are currently backlogged, and we have two holiday stories coming as well.  Once Silver Serpent moves onto the second editor, we’ll make sure these stories get their chance to shine.

 

That’s it for now, but you can be certain we’ll be talking a lot in November, on account of the Quantum Quest Kickstarter.  See you soon!

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Dragonspeaker has released!

Hey folks!  It’s new book day, and it’s a very special one for us today. This marks the first step into a new journey.  While all the books that came out in Tales of Tellest (as well as the Tellest Legends campaign’s Lord of Thunder) focused on established characters in the Tellest brand, this newest adventure introduces a brand new set of characters from a continent that we’ve heard of but never seen.

Not only that, but it allows us to explore a race that was only witnessed in short stories or deleted scenes.  The kaja are one of the first anthropomorphic races I’ve written about—we haven’t had a chance to play with centaurs or minotaurs, but we did have a story about kobolds.  In any case, this is definitely the longest tale I’ve told where an anthro character is the star of the show.  Kaiyonani is an awesome character who is only going to grow as we give her and her dragon companion some meatier stories in the future.

Kaiyonani knows what it’s like to be a cat of the Kehara desert. The harsh sands around her tribe’s oasis are hot and savage, and there are enemies abound throughout the region. The one thing her people had to rely on was their fierce dragon ally, Iraneth.

But now, the dragon is dead.

Kaiyonani’s grandfather fulfilled the role of dragonspeaker. It is a title that is passed down from one kaja to the next, though it usually changes hands because a mortal has died—not one of the majestic winged creatures they call friend. The next dragonspeaker has been named, and to everyone’s surprise, it is Kaiyonani who is destined to take up the mantle. She must venture across the desert, to lands unknown in order to make the bond with her own dragon companion,

But can she survive the cruel wilderness and dangerous creatures that call Saveon and the Kehara Desert home?

Dragonspeaker just released today, and it’s available for the low introductory price of just 99 cents.  You can’t beat that!  Why not check it out on Amazon today?

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Lord of Thunder Released

Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to announce the official launch of Tellest’s phase two.  Lord of Thunder has released today, and I’m excited to bring a follow-up to Bolt Thunderfury’s first adventure.

We’ll see how the book does on Amazon, but just remember, every ten weeks from here on out, another Tellest adventure is coming your way.

Once again, this is just the beginning…

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Christmas Wishes

*Note: This is a work in progress—full story to be ready by December 21st*

There is a legend that exists that says this: The first snow of the winter season brings with it incredible magic, and if you see that snow falling as the sun rises, you are rewarded with a wish.

And so it was that day in that cozy corner house, where a doting husband and loving wife cuddled up beside their fluffy dog and their resistant cat.

“Rhianna, it’s snowing,” the man said.

The lady swept her lovely mane of red hair out of her face, and stood, clutching the little dog close to her chest.  In time, she reached the window that overlooked their yard, and she could not rein in that smile.

“You have to get over here and make a wish, Michael,” she bade.  “It’s the first snow of the season!”

Never one to buck her traditions, the husband rose and scooped the cat along with him.  If he had to be present for such an occasion, it was only fair that their pets both be there as well.

The fellow looked out upon that falling snow and grinned at his wife. “This isn’t one of those things where I can’t know what you wished, is it?”

Rhianna laughed and shook her head.  “I don’t think so.”  She looked down at the dog—her fur almost the same color as the woman’s hair. She pushed as far into Rhianna’s chest as she could, and she laughed as she realized she was attempting to squeeze as far away from the cat as possible.

“I wish that we could communicate with our fluffy little babies.  Would’t it be funny to hear what Peanut and Zelda thought?”

The man chortled and shook his head.  “I have a feeling we would be a little less impressed than you think.  I can just imagine Zelda now: ‘throw the ball, throw the ball, throw the ball!’  And Peanut?  It’d be wasted on her.  Though I guess it would be funny to hear what she says in her sleep.”

“Oh, I just want them to know we love them,” Rhianna said, rubbing her forehead against the dog’s.  She looked up at her husband, who still stared out that window.  “What are you going to wish for?” she asked.

He pondered for a moment, watching as each of those snowflakes dropped.  “Hmm,” he thought.  “This time of year, I bet it’s beautiful in Tellest.”

Rhianna just smiled and rolled her eyes.

Tellest was a world that Michael had imagined for sixteen years.  It was the world that brought the two loved ones together.  Once upon a time, Michael suggested that Rhianna utilize her artistic talents to help him bring that world to life.  They ended up finding other awesome people to help with that, and the two of them ended up forming a beautiful relationship together.  After five years together, they worked on that fantasy universe together, writing stories, creating games and gathering art.

Michael kept wearing that goofy grin, and shrugged.  “I wish that every Christmas, we could visit Tellest.”

*          *          *          *          *

A few days passed, and it was the afternoon before Christmas Eve. Michael heard the telltale buzz of his phone as he was putting on his coat.

“Hewwwoooo,” he cried as he swiped at the screen.

“Michael?” he heard Rhianna say.  “I think you should come home.”

The man arched his eyebrow.  His wife always played around when he first answered the phone.  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, “nothing is wrong, per se.  But you’re going to need to see this.”

The prominence in Michael’s throat dropped, and he hurried to his car.  He tried to maintain some air of composure, but he sped home faster than he should have, and when he pulled into the driveway, he nearly forgot to shift the vehicle into park before he jumped out the door.

Michael rushed to the front of the house, jamming his key into the lock and swing the way open.  He was surprised to see his wife sitting on the couch, staring at their dog on the floor.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Zelda, their pretty little dog, turned about at once, and stood on her hind legs.  “Daddy!”

Michael smiled as the pup crossed the distance to meet him by the door.  It wasn’t until she reached him that he realized what had transpired.  His eyes went wide, and his gaze slowly drew to Rhianna, still sitting on the couch.  She passed him a knowing nod, confirming that he was not, in fact, going crazy (though some people suspect all DeAngelos are).

He cocked his head to the side, and looked at the eager dog.  “Zelda… did you just speak?”

“Woof!” the pup called out.  It was not the typical bark of the dog when she was called upon to perform her tricks.  No, she said the word—and with great pride, judging by the waggle of her rump.

“You see what this means, don’t you?” Rhianna asked.

Michael returned an absent stare as he put together the clues that he could find.  “It means your wish came true,” he mumbled.

“It means you were wrong!” his wife exclaimed.  “She hasn’t asked me to throw the ball yet!”

Zelda spun about with a gasp, and stared at her mommy.  “Ball!” she cried.

“Wait a minute,” Michael said.  “You wished for the ability to communicate with our animals.  Plural.  Is Peanut able to talk now too?”

In response, Rhianna walked to the window, and swept the curtain out of the way.

The cat was there, and she turned her head to look at the interloper to her bay window refuge.  “Ugh,” she groaned.  “What do you want?”

Rhianna gestured with her hand as if to ask if that was confirmation enough.

“How long have they been like this?”

 

 

 

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Awake Released in Audio

Howdy folks.  I come to you with fantastic news today.  Awake has become the fifth and final Tales of Tellest novella to release on Audible.

Narrated by Brandon McKernan, who has done work for us twice before, Awake is the tale of Venathryn of the Whisperwind Elves, who suffers from a terrible guilt made manifest in her dreams.

You can pick up Awake on Audible today for the low price of $6.95!

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State of Tellest, November 2016

Howdy folks.  This is the first time that we’ve had the occasion to bring you two “State of Tellest” posts so close together.  I’d say that is a very good thing, because it means things are coming together at a quicker pace than ever before.

Part of that could be due to the fact that Tellest now encompasses so many different projects, from a handful of different people.  Let’s get right to it, shall we?

 

Legacy Novellas and Tales of Tellest Short Stories

A while back, we had mentioned that Brandi Salazar was brought on board to help us clean up our act—Act I, that is, to be clear.  She’s done a very good job of putting a further layer of shine on the stories from the original Tales of Tellest volume.  If you are one of our readers from the get-go, you should be able to update your reading devices to get some cleaner prose than before.

 

Tellest Legends Project

We’re coming along well with the Tellest Legends books.  The timeline is still looking promising, and we’re getting ready to run our second wave of edits on Lord of Thunder, starting today!  Those edits should go relatively quick; I’m assuming that the book is going to end up being roughly 4.5 hours total in reading time, so usually, my second pass takes about that long as well.  Then, it’ll go to our two wonderful editors, and we’ll get it ready for the Tellest Street Team prior to the March release of the book.

Since it’s November, most of the focus has been on the NaNoWriMo book (more on that in a moment).  We have to shift again in December, back to Dragonspeaker (which is first-pass complete), and to Stealing Seramore, which needs to find its feet again.  Arise, meanwhile, has been seeing some steady progress.  I write that book on the train to work in the mornings when I’m in my satellite office, so that’s been doing well.  I have a feeling that is going to run longer than the previous books of the new collection, but I’m still optimistic that we’ll get that prepared in time for the planned release date. After all, it’s still 2016!

 

Short Stories

I’m very happy to announce that we’re moving back into position with the Tellest short stories.  In fact, I made a whoopsie and didn’t include one of Aaron Canton’s shorts in the Tellest Newsletter as an exclusive like I believed I had, so we’re starting the new shorts up again today!

With my focus on the longer form novellas and novels at this point, I’m going to be letting Aaron helm our short story department for at least a little while, but I’ve got a handful that I want to put out before the second short story collection comes out in 2018.  Don’t forget, we’re trying to release at least 24 new shorts—but you’ll be able to catch most of them here first.

 

NaNoWriMo

I went from believing that my NaNoWriMo project, The Silver Serpent Chronicles, was going to end up being too short to fit the 50,000 words required to be a victorious novel.  As it turns out, I’m probably set to reach at least 75,000 words by the time the story is done.

Now for the bad news: I lapsed!  Between funerals, podcasts, noodgie dogs and just a little bit of writing burn-out, I fell about 3,000 words behind.  Now, that’s not exactly difficult to make up—I’ve had 4,000 word days before, and with a four day weekend in front of us, I can likely make that up—but it is just one more obstacle before me.

In any case, I have my doubts that I’ll be able to finish the project in its entirely in November.  What we’ll probably end up doing is shifting some things around to find a focus on the books that are coming out sooner rather than later.  I have to do the same thing for last year’s NaNo project, which is even longer than this one.  Once I fall back into that one, we’ll be in a very good place.

 

Audiobooks, Now and Future

Phew… tired of reading yet?  If you are, I’ve got some great news for you: the first round of audiobooks are complete, though we’re still waiting for ACX to approve the fifth and final “Tales of Tellest” novella, Awake.  Once that’s done, we’ll have five books in audio form, and that’s a pretty cool feeling.

We had considered also having the short stories produced for ACX/Audible, but there are too many hoops to jump through to do that properly, so the idea we’re entertaining instead is bringing on another voice to our team in order to capture the short stories in audio and deliver it straight to our site.  We’re still prepping that relationship and those goals, but keep your eyes and ears open for that in the near future.

Further away, what we’re anticipating for our audio goals is that we’re going to work on getting most of our novella and novel length projects narrated a lot earlier in the game.  Previously, we waited to see if people enjoyed the written content of the Tales of Tellest novellas before we moved along.  This time, we’re going all in on day one.  The day the new books release, they should have the appropriate level of polish, and we’re going to begin the process of prepping them for audio.  For sequels, we’re anticipating continuing along with the narrators of the first books in each series.  For new properties (Dragonspeaker, Heart of the Forest, Silver Serpent Chronicles), we’ll look for new narrators to bring to our team. There’s a very real chance that we’ll end up running over ourselves eventually.  20 weeks isn’t that long when it comes to whipping up some decent audio, but we’ll see what we can pull off!

 

Card Game

Yes, we’re still working on this little side project!  In fact, it’s coming along very nicely.  All of our alpha art content is completed, though there has been some thought given as to whether or not we could get one or two more sets of assets.

In any case, we’re getting ready to prototype our game in the coming weeks.  Christmas is a great time to test how all kinds of different people enjoy the game, from nerds to regular ol’ folk.

The great news is that even when we had zero art, the game ended up being a lot of fun to people who liked tabletop.  I’m hoping the gorgeous art we’ve been acquiring for around 18 months really helps to step up the enjoyment of the game even further.

You can see the latest cards—full cards—on our Facebook page. There are adventurer cards up now, but we’ll be showing off a selection of dungeon cards in the coming weeks as well.

Now, there is a spot of bad news here.  Since this is the first time we ever put together a tabletop game, there’s still some things that I’m trying to put together and understand.  The timeline is one of the things that I didn’t realize was going to be so hard to stick to.  Here’s our dilemmas so far:

We aren’t going to make it to Magfest and PAX East (sold out, drat!).

What we are still going to try and do is make it to AnimeNext, Philly Comic Con and Metatopia next year.  I really want to run the circuit for this game, and if we see a lot of genuine enjoyment out of it, we may try and jump into some other places as well.  The ultimate goal is to try and Kickstart this game, ala Boss Monster, but we shall see what we can pull off.  I’m very happy with the journey this game has made (even though I still haven’t settled on a final name for it yet). Time will tell if the destination is a happy one!

 

That’ll about wrap us up.  Even though it’s only been a month, it seems we had plenty to talk about.  Here’s hoping the next time we get to chat, there’s even more incredible Tellest news.  Thanks for tuning in!

Cheers,

Michael DeAngelo

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State of Tellest, October 2016

Hello there everyone.  It has been a whirlwind year, the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2014.  And now, with the conclusion of our latest Kickstarter, we’re ready to jump all-in once again.

It’s time once again to let you know what’s on the docket.  With so much planned out ahead of us, there’s no better time than now to tip our hands.

Legacy Novellas

I’m still at the point right now where I am very, very happy with what we managed to pull off regarding the Tales of Tellest books.  From Mageborn to The Fall, every one of those books feels like good writing to me.  The stories are compelling, and the prose is relatively tight compared to my earlier work.  Sure, they’re shorter stories, but they taught me a lot, and they end when they are supposed to.  Not every quest is going to involve a thousand people, and not every memory is going to involve traveling across the world.  Somehow, we’ve still managed to tell what I believe are very compelling stories in the same world that will ultimately add to the overall universe.

One thing that we wanted to do to improve upon that quality included going back and tightening up some of the problem places we had.  Tellest developed a style guide a few months back, and we’re busy putting together some finishing touches on those five novellas and the short stories.  As such, we’d like to welcome Brandi Salazar to the team.  She’s a delightful second pass editor who will snag some of the problems that Nace and I may have missed. Sometimes, when you’re a little too close to a project, you can miss things more readily.

As of right now, there are no plans to give the original trilogy the same treatment.  We have a different game plan for that collection, but we’re not quite ready to divulge the information on that just yet. Just know that we are committed to bringing you the best stories we can.

 

Short Stories

Speaking of bringing you great stories, you’ll see that we’ve quieted down a little bit in the short story outlet in the previous few weeks. Preparing for the Kickstarter sapped my energy, and I aimed most of my creative output toward the bigger stories that you’ll see starting at the beginning of next year.

With that in mind, we’re happy to announce that we’re bringing Aaron Canton back for another set of three short stories that we’ll be preparing soon.  We also have some other writers that we’re hoping we’ll be able to debut, and we’re contemplating opening up Tellest writing prompts again to see if we can find the next Aaron Canton!

 

New Novels

So, word counts can be a bit dubious in nature.  NaNoWriMo considers a novel to be 50,000+ words, while the Nebula awards requires books to be 40,000+ words in order to qualify.  In any case, we’re hoping that our new books coming out starting next year will mostly qualify as novels.  With the exception of Dragonspeaker, each of these books should be longer than the books from our last wave.

Anyway, that was a bit of rambling preceding some awesome news. You see, even though we had the Kickstarter running, I’ve been on pace to knock out two of my books before their soft deadlines.  If things keep going well, both Lord of Thunder and Transformed will be done by the end of October, in first draft form.  They join the likes of Dragonspeaker which is already complete as a first draft, and Heart of the Forest, which is more than 70% complete.  With that in mind, we’re well on track to keeping up with our new goal of releasing a book every 10 weeks starting in March of next year.

 

NaNoWriMo

Last year, I participated in my first ever NaNoWriMo event.  I had to completely change the way I go about writing, but I learned a lot, stuck with my word goals, and managed to crank out my 50,000 words.

We’re going to be participating again this year, although it’s going to be a little bit off-rules, I’m sure.  I’m aiming to make Silver Serpent Chronicles my “novel” this year, and it might not qualify in format or word count.  We’ve been putting a lot of behind the scenes work into it though—much more than I typically do.  I like to learn the story along with my characters.  I’m a pantser more than a plotter, but I’m hoping that the outlining and preparing we’re doing for Silver Serpent Chronicles really makes it feel good when all is said and done.

It’s not official, but Rhianna is also planning on participating in NaNoWriMo—a mini-mo, if you will.  Come November, we’ll see exactly how far we’ve come!

 

Card Game

By now, everyone should know that our big side project, that we’ve been unveiling piecemeal, is an upcoming card game.  It’s influenced by Monopoly, D&D, Boss Monster and most of all, Tellest.  We’re still a little ways off from drawing back the curtain entirely, but we’re getting closer than ever.  We’re about 90% done preparing alpha art assets for the game, and then we’ll do a fair amount of internal testing before we introduce a beta team to join us.  After that, we’re actively seeking space at conventions to debut our game to a whole slew of new fans.

If all goes well, we’ll be ready to crowdsource next October.  Keep your eyes peeled for all the news we can hope to bring you regarding this cool new adventure in Tellest!

 

That’s it for now, but as always, we’ve got a ton of content just around the corner.  We hope everyone has an awesome holiday season, and we’re so looking forward to bringing you some great new books starting in March of next year!

 

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Tellest Kickstarter is Live

Hey there folks.  Just wanted to let you know our newest Kickstarter is live.  We’ll be running this crazy campaign until September 15th, and we’ve got a bunch of awesome content and deals you wouldn’t believe ready for you:

We’re already doing pretty well, and it’s only been up for a little over an hour on a Monday morning.  It’ll be very exciting once everyone has got their morning coffee in them!

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Interview with Michael DeAngelo

Hello there folks.  We’re busy busy busy this month, but we’ve finally got some time to talk about a few things.  First off, we’d like to formally welcome Erika Castro to the Tellest team.  She’s going to be our social media guru.  As of right now, she’s the reason our Twitter page looks as delightful as it does.  She’s also taking on a new responsibility today as she sits Michael DeAngelo (that’s me!) down for an interview on all things Tellest.

Let’s give her a warm welcome as she joins this wonderful team!

Without any further adieu, here’s an interview that’ll give you some insight into the vision for Tellest in the near future:

 

Erika Castro:  First of all, thank you for the opportunity.  It’s going to be a lot of fun working with Tellest and all the people who make it awesome.

Michael DeAngelo: Well we’re definitely very lucky to have you here.  You’re going to fill a role that I’ve been lacking in lately, so we’re very grateful to have you as part of the crew.

 

EC:  I hope I’ll prove myself as we move forward.  Should we move forward with the interview?

MD: Take it away!

 

EC: What made you first interested in writing? 

MD: When I was younger, I was always making up stories to be a part of, but they originally started as pipe dreams for games.  I fantasized about making these big sprawling games like Final Fantasy, because Roleplaying Games were always a big part of my life.  I used to tell people I wanted to be a software engineer, because I heard it and didn’t yet know the term “game developer.”

For the longest time, I always thought that writing a story from front to back was out of reach for me.  Those were for far smarter people than me—it was beyond my capability.

It’s silly but letting go is probably what gave me the opportunity to really dig into writing.  I was lucky enough to work fairly quickly in school, and we had 90 minute classes.  During a math class, I ended up finishing a test ridiculously early.  I knew that Baldur’s Gate II was coming out soon, and I knew that you could develop a character biography for yourself.  I started writing one for the character who would eventually become my original main character, and the rest grew out of control from there.

 

EC: Why fantasy? 

MD: Fantasy has always scratched a particular itch for me.  I’m not sure why, exactly.  It’s just always been a part of my life.  I learned to read and write playing King’s Quest on the Apple II.  My favorite movies growing up were Willow and Princess Bride and Goonies (a pseudo-fantasy, if ever there was one).  And I’m a huge fan of videogames, as I said, with Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy and the Secret of Monkey Island being huge influences in my life and in my writing.

While my Dad had always been a big fan of fantasy and sci-fi, it was my aunt who I think really planted the bug in my brain.  We used to play a very simplified version of dungeons and dragons when she would babysit me, and I think that was probably what got me started wanting to build worlds.

 

EC: How old were you when you wrote your first story (not published)?

MD: I believe I was five or six when I wrote some incoherent mess about a shark that didn’t want to eat fish… he wanted to be their friends.  It’s very possible that Pixar used this wonderful book as inspiration for the sharks in Finding Nemo.

 

EC: Is there a particular author that inspires you?

MD: R. A. Salvatore is the storyteller who speaks to me the most.  It wasn’t until I read about Drizzt and Wulfgar and Bruenor and Regis and Catti-brie in The Thousand Orcs that I really go the push into storytelling.  That book was also given to me by the aunt that imparted all that love for fantasy in me.  I received that on my seventeenth birthday, right around the time Baldur’s Gate II was coming out, and it just happened to be the perfect storm of creativity and intellect to get me going.

 

EC: Was there a particular book/story you wrote that made you think that you had something going here?

MD: I think that’s both the blessing and the curse of being someone who continues to write books.  When I wrote my first book, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.  I was very impressed with myself, but if I go back and read that, I’m appalled.  It’s horrible!  But at the same time, I’m glad that I believed in myself back then.  If I had started writing and immediately found disgust in my work, I don’t know that I would have ever continued doing what I am.

There’s a trend with my work, too.  I’ll go back to a book I wrote five years ago and be disappointed with it, and I have no doubt that something that I write this year will feel a tad undercooked five years from now.  But I feel that it also shows that I’m growing as a writer and a storyteller, and for that I’m grateful.

 

EC: Is the character Kaos Kreegan based on anyone you know?

MD: He is, and while other people might be ashamed to admit this, I’m just going to own up to it.  Kaos is an obvious straw man.  Kaos was supposed to be someone that I could aspire to be—maybe not the fighting prowess and the treasure hunting and all that jazz, but certainly his values. 

We spend three books with Kaos where he’s this white knight willing to do all these things, but we never really see him break.  He sticks to his guns, so to speak, for better or worse.  I can tell you this though: writing a straw man character gets kind of boring, especially if you aspire to be the best you that you can be.  When we see Kaos again in the future, we’re going to really work at breaking him a little bit!

 

 

EC: Where does the name Tellest come from?

MD: To be perfectly honest, I cannot tell you how I came up with the name after all these years.  I’d like to think that it just came to me in a whisper, but back then, I was developing names for cities and characters by looking at everyday objects and reading them backward.  We had a poison called red nib that we developed just because we happened to be looking at a binder.

It’s probable that we were thinking of creating this world where you’d be telling this insane amount of stories over a broad history, and we thought, “hey, Tellest sounds a lot like ‘Tell Us,’ let’s just roll with it!”

 

EC: Who is currently part of the Tellest team?

MD: Tellest has grown a lot from those days when I was writing after math tests.  We’ve got five people who have officially developed stories for us, and among them, four of them have been published in our anthology.  We’re in the middle of courting a few other writers right now as well, but it is slow going as we try to organically build.

Meanwhile, on the other media front, we have a group of around four or five artists who consistently deliver content to us.  By the end of the year, I’m hopeful that we’ll have over 100 pieces of commissioned work to show off on the Tellest site.  We’ve also got a pair of very dependable narrators who we use for the Tellest audiobooks, and we’re just wrapping up work on the last two Tales of Tellest novellas.

And then of course, we’re starting to expand elsewhere, which is where you come in, Erika!

 

EC: Where do you find your writers and artists?

MD: Most of the writers that I work with are local.  I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who share the same love of storytelling and fantasy, and I’ve been able to share Tellest with them in a way that you don’t often see with other written worlds.  They’ve surprised me every step of the way, and I’m proud of each of them.

We also experimented about two years back with hosting writing prompt contests on our website.  That was how we connected with Aaron Canton, who ended up being one of our more prolific writers.  We’ve been talking internally about opening that up again as a feature.  When we did them before, it was almost laughable because we didn’t really have a large web presence.  Only two or three people would submit at a time!  Now, and especially as we move toward releasing another big set of books, maybe we’ll have a bigger internet footprint.

Regarding the artists, I was lucky enough to find most of them on DeviantArt or through Reddit.  With Leo, our main cover artist, I happened to see his work on another writer’s book cover, and I tracked him down and convinced him to do a commission for Mageborn.  We loved working with him so much that he’s done just about every cover since then!

 

EC: Out of all your novellas, which is your personal favorite? 

MD: That’s such a tough question.  I’m a fan of all my books for different reasons, but there are two that are a little closer to me. 

Awake was almost an experimental piece for me that explored what PTSD would look like in a fantasy world.  I had to do some real research with that, and actually reached out to a friend I grew up with to get her opinions as both a modern day warrior and as a woman.  That translated to some real inspiration for the character of Venathryn, who has evolved tremendously since her original inception about sixteen years ago.

As much as I love Awake, I think my favorite actually has to be The Fall, however.  It truly speaks to the way Tellest itself was kind of dreamed up—as a world that lets different genres play together.  The Fall is the tale of Icarus redressed for fantasy.  And the best part is it’s told in such a way that it could in theory be what actually inspired the mythology.  The Fall is also the first story that I told in such a distant part of the timeline from the established books in the series.  We look at what the world looked like over three thousand years ago!  And of course, I think with such an event—the end of the world for some people—gave me the chance to make some strong emotional choices that I really hope resonated with people after they were done reading it!

 

 

EC: You have a second Kickstarter coming up, tell us about that. 

MD: So, what we’re trying to do is raise $2000 to offset the publishing costs of releasing at least six new books.  These are going to be five sequels to the Tales of Tellest novellas, but they’ll each be consistently longer than their predecessors.  We also have a collection of short stories once again—this time we’re aiming for two dozen in the compilation!

The money that we raise from this campaign will help us with editing, and it’ll assure that each of these stories has gorgeous front-and-back book covers.

 

EC: How did the first one go?

MD: I wouldn’t have even dreamed of coming back for more if our last Kickstarter hadn’t gone so well.  We were absolutely blown away to have been fully funded by the end of the first day.  For a fantasy brand that really had no internet footprint, that was an awesome feeling.  I was floored by the response.  And then, through the rest of the campaign, we managed to double our original goal, and ended up with some interesting bonus content.  We wrapped up reconciling all of our rewards just a few months ago, and I hope that everyone who played a part in bringing this volume of Tellest books to life felt great having those books in their hands.

 

EC: What are some of the goals of the Kickstarter? 

MD: First and foremost, it’d be nice if we could fund these initial books.  Because they’re longer, this set will require more stringent editing than the last set, which will obviously increase the cost.  And going with double-wide covers essentially doubles the cost of the art as well.

Kickstarter is also great for developing an audience that you might not otherwise have access to.  Not only that, but you’re essentially pitching to people who are specifically there to look for projects like yours.  We have the opportunity to show people that Tellest is an accomplished fantasy brand—we’ve already ran a successful campaign and delivered on our promises.  It can only go up from here.

 

EC: What would you do if you surpassed your set goal of $2000?

MD: I’m hopeful that we will.  I mean, I’m cautiously optimistic.  You don’t want to count any of your chickens before they hatch, but I’m always prepared, just in case.  Besides these big five sequels, we’ve got a handful of other longer stories waiting in the wings.  For every $500 we raise beyond the initial goal, we’ll be able to publish another book.  And the best news is that everyone who pitches in at one of our very affordable levels—$29 for the first 100 folks, and $45 for anyone that doesn’t get in when the getting’s good—is going to get all those eBooks added to their order for free.  If we raise $4000, that’s 19 books for as little as $29.  I think that’s a pretty good deal.

 

EC: What is something you want people to know about you and about Tellest that are new to the scene?

MD: We want to make Tellest an inclusive fantasy world.  We want it to be something that compels people to come back, and make it feel like home.  The idea of our fantasy brand is that you’re always going to be a part of it, and that we’ll always have new content driving us forward.  It’s already grown quite broad in the five years since I first published, and if we’re as successful in the next few years as we were in the past few, you’re bound to see some incredible things right around the corner.

 

EC: Excellent.  I think that’ll about wrap it up.  Thank you for taking the time to talk about all this.  I know you’re busy with the Kickstarter, so this was very nice.

MD: Not a problem at all.  I’m glad for the opportunity.  I’m usually on the other end of the interview, so it was a nice change of pace for me!

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