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Luke R.J. Maynard

Goodreads Author

Born

Canada

Website

http://lukemaynard.com

Twitter

lukemaynard

Genre

Fantasy, Horror, Fiction

Member Since

November 2014

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/lukemaynard

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Luke R. J. Maynard is a writer, poet, musician, literary scholar, and wearer of sundry other hats in the arts and letters. His poetry, short fiction, and scholarship have appeared in various collections across Canada and the United States, and his first CD, Desolation Sound, was released independently in 2018.

Luke is best known as the author of the Travalaith Saga, an epic fantasy series that began with "The Season of the Plough" in July 2019, and continues with "The Season of the Cerulyn," released earlier this spring. He lives in Toronto, where he is studying the law and hard at work on a sequel. ...more

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What are you currently working on?

Luke R.J. Maynard I've got a couple of stages at various stages of completion:

1.There's "Heartblood," a revisionist take on a classic fairy-tale, which is much differen…moreI've got a couple of stages at various stages of completion:

1.There's "Heartblood," a revisionist take on a classic fairy-tale, which is much different from most of the fantasy I write;

2.There's "The Season of the Cerulyn," the next book in the Travalaith Saga;

3.I'm working on a crooked retelling of Beowulf in the style of a popular children's book. It's murderously hard because I'm trying to maintain a modern rhyme-scheme popularized by Dr. Seuss and others AND the alliterative metre of Old English poetry simultaneously:
"HOW WE HAVE HEArd of the legends and lays
Of the ever-wise earls in the eldest of days..."

There are a few other side projects too of mixed seriousness. Right now, almost all my time is going toward "The Season of the Cerulyn." The first book in the series has been really well received, and I feel that now I owe it to those generous readers to get Book II to press as soon as I can. Nobody should ever badger an author to hurry up; but by the same token, I don't want to troll readers by dropping a cliffhanger and then going off to work on ten other things.(less)

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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Luke R.J. Maynard Like probably almost everyone, I'm inspired by what I take in. That's part of the reason why I take a breather and never read the same genre I'm curre…moreLike probably almost everyone, I'm inspired by what I take in. That's part of the reason why I take a breather and never read the same genre I'm currently writing in: writers consciously echo what they take in, and if I read high fantasy while writing high fantasy, there's a chance what I'm doing will turn out too much like what they're doing. I love the Tolkien comparisons I've been getting with "The Season of the Plough," but I don't want to *copy* JRRT or anyone else in fantasy.

So I mostly read other things. For "The Season of the Plough," I took a page out of William Faulkner: he also spends a lot of time writing about small towns growing up as a community in the shadow of a civil war only a couple of generations past. I wanted to begin the Travalaith Saga with a look at a small town.

It eventually became a town of refugees from all across the Travalaithi Empire because I wanted a diverse cast without the feeling like I was just shoehorning one into the standard English Medieval setting of most high fantasy. I wanted a small town like Faulkner's for Aewyn to grow up in, but I also wanted a rich background of people from all over, with past lives and stories from far away... something like the alien cantina in Star Wars.

If you imagine a world where that's not a spacer bar, it's just a bar where all the local farmers go, but all the local farmers came here from other worlds to get away from their lives, I guess that's what Widowvale is like.

I also wrote the book while studying for a law degree. So I had Aewyn's story from the beginning, but the idea for the setting grew out of William Faulkner's short stories, plus Star Wars, plus a few medieval land conveyances and tax evasion case law.

The upcoming sequel, "The Season of the Cerulyn," has its roots in Guy de Maupassant's short fiction from the French decadence. But that, as they say, is another story...(less)

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Luke R.J. Maynard’s books

Average rating: 4.06 · 328 ratings · 80 reviews · 10 distinct works

	Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis by Scott R. Jones (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Ruthanna Emrys (Goodreads Author), Kristi DeMeester (Goodreads Author) 3.83 avg rating — 144 ratings — published 2016 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	We Dare: An Anthology of Augmented Humanity (We Dare #1) by Chris Kennedy (Goodreads Author), Jamie Ibson (Goodreads Author), Christopher Woods (Goodreads Author) 4.22 avg rating — 92 ratings — published 2019 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath by Justine Geoffrey (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Scott R. Jones (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Lyndsey Holder (Goodreads Author) 3.68 avg rating — 63 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Season of the Plough (Travalaith Saga #1) 4.34 avg rating — 44 ratings — published 2019 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession by Scott R. Jones (Goodreads Author) (Editor), H.P. Lovecraft, Autumn Christian (Goodreads Author) 4.35 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 2017 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen by Selene MacLeod (Editor), Jordan Gallader (Editor), Ahmad Al-Khatat 4.40 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2017 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Season of the Cerulyn (Travalaith Saga #2) 4.75 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2020 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	“Curious, if True”: The Fantastic in Literature by Amy Bright (Editor/Contributor), Luke R.J. Maynard (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Gaelan Gilbert (Contributor) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Everything Wants To Live / That Most Foreign of Veils 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis by Ruthanna Emrys (2016-05-23) by Scott R Jones, Konstantine Paradias (Goodreads Author), Rhoads Brazos 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Series by Luke R.J. Maynard

The Travalaith Saga (2 books)
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Luke R.J. Maynard (Goodreads Author)

4.40 avg rating — 52 ratings

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Balkan Magic

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Bessie Bell and the Goblin King (Tales of Aylfenhame, #3)

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“Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.”
― Adam Lindsay Gordon

tags: courage, kindness, ye-weary-wayfarer

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