The world of Ashlyn Dark may, or may not be linked to that of Hestonia. Perhaps it takes place in the same universe, since the idea of space travel between the stars of fantasy worlds has always been a firm favourite of mine since the advent of Spell Jammer and planar travel with Planescape.
I'm a bit of a fan of those concepts, if you hadn't already guessed.
In Ashlyn's world though, compared to Fate's Hand, demon lords are the old lords and kings of her planet, they are the first prime movers and shakers.
In terms of RPG ideas, especially in my favourite RPG system to-date: 13th Age. They would be the icons, or at least agents of demon kings who'd be icons.
I have made lots of alterations to Ashlyn Dark over the last year or two, never quite happy with how the first two iterations of her story progressed. Then I re-read some Conan and suddenly it hit me, I wanted to write a story that followed a path from A to B...one that didn't really flirt with complex politika and incredibly deep convoluted plots.
Something that could be expressed in about 30,000 words.
So Ashes of Amarra was born. The tale of a demon hunter and her travels across a world that is being preyed on by demons, drawing her deeper into a bigger story that could unfold over several smaller books. Each one is a definite A to B story though, with enough room to progress into a sequel if I really felt like it.
I delved into Robert E. Howard's work a lot to get the feel of Ashlyn Dark's world, but I wanted to mix it with a bit of Fritz Leiber and Robert L. Asprin. These are influences of mine that have shaped my view of fantasy from an early age along with Michael Moorcock and J.R.R. Tolkien.
I focussed on distilling combat down into a really short flavour piece, where each blow isn't detailed and every movement isn't tracked. There's a paragraph in Howard's Tower of the Elephant where Conan kills one man when the candles are out, you don't get the whole blow by blow account and it's so visually satisfying because of it.
I also looked a bit at how Howard described things and brought a little of that into the story. So in the end, I hope people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
I'll be updating as it heads towards publication.

Art by my gorgeous wife: Gillian Pearce