Available now
A Company of Adventurers is the first Tales of Kjeldale novel, and it’s fast-paced with a clear RPG-feel. Practically brimming with adventurers, orcs, and magic. The Kingdom of Kjeldale makes your role-player’s heart feel right at home.
I had a lot of fun writing it and the beta-readers said they could feel this. Not that it’s a comedy, it’s a genuine regular fantasy novel, but when the writing flows easily, it just shows.
❤️🎄 Check it out
❤️🎄 Read the first pages
I spent most of the year on it, and it was my first attempt at discovery writing (the style preferred by famous writers such as George R.R. Martin and Stephen King.) To my surprise, I discovered that I really like this approach. It makes the words and plot flow without a ton of pre-planning.
The idea
The thoughts behind the novel came from various places, but mostly from wondering what happens to adventurers at the end of their careers. If you ever read a book or played a roleplaying game, you might have considered what became of a beloved character once the book or game ended. Like, did the character go on other glorious adventures or did they end up dying while unhappy or perhaps “lived happily ever after?”
I often wonder about such things, and since I played a heck of a lot of games and read a lot of books over the years, I have a lot of thoughts and daydreams on this matter to draw on.
While I created all-new characters for the book, the focus remained, and I focused on a couple of retired adventurers. The novel begins by introducing the farmhand Talen, who used to be a legendary fighter. Living with his wife and child on his brother’s farm, Talen is not unhappy per se but wants more from life than mucking out stalls.
When an adventuring job comes along, one that can make him instantly rich on successful completion, he becomes an adventurer once more, even despite him having a party, or having held a sword for years. Will he succeed or fall flat on his face?
The beta-readers tell me the story is quick-paced and a lot of fun, and if you want to see how Talen’s new adventure pans out, pick up the book 😊❤️🎄
The writing processes
The project began small. Like “short story”-small!
The scandi-crime author, Christoffer Petersen, and I, briefly talked about writing some fantasy short stories. We would do some quickly written origin stories and publish them together.
But since Chris ended up being busy with other writing projects, and I kept having fun trying my hand at discovery writing, what started out small quickly became HUGE for me!
Having written an epic fantasy, Doomsayer Prince, I’m used to doing a LOT of world-building and juggling multiple characters and subplots. Even though the novel is much smaller in scope, this sort of thing just flows naturally to me.
Since A Company of Adventurers was written through a discovery process, it’s a very different writing experience from Doomsayer Prince. I wrote quicker than the previous novel, and soon my first short story expanded and became the first two chapters of the novel.
Talen, his wife, Lia, and the earth sorcerer, Mick, who hates Talen’s guts, became important characters in the book, and each of them got their own chapters. The holy champion, Njörn, who was inspired by Miller (a minor character from Doomsayer Prince, whom I missed writing about,) kept me busy with a very nice story arc, and Chris let me use Dianne, a thief he’d first coined, free, and the whole thing just kept expanding until A company of Adventurers was born as a fully-fledged fantasy novel. Thanks to Chris and my fantastic beta-readers for helping me to make it what it needed to be.
eBook and paperback
For now, A Company of Adventurers is out in hardcover only, but soon it will be available in eBook and paperback formats. Visit me on Facebook, homepage, or Twitter to see when it happens.
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