What inspired you to write this book?
Mortal was long overdue. The Mental Damnation series has been the burning flame with my writing for 14 years since its conception as a single 190,000-word manuscript. Even then, the story wasn't complete and a second book was fully outlined, which was scrapped entirely. The book had a ton of revisions applied to it and grew in size. Eventually, the manuscript split into three books.
The first book Reality was the first professional release back in 2012. I've taken several detours since then and had also released two more novels in the Mental Damnation series, which concluded the original 190,000-word manuscript from 2006. Still, the ending wasn't defined.
Fans wanted to know the ending, and I wanted to too. So the inspiration was to give the fans and characters the ending they deserved. All of last year, I thoroughly reviewed the first three books, plotted, wrote, and spent many hours on the book to get it out.
What can we expect from you in the future?
More writing, of course! In the near future, I am compiling a wide range of short stories I have worked on into a transmedia anthology, which includes a musical score, artwork, and a multiverse world of multiple short stories ranging in genres.
Do you have any "side stories" about the characters?
The Mental Damnation tetralogy has a ton of subplots going on. I have over a decade's worth of backstory notes, a lot of it never made it into the series. There are also expanded universe short stories that will appear in the anthology.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Mortal?
Sure. The characters are a continuation of the Mental Damnation series. There are a few new characters and others that have been long foreshadowed since the first book. The protagonist is Krista, a reptilian who is struggling with being imprisoned by humans. They are racist to her people and are using her as a political tool while trying to study the brain disease she has – Mental Damnation. The disease makes her believe she crosses into hell during her dreams, where she is trying to escape. While all of this is occurring, she is dealing with her coming of age struggles. She has conflicts with friends, romance, learning self-defence, making choices on her own, and developing confidence.
How did you come up with the concept and characters for the book?
The concept came to me from an illustration I sketched out back in 2006. Krista was already a pre-established character to a story I had written. The Mental Damnation series was intended to be an origin story of how she came to be. The sketch was of a younger Krista clutching her head and split between the real world and hell. The hell side would explain who she became in that other story.
A few other characters had been defined as well, such as Darkwing and Malpherities. Other than that, the split reality illustration sprouted the storyline.
Where did you come up with the names in the story?
I'll add to the previous question; the name came to me from the initial sketch of the concept I did back in 2006. The sketch which had Krista and the split world also had a title banner, as I thought this sketch would become the book cover. It didn't. But seeing her head clutched, the ordinary world, and the hell world, the title Mental Damnation was self-explanatory and it stuck.
For the Kingdom of Zingalg and the fantasy aspects of the tetralogy, I pulled influences from naming conventions seen in Brian Jacques’s work such as Redwall and the videogame universe Warcraft by Blizzard. The theory is mashing two words together as a single word or with hyphens describing what it is.
For Dreadweave Pass (see the mashing of words there?), the hellish realm and the afterlife, I used some of the same techniques but also made reference to biblical mythology and Latin names.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
For Mortal, I enjoyed writing the conclusion to the Mental Damnation series. It brought a sense of completeness to me on a deeply personal level.
Who designed your book covers?
I am a graphic designer by trade and work as a freelancer. Naturally, I designed the cover and interior formatting. For Mental Damnation, the series uses a custom drawn typeface seen in the titles and chapters. There are also glyphs and illustrations within the books that I did too.
For my other novels, I too did the covers and interior formatting and most of the artwork that accompanies them.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
Of course! Hindsight is 20/20. I almost did third editions of the Mental Damnation series so I could do more foreshadowing for Mortal. But perfection is the enemy of progress, and these minor details are only things that grew in recent years. Fans love the books as is, and I was more interested in giving them the next book in the series than going back and re-releasing the first three for the third time to make Mortal slightly different.
Did you learn anything during the writing of your recent book?
I did! I learned not to spend 14 years on a series, haha. In seriousness, Mortal was the first book where I wrote the first draft with speech to text software. Other authors I know have talked about how much fun it is to speak your story out, and how much faster it is. I finally tried it out and quite enjoyed the process.
Anything specific you want to tell your readers?
Thank you, sincerely, for all the years of support. Some of you have been a part of the journey since I first released Reality in 2012—others, even longer. Finishing Mortal is for you.
How did you come up with the name of this book?
Oh, well, that would be giving spoilers. Let's just say thematically from the first three, it was bound to be.
What is your favorite part of this book, and why?
Spoilers! Chapters 17 and 24 gave me a real strange hit in the chest with warmth going all the way through, like when you have a crush on someone, or your pet dies.
Convince us why you feel your book is a must-read.
Short pitch: Lord of the Rings meets twisted Alice in Wonderland.
Long pitch: The Mental Damnation tetralogy brings readers into a dark, surreal, twisted world of Dreadweave Pass and the Kingdom of Zingalg. Necromantic Rituals. Holy spells. Demons, ghouls, angels, and gods. The classic good vs evil is shrouded with uncertainty as moral lines blur from the vast unbiased void of realism.
Have you written any other books that are not published?
I have. Two will NEVER see the light of day. One might, it needs some T.L.C., but there's an excellent foundation to work with. I also have a couple of books fully outlined chapter by chapter, but they too are scrapped.
