Inspirations

I feel like I can't truly describe what inspired me to write romances until I talk about Megan Derr.

There was a time when I was in high school that I began to realize there was more gay romances out there than just fanfiction. This search led me to Fictionpress and eventually Megan Derr. At the time, she had posted a great many m/m sappy, lovely, sexy, fluffy romances. I read a great many of them, but my favorites were her Fairytales Slashed series.

Let me tell you, I have read those short stories so often that I can literally open this book to any page and just start reading and thoroughly enjoy myself. I don't need to be at the beginning of a story or even in any logical place, I have it memorized. Any one of Megan Derr's short stories or novels are my ultimate comfort read. When I want something light and romantic and a happy ending, I go to her.

Now I don't know the life story of Megan Derr, but I do know she eventually took down all her works on Fictionpress and moved some to her website and others she began to publish through Less Than Three Press. Since I couldn't get all my kicks for free, I began to purchase some of her novels/collections, especially the older works I knew so well.

(please don't judge some of the other books in frame. I judge myself every day for owning Twilight)

I still have plans to basically collect all of her works, but this is a good start.

So flash forward to a few years ago when I decided that I wanted to try getting published. I wanted to try to find small publishers that would be more likely to accept my work. Naturally, one of the first places I looked was Less Than Three. At the time they had submission calls out for more Fairytales Slashed stories and I decided to try and write a couple of original fairytales.

I've never known if this is super obvious, but I did write those stories as if I was Megan Derr. I tried to use her same style, same tropes, same fluffiness. And it worked! I got published for the first time!

(Admittedly, I do think my first couple of stories are a bit rough, but I blame that entirely on being inexperienced on the whole short story business)

I've branched out since then. I've tried different ideas and moved from short stories to novels, but I do think a bit of my Megan Derr inspiration is there in every romance I write. Or maybe I just think "would my high school self love to read this?" and I go from there.

The Warrior, the Healer, and the Thief inspirations

So The Warrior, the Healer, and the Thief, started out as a simple idea. I wanted to write a poly story and I wanted the characters ‘roles’ to be based off of RPG/D&D character classes. To make it a bit more interesting, I wanted the characters to be useless in their class (i.e. a healer that cannot heal, a thief afraid of the dark, a non-typical warrior)

This is about where my idea ended. I tried different genders, different fantasy worlds, but nothing seemed to stick. Then Less Than Three Press put out a call for a western collection and I wondered if I could finally flesh out my idea. 

Thus was born the magical western lesbian polyamory romance.

When I created the world, naturally I needed to incorporate magic. (I mean, being inspired by D&D means this is a requirement) I wanted a variety of magical users whose classification wasn't entirely based on types of magic, but more like the culture and family they were born from. Mages and healers and witches and voodoo. I also wanted monsters but I didn't want to take entirely from European myth. So I started picking from Native American myth and American folklore.

Fun fact # 1: Speaking of mythical creatures featured in the novel, hodags are from Wisconsin and the legend started based on an old timey ‘photoshop’ picture of one. 

Also sharp tongues are my own mythical creation based on a short story you can read here.

I spent a long time agonizing over what sort of western setting I wanted to use. From the Oregon trail, to the transcontinental railroad, to cattle herding in Texas or frontier farming int he Dakotas. I watched all of Ken Burns The West and fell in love with all of them, haha.

I picked a typical Oregon trail setting, if only because it would be easier to bring different characters together. It was a time when the west was still relatively fresh and untouched by European influence and I had played the game, Oregon Trail, too much as a child.

Fun fact # 2; if I had used the transcontinental railroad someone would have definitely been a Chinese immigrant. Possibly Chase. Ahh, perhaps for a spin off…

Throughout the book I learned a lot of things. Not only what it means to write a poly romance, but also how writing three people falling in love is exponentially more complicated than two people. I'm also just not very good with more than two main characters, haha.

I'm hoping to one day get started on a sequel.