Interview with Paul Tallman about his new series ROGUE DESTINY

Hello Paul! Thank you for stopping in at my blog today.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself as a writer?

Thanks for talking with me.

I’ve loved imaginative stories since I was very young. From the moment I could hold a pencil, I wrote stories and drew illustrations, creating my own characters and worlds to play in. In grade school, I was always in trouble for doodling in the margins of my books instead of paying attention in class.

As the years rolled by, life and adult responsibilities got in the way of my creativity. But the desire never left me. I dabbled in writing and drawing in my spare time, creating new characters and more fantastical worlds. Eventually, I joined a writing group to learn how to tell a story better. From that, my first book, Rogue Destiny, emerged.

I read your book Rogue Destiny and loved it so much that I gave it to my husband to read. He’s not much of a fiction reader, but he also loved it and became a beta reader for your next book. The basic premise for the novel is that there are millions of literary worlds created by different books. The characters don’t know they are in a story that keeps repeating.

What was the inspiration for this story idea?

The first spark of an idea that would become Rogue Destiny came to me after I watched an old Chuck Jones cartoon where storybook characters escape from their books to sing and dance with a little cartoon mouse who came into the bookstore to escape the weather. The music wakes up Frankenstein’s Monster, and he crashes their party. I found the interaction between characters from different genres intriguing.

The beginnings of a story formed in my head. What if there was a mystical universe where every fable, myth, story and fairy tale existed as its own world? What if the denizens of these myths could travel to other worlds via rabbit-holes, like the one in Alice in Wonderland?

At the center of this mythic cosmos, there is a city called Rogue Destiny. It’s a never-never land where those escaping their own worlds find refuge and where a heroic band of adventurers, known as the Raconteurs, protected the city from the dark forces that often threatened her.

The story was enjoyable to read because with your story premise your main character, Ren, travels to many different story worlds.

Did you have fun writing about these different worlds?

I’ve always loved the idea of one genre bleeding into another, blending familiar tropes to create something completely new. Star Wars is just Flash Gordon with samurai space wizards. I wanted to create a standalone mythos where all these contrasting elements crash into each other.

Since I have the attention span of a two-year-old, the stories needed to be compelling, and full of high-octane action. If I’m bored with the story, then the reader will be too.

My favorite bit of writing advice is from Brandon Sanderson. He said to “Err on the side of awesome.” So I always look for the awesome in the story. That’s the mantra I write by.

Did you have any unique challenges?

Worldbuilding was a nightmare at times. The Raconteurs travel from one story to another, and I wanted each world they entered to feel real to the reader, like it was a complete story unto itself. That was hard to do at times, but so satisfying when I hit the tone and atmosphere of that particular world. And jumping from genre to genre is so fun, the writing never gets boring.

What was your favorite character in the book and why?

Ren B’gatti, the shape-shifting trickster. He’s the protagonist who the story follows through all the books. He doesn’t remember how he ended up in Rogue Destiny or where’s he from, his partner Claymore recruited him into the Raconteurs, to help defend those who cannot defend themselves.

You rewrote the original version of Rogue Destiny, and the new book is Rogue Destiny – Beginnings.

Why did you republish it and what were the changes?

When I first published in 2021, I found many readers dropping off after only a few pages, so something wasn’t working. I realized I had started too far into the story. The original opening showed a trial for one of the main characters. The reader had no vested interest in the character or why he was being sentenced to death. So I decided to go back and write new opening chapters to set the stage for the trial. That worked much better.

I wanted Rogue Destiny to be my Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars trilogy, so I was way in over my head from the beginning. I’d planned doing this big thick, three volume trilogy that amazed and entertained the world. I figured J.R.R. Tolkien and Brandon Sanderson did it, so how hard could it be? Turned out to be pretty darn hard. Stories of that size tend to take on a life of their own and grow beyond what the author can contain.

Big fantasy books are great. I’ve read dozens of them, but writing something of that size took me forever and as a self-publishing author, you need to keep the new books coming. So, I split the first book in half and rewrote them into stand alone stories. And for me, that’s a much more practical way to go.

Your books might appeal to many young people because there is a comic book or superhero quality to them, but they get fairly dark.

What age range did you write the books for?

I always imagined Rogue Destiny being for readers as young as nine or ten, depending their reading maturity. But it is also written for an older audience who enjoy a fast-paced portal fantasy story. The levels of violence is nothing more than what we see in Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Arc, or Lord of the Rings. The themes are about loyalty and duty, but the stakes are high, and characters will die.

The next book in the series is out now, Ley-Lines and the Rabbit Hole.

Can you tell us what it is about and where readers can get a copy?

After a mysterious prison breakout, the Raconteurs are forced hunt down the ruler of the criminal underworld, Mordecai Davos, who has disappeared from the city. Rumors swirl that he is on a quest to recover a lost artifact dating back to the origins of Rogue Destiny. Their plan is simple. Find the outlaws, drop the shape-shifting trickster into their midst, and let Ren do what he does best. Once he infiltrates his enemy, everything goes sideways, and Ren awakens an ancient evil that threatens to devour a world.