Why I Write Fantasy - Renee Wildes

Welcome Renee Wildes, fantasy romance author who has never met a unicorn or elf she didn't like.

Amber: Why do you Write Fantasy?

Renee: I grew up reading Terry Brooks and Mercedes Lackey, so it was a natural progression for me to switch from writing horse stories when I was six to writing fairytales when I was sixteen. And I am a HUGE (totally GINORMOUS) Joseph Campbell fan. My muse is a big red dragon, so my books got darker and edgier as I matured.

Amber: Authors I've interviewed so far aren’t writing about swords/sorcery/elves/dragons. How you work that into the romance?

Renee: They totally go hand in hand. Fantasy is good over evil, and romance is love conquers all - so it's a win/win situation. I think there's a huge draw to "happily-ever-after." My heroes and heroines meet on a bigger quest and fall in love along the way. It's totally 50/50, except my heroes are elves and werewolves and my heroines are dragons, selkies, dream faeries and assassin nuns.

My villains are demon-possessed despots, genocidal royalty, and most recently goblins who don't know how to work dwarven magic properly! I'm a Navy brat and a cop's kid, so I use a lot of warrior arch-types. They say write what you know! I'm also the only vet tech in a family of nurses, so that's where all the critters come from.

Amber: Tell me about your red dragon muse.

Renee: I started my serious writing career with short series contemporaries, only the weird, twisted dragon soul who drew the short straw and became my muse knows. And she's not talking. I actually wrote two contemporaries - Second Chances and An Angel For Gabriel. Then I learned POV, and that red dragon grabbed me by the throat and said to knock the whole contemporary-thing off. Very direct creatures, dragons. And so the "Guardians of Light" series was born.

Amber: How did the Guardians of Light begin?.

Renee: It started w/an image of a girl kneeling in a burning room. (Dragon muse, remember?) When I learned she STARTED the fire, I went to my then-critique partners and asked, "Do I do something with this?" And Duality was born. When it won in the 2006 WisRWA Fab 5 SilverQuill Award in Paranormal, I remember meeting one of my judges at a chapter meeting and her saying, "YOU wrote Duality? I LOVED that story." I pitched it to Angela James from Samhain at the 2007 NJ RWA Put Your Heart In A Book Conference, they bought it. Bk 2, Hedda's Sword followed. Lycan Tides’ ebook comes out July 2009 and coming in print May 2010. Bk 4, Dust of Dreams, comes out in ebook July 2010. All the characters and lands are interwoven in a grand tapestry, although each story line stands alone.

Amber: I see from your website that you teach world building.

Renee: One of the things I've become "branded" or pegged for, as to what readers can expect when they pick up my books, is the level of worldbuilding. Culture, politics, religion, geography and description. Mostly putting my characters in the unfamiliar - having them learn as they go in a sink or swim scenario. I have a "6 Senses" class that's geared more for beginning writers, an intermediate "Deep POV" class, and a "World-building" class for more advanced writers that builds off the first two. Worldbuilding depends a lot on deep POV, because the entire story is told from one or two characters' viewpoints. I love to have conflicting cultures and religions, b/c that's what's in todays news. Readers can relate. A warrior and a single mom are going to have different priorities - how to make them compatible? Today's fiction needs more than conflicting personalities - characters are products of the world around them. Part upbringing, part environment. http://www.reneewildes.net/currentnews.html

Amber: Any thing special that helps to with your worlds?

Renee: One of the things I do when I write is listen to appropriate cultural music to set the story. Duality was written to Medaeival Baebes, Hedda's Sword was written to Nordic bands Garmarna, Hedningarna and Varttina, Lycan Tides was written to Celtic Lunasa & Leahy, and Dust of Dreams was written to Nightwish and Warlock. I use Axel Rudi Pell for battle scenes and Enya and Kate Price for love scenes.
I take a standard norm and flip it on its ear. Duality is basically a Cinderella story - if Cinderella were a half-dragon fire mage w/a homicidal temper. Hedda's Sword is basically Sleeping Beauty - if Sleeping Beauty were an assassin nun. (And Prince Charming isn't a prince at all.)

Amber: Why do readers love fantasy?

Renee: I think for readers it's the escapism - the magical trip to someplace long ago and far far away. It's where things can be worse than real life but somehow good always triumphs over evil. It gives us hope.

                                                         
Amber: Would you write fantasy even if no one read it?

Renee: I already have - I started when I was 16 and got published when I was 40! And when the muse strikes I write - even when I know there's no market for whatever it is... I can't NOT write.

Learn more about 
Renee Wildes’ 

Books and Worlds 
on her website.