By D.W. Vogel My favorite part of writing a book is conceptualizing the story before I begin writing anything down–answering all the “why” questions. Those answers help me understand my characters’ motivations. I love sorting out the reasons why everyone does what they do. This was particularly interesting while writing The Forgotten King because the characters existed before I got my hands on them. I had to take characters that people felt like they already knew and loved and get inside their heads. It’s a whole new experience writing in someone else’s world. With my own sci-fi series, I have…
By Zachary James If you’ve ever been a fan of a franchise (and if you’re reading this, I’m sure you have), you surely appreciate consistency within that franchise. When writers introduce plot holes and errors into an otherwise perfect continuity, fans get understandably frustrated and upset. When writing Super Dungeon: The King’s Summons, I always had the fans at the back of my mind. I spent hours researching and re-researching the world, poring over single paragraphs of lore to make sure I wasn’t missing any crucial details. After all, if I made one mistake, like claiming Amethyst was the oldest…
By Christopher Keene To write a book, I need to be in a specific state of mind; I need to be confident enough to be creative. When writing a book from an existing world, like the Super Dungeon Series, you need to know about the world, its magic, its factions, and the story you want to tell in it. The hardest part of writing The Midnight Queen was getting on board with writing in a world that wasn’t entirely my own. There is a lot of magic and monsters, friends and foes, and I had to navigate that while also…
By Dan Allen Have you ever wished you could sneak onto the set of your favorite movie, or pilfer the notes of your favorite author and get the rest of the story—everything that never made it into the books or onto the big screen? Just dive into the creator’s imagination and soak it all up? I got to do that once. The day I got unrestricted access to the Super Dungeon vault (shared drive), my fingers were just tingling. There, right in front of me, was the Super Dungeon bible—the top-secret repository of all the lore, legends, races, magic, characters,…
By David J. West In the past, I’ve written some weird horror books, and so naturally I was tagged to write The Glauerdoom Moor, which is set in this creepy-themed area. To start, I had some fun playing Super Dungeon Explore with my brother and our kids. Then I started thinking about how to make a story out of the adventure and how to bring that all to life. I liked planning out the book a bit beforehand, even if just in my mind. I pondered what the story would be about and what might be some exciting scenes, kind…
By Adam Glendon Sidwell Way back in 2016 I sent an email out of the blue to Soda Pop Miniatures to ask if they were interested in doing novelizations of Super Dungeon. I’d never met any of them before and I didn’t even know their names yet—I just loved the art, the charm of the characters, and the complexity of the world of Crystalia. And, to my delight, someone responded! It wasn’t long after that Deke sent Zac, my co-author and, at the time, the Project Manager at Future House Publishing, a dump of google docs, games, and reading material….
By Michael D. Young
So, you want to do NaNoWriMo? Good! And good luck! It’s not for the faint of heart, especially if writing is not your primary profession. I’ve done NaNoWriMo eight times and managed to write the full 50,000 words seven out of the eight times, all while trying to juggle family and work life. Though it can be difficult, it’s an incredibly rewarding experience that has produced some of my favorite work.
The release of Christopher Keene’s The Midnight Queen in June was a bittersweet one. It marked the end of the five-book Super Dungeon Series, authored by six of Future House’s authors, and told the story of the Heroes of Crystalia as they battled epic monsters and tracked down the adventuring princesses in the furthest reaches of the realm.
I’ve been writing since I could read. I have notebooks and journals galore, dating back to my early elementary years. From an early age I had no problem labeling myself as a writer. But having the confidence to label myself an author came much later. By my late twenties I had written my Sherlock Academy Series, dabbled in self-publishing, and was leading a writer’s group. Yet I couldn’t muster the nerve to call myself an author. The reason? I hadn’t really taken myself seriously as an author, so why should others? Then a seasoned author told me to attend the big Society of…
A few short weeks ago, we, the fans of Star Wars, had no idea how quickly we would be captivated by a character with absolutely no ability to show facial expressions. And that’s just “Baby Yoda.” Even better is the character the show is named for, the Mandalorian, who never reveals his face because “that is the way.” This is one series that works its way into the greater Lucasfilm universe as a wonderful addition and a return to the brand of storytelling that made Star Wars fun in the first place. The setting is a post-Empire world following the…