1. How did you get started writing?
My grandfather was an avid reader and would let me spend hours in his backyard workshop/library. It was full of books from the Lord of the Rings to Conan pulps to old school Louis L’Amour westerns. I read everything I could get my hands on back then, and it was a very short hop from there to writing my own short stories where Conan and Frodo ran into outlaws and cowboys. Once I caught the bug, I couldn’t stop.
2. Out of all your books, which one is your favourite and why?
Probably School of Swords and Serpents book five. It encapsulates everything I love about the rest of the series.
3. If your friends were asked to describe you in one word, what would it be?
Curious
4. What is your favorite thing to do outside of writing?
Games. RPGs, video games, strategy games, wargaming – if it’s got rules, dice, or controllers, I’m there.
5. What do you love most about the genre you write?
Cultivation and academy stories are about exploration and refining the self, which is something I’ve always been keenly interested in. These books are full of characters who relentlessly strive to learn more, to do more, to become more than they were at the start of their journey.
6. What do you want readers to take from your books?
The idea that everyone is capable of changing at least their part of the world. My books are about underdogs striving to make sense of the mysteries that surround them to overcome the forces that want to destroy or subjugate them. As long as the odds are, though, those characters never stop trying. They might not accomplish what they thought they would, but they always evolve and advance in unexpected and exciting ways. That’s kind of how I approach life. Relentlessly moving forward, one step, one discovery, at a time..
7. Describe yourself in 3 words.
Interested. Driven. Seeking.
8. What made you decide to write in your current genre?
I caught the progression fantasy bug a few years ago and really dug into reading those books with their gamified worlds. From there it was a short trip over to cultivation novels, and I was really fascinated by what I found in those books. I’d been working on another idea at the time in an unrelated genre, but found that story fit much better in the cultivation genre. That eventually became School of Swords and Serpents.
9. Tell us about your current release/or new release?
I’m finishing the final draft of the School of Swords and Serpents: Infinite Core. It’s the fifth book in the series and really ties together a lot of the threads that have been woven through the stories that came before. It’s been exciting to see Jace’s journey expand over the course of the series. A lot of my readers are not ready for what’s coming down the line for our scrappy Eclipse Warrior.
10. What does your writing space look like?
A disaster. 🙂
11. What’s the one piece of technology you can’t live without?
My trusty voice recorder. No recorder, no stories.
12. Do you find it hard to kill off your characters?
No. I’m a horribly cruel author.
13. How much of your characters are based on your traits or someone you know personally?
I think every character is based on bits and pieces of the author’s life. I never just transplant someone from my real life into my novels, but little bits and pieces sneak in everywhere.
14. What are you working on now? Can you share a teaser of it with our readers?
I’m still deeply involved in writing Swords and Serpents, but I’ve got a new thing on the horizon. The opening line has really stuck with me. “They’ll never admit you’re a god.”
15. Is there one genre that you have not written in yet, but would love to try writing?
I really want to do space fantasy stuff, but the timing just hasn’t been right.
16. What do you do when a flash of inspiration hits you at an inopportune moment?
I don’t stress to hard about it. I think ephemeral ideas that hit you like a bolt from the blue and then disappear forever weren’t meant to be. If they resonate strongly with you, then they’ll lodge in your brain like a splinter and won’t stop bothering you until you get them out.
17. What keeps you going while writing?
Finding out what happens next.
18. What’s next for you?
More writing, a podcast idea that I’ve been working on for a while, and, hopefully, a new campaign setting for RPGs down the road a bit..
19. Where can we find you on the internet?
My web page is at gagelee.com, and my Facebook group is right here: https://www.facebook.com/