Hello everypony!
I know it's been a little bit since we have done an interview, but you're all in for a treat with this one.
I had the chance to interview Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree author and frequent Brony convention Community Guest Fiaura the Tank Girl. The interview covers what she has done in the fandom, how things have been going on Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree, and what else she's been working on over the past year or so.
The answer will probably surprise you, and probably net you a nice little discount on something pretty fun.
So be sure to check out the full interview after the break!
The Illustrious Q: Fiaura, could you please tell the readers of Equestria Daily, a little bit about yourself? You know, like what you are known for in the community, how long you have been going to conventions as either a vendor/community guest, and any notable works you have produced for the fandom?
Fiaura Tanks: I have been a community guest at conventions since 2016 and been a vendor since 2018. I have produced a ton of science panels, so many now that they eat up almost six gigabytes on my hard drive of just power points, their associated pictures, and the couple of video clips that go with them. Further, I am the author of Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree, the last of the major seven side stories currently recognized by the FoE Wiki, which was recognized in 2019. Sadly, I have had to put that series on hold.
TIQ: Speaking of Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree, where did you first get the inspiration for creating that story?
FT: It was strange to take a tabletop session, look at the major points, determine how I actually wanted the story to go and then write from there. The deeper you get into the book the less and less you see the tabletop story bleeding through but also the more you can see the roots of said tabletop session still buried in it.
It has been a wild ride full of ups and downs. Going to a convention in 2019 and having just ordered over 200 books only to leave with pre-orders for the next printing was an experience. It made me realize that maybe I have something I can write and be good at writing. It has been a teaching experience for me.
TIQ: The story thus far has been published into three physical volumes. However there hasn’t been an update to the fimfiction version of the story since July 2022. Could you explain a little bit about the lack of updates?
FT: I can’t afford to keep making it at this time. Simple as that. It costs me between 70 to 200 dollars to make one chapter. I have to pay my editors and then sometimes I need a piece of artwork for that chapter. Further, I realized that every book I’ve sold, all 2304 of them, I have made 0$ on. I’ve actually lost money due to the costs of publication, getting them to sight, and other costs from the books as well as investments in FoE projects that don’t make money but are fun to do, like the Audio Book or News from the Bunker Series with Dusty Katt and Inky Notebook of the Traveling Pony Museum, which is sadly now closed. This is because Kkat at the end of the day told me I wasn’t allowed to and if I still wanted to write the story and publish the book, those were the terms. So I obeyed them faithfully and rather than NOT respecting her wishes, I stopped work on FoE: Dead Tree when I could no longer afford it.
I’m not mad at Kkat for this, I think this is truly something nice and so long as she sticks to that principle I can respect her even more than I would have ever allowed myself. She did this purely for art and for the story, something I wish I could do today but know that I cannot do such a thing and still be able to keep the roof over my head.
TIQ: Are there any plans to finish Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree, or is there something else that has been occupying your time?
FT: I desperately want to finish Dead Tree but at this time, I cannot. If things work out and I have the extra money to pursue a passion project again, I will most certainly be finishing Dead Tree. The ending is already written but I cannot share it until the middle is done if you want it to make sense.
In the mean time, I have been working on my own Original Series with full permission to use elements and inspiration from HC SVNT Dracones. I have been putting my efforts there towards a book that hopefully can pay for itself and then pay for me to finish the series. If I can afford to come back and Finish Dead Tree after this book is made, I am going to, it only has seventeen chapters to go and I really want to see my ending displayed to everyone else, I already wrote that part.
A series we are calling: Here, There Be Dragons for many reasons. Not only is it set after humanity has passed in a Hard Science Fiction World full of genetically engineered creatures but to me it is unknown territory to be allowed to write anything I want and make any cannon or ideas I wish without someone else calling any of the shots.
TIQ: You have my complete undivided attention. I’ve always had a soft spot for Science Fiction stories, and I’ve always found science fiction stories with talking animals something that isn’t done anywhere near enough. Could you tell us a little bit about the creative decisions that went into this story about furries in space?
FT: Well for a start before I was a Brony I was a furry. One of the three open furries during the time that World of Tanks had professional gaming teams and I was on them, even went to a world championship in Warsaw twice. But also because the setting fascinates me. I have a background first in biology and secondary in science. Though mostly soft science based upon my degrees.
This allows me to combine them. Apply principles of newtonian physics with advanced understandings of the biological experiments on DNA we are doing even now. Plus let’s be honest, what anime fanboys don't think of catgirls in space isn’t what I do. And I wonder if they will like my more 1980s Feral Catgirls from a wasteland.
TIQ: I have read a lot of science fiction. My home library has well over one thousand science fiction novels I have read since I was a little boy. Yes, most of them are soft science fiction like Star Trek, but I’ve also read hard science fiction by Isaac Asimov and plenty of science fantasy novels—a.k.a. Star Wars—over the years. Of those three sub genres of science fiction, which would best describe Here, There be Dragons?
FT: Absolute Hard Science Fiction with a healthy dose of Eldritch Horror. I’m playing in a universe where Hard Science is king but only because magic can be described as dabbling with the powers of HP Lovecraft inspired Arkham Horror. Where you can imagine that every time you use it for power, there is a risk of something world ending coming to end your world.
With that in mind, ship combat is based upon the current interpretations with near future technology. Shields don’t exist, you have armor and hull reinforcements. Railguns and missiles are the primary weapons with laser point defense and autocannon point defense systems with a few things like plasma weapons for extreme close combat at ranges of less than a few kilometers.
TIQ: One of the fun things about Science Fiction is that the genre itself can be a set dressing for just about any other genre of story. Which is part of the reason why a good number of horror stories are also science fiction stories. What is the subgenre of Here, There be Dragons?
FT: Firmly within the realm of exploring the edge of the map. Understanding that the places you are going is beyond the point everyone has been. Things you have a chance to find may revolutionize the world as you know it. It may bring benefits never imagined before. But also foes to be faced break the rules and ignore the pre-defined laws you expect them to obey. The kind of inspiration I feel is the crew being a more found family interpretation of the crew from Mass Effect’s Normandy and the foe they face is akin to the Reapers but now how they were portrayed in the first game rather than a physical enemy, more one who can affect your mind and alter your personality first. The physical entity only comes out as some horror beyond the stars that wants to unleash more of itself upon the universe.
I had to see a setting I was allowed and seize upon the idea that your enemy isn’t necessarily able to be touched. Imagine a foe that appears to be made of solid liquid. Bullets pass through and rip flesh from it and leave holes gapping holes that simply wrap around and close, reforming as if the force of the impact never happened.
Only to find out that sort of enemy can appear anywhere, emerging from your best friend because he dug a little too deep and now they “Know” him well enough to use him to shred the bounds of reality and enter our world with intent to end you. An enemy that the more you know about them, the better you can fight them but so can they have a better chance of your own annihilation or to use you as a conduit into the universe to attack those you care most about.
TIQ: So since the novel will be the introduction to this completely brand new universe, with brand new characters, locations, social political structures… everything basically, how are you approaching the writing of this novel? Are you writing it in such a way that the audience will be able to pick up and understand what is going on fairly quickly or are you going for an “en media res” type of story where explanations will be at a minimum and the characters are fully living in their world?
FT: I prefer that explanations come because the characters in the world ask. You wouldn’t expect a Space Marine, trained to board ships and subdue enemy crews to understand how genetics work. You wouldn’t expect an archeologist and social savant to know how hacking a computer system works. A street cat burglar isn’t going to know the rotation of planets and where you can stand on the surface of Mercury or for how long but an engineer might.
So what I do is have each character with different personalities, different backgrounds, and different understandings of their worlds. When the reader doesn’t understand something, someone on the page isn’t going to and they are going to ask in their own way only to have the character next to them who does understand it, explain it.
This is how I did for Fallout: Equestria, either things were explained by intercharacter monologue between Pink and Sunrise or by the group around her, or in her case by her to someone else who asked the odd question about why she was fire-hardening sprinkles only for her to explain they made excellent shrapnel once hardened.
TIQ: What were some of the inspirations for Here, There be Dragons?
FT: I sat down one day and made characters I liked. People that I felt like at different points in my life if I had gone down a certain path, I would live a life similar to their’s. Then I use the personalities of my closest friends as templates to create those characters personalities and adjust for the character life experience. One is a deceased friend of mine, who was my best friend until the plague took him in 2021. Another is based upon a close friend of mine, another still is a combination of a person whom is a hospital janitor and O’Brien from Deep Space Nine and my own grandfather’s way of doing engineering and showing he cared.
I was inspired by a place that felt it needed to be spoken as well. A world where Corporations are more powerful than governments not unlike the one we live in where it feels that way sometimes. A world where even if you feel like you are getting somewhere, it just never quite gets there and about a found family that live like I do. On the edge of acceptable bureaucracy and looking for ways to leverage the system intended to keep me within control and in my place against itself in order to gain the things you want without actually breaking any laws.
All while knowing full well that you could be crushed if someone takes too much notice. It’s how it feels every single day being an independent creator and honestly, if a publisher made a compelling offer I don’t know I could resist. While at the same time knowing you can always find a way up and out; that you must find that way or be crushed.
TIQ: Of course no story is complete without fleshed out and fully realized characters. Please tell us a little bit about who the main cast of characters in Here, There be Dragons are and what were some of the inspirations for them?
FT: Before I tell you about them, I want to emphasize this. When I design a character, I make their parents first and then after that I figure out what they should look like as close to what I want them to adjust between the blend of parents and creator. Next I work on how they will fight because people don’t just fight because of how their bodies allow but also how they feel upon principle, how the experiences of any particular combat may have shaped them and how their body allows for. You take the best of all three to create a person's conversation style, personality, and fighting style. So with that said;
There is Cossette Orshan, a ktisune who is an archeologist specialized in humans. She is the first character you really meet and understand. She acquired cybernetic and bio-mechanical implants to allow her to exist for days at a time in the vacuum of space for the purpose of being able to go into old abandoned human ruins deeper than a suit may allow and access systems that suits and armor would interfere with. She relies upon talking her way through things, skirting the bounds of what is legal and what is simply not legislated, to use words to convince rather than brawn. Her weapon reflects that and how she presents herself is made to reflect that. She carries small knives that are easily mistaken for other things or that she can play off as Archeological tools rather than weapons. Things that can slip between armor plates into sensitive spots or disable sensors on a power armored suit, rather than outright kill the occupant.
Hoary, a person who was made by a corporation for the purpose of working for them, her whole life was made and designed to ensure she could not have a hope of ever leaving. A slave in all but name given a chance at freedom, she takes it. She is made to look like an Owl; which in this setting can be described as if you saw slenderman, a deep one, or worked at Freddy Fazbear’s pizza and turned around to see the bear standing over you. They don’t exist outside of genetically engineered blips specially made for a purpose. She is a geneticist trying to understand the secrets of her genome and working towards determining how to removing the remaining controls the Corporation who made her, have on her. She refuses to use guns, calling them brutal and unprofessional, instead relying upon her bio-augmented talons and beak that can tear through armor with effort and purely using her body as a weapon. She believes it allows her to control herself and prevent violating her oath to cause no harm by ensuring she doesn’t kill her target.
Alison Shadow, that isn’t her actual name merely the one she adopted because ten year old her thought it was cool. She is a literal Cat Burglar who is a house cat. Inspired by things like Aladdin or Oliver from Oliver and Company. She had a sister who played it as straight as possible, they lived in a commune, an apartment building owned by the tenants and run by elected residents who had no right to sell the place. Then well, she crossed someone and became a stowaway on their ship, the Adrift Sphere. She plays fast and loose with the rules and she knows that dead guards get you hunted down, but knocked out ones don’t. She carries a pair of tonfa batons and small machine pistols that are customized with suppressors and collect their own brass in side collectors rather than discard it, she aims for limbs with those
Jackson Blanc, an ex-police marine who had Stark White ships show up and destroy his patrol ship while they were preparing to board someone else and seize their vessel only to assume a new identity and stay with the crew. He’s a big soft boy, he isn’t the brightest but he is an excellent chef and definitely full of that dad energy you would expect of someone who shows up to your house and goes, “Did you eat today? Sleep? Shower? You got everything you need?” He’s the kind of person who shows their love and care by doing for you and by checking on you when you most need it. His combat style is a mix of hammering brute that uses his size and weight, he is a Dingo Taur creature and it introduces the idea of a taurian creature like a Centaur to the audience, as well as his massive strength to wield a heavy weapon. In his case one that is an ancient antique, an M2 Browning Heavy Machine Gun, complete with etchings from everywhere it’s been since WW1 France.
Wingman Riptide, a shark, a lemon shark to be exact. I chose a lemon shark because of their habit of creating pack feelings and ownership of the divers to the point they will ward off other sharks, even one’s bigger than them, from their special diver. He is the ship's engineer and he is altered to exist in the extreme temperatures of the ship’s coolant system. This let him redesign the entire core and weapon systems to allow him to swim around in them. He used to be a dock worker when the corps needed a scapegoat for the police, he got pushed down the stairs and out the door. His choice was to get onto the ship or go back to his home on Venus and work in the terraforming facilities. He uses a tech-compound bow that 3D prints arrows as needed for the user from a specialized quiver. He wants to keep a weapon he can use just as well underwater as above water and something that won’t fail when there isn’t an atmosphere. Also it utilizes his natural heavy strength since the thing has a draw weight that no human could hope to achieve.
Lexington Doran, an information broker working to acquire dirt on high ranking politicians and corporate interests. His job is computers, as well as operating the ship’s weapon suite but he’s more than that. He is the kind of person sitting on the border between going too deep into the conspiracy theories and being pulled back just enough to keep himself from tripping too hard, with the rest of the crew acting as his anchor.
He’s a gargoyle, a literal chimera and the first representation in the setting that a reader will get what happens when two parents are not of species compatible for children to create a child using their genetics and the ability to engineer a child. In his case, a crocodile mixed with a Brazilian bat. Though his wings only allow for him to glide since he doesn’t have hollow bones.
TIQ: One of the challenges you’ve setup for yourself is using the title Here, There be Dragons. That idiom has been used by sailors and map makers for centuries as a warning about the unexplored parts of the world and the dangers they might encounter. So why that particular title?
FT: For a start, for me this is unknown territory. I have written things using other people's OCs for nearly 4 years in college to make a living. Then I wrote using other properties like MLP, Fallout: Equestria, or even a tabletop game. But now, I don’t have any of that. I have a setting that I’ve been allowed to alter as I see fit and present a full reinterpretation of without any catch.
I have to come up with the characters and their place. While we run a tabletop game of HC SVNT Dracones on Sunday, I don’t draw from it to write my novel at all. If anything I go out of my way to ignore it or use it to experiment by stretching the bounds of the setting to redefine it as my own to the point I know it no longer looks like the setting I was handed. So for me, it is the edge of my map. I don’t know if such a thing will sell. I don’t know if such a thing will be interesting to people, and most importantly, I know if it fails; that I may never afford to be able to write a book ever again.
For my characters, it is their edge of the map. They know the solar system and we know of multiverse theory and multi-timeline theory but I have a different question, a different map edge. What exists in the space between those different places? What separates them? It can’t just be oblivion. So what lies in that place? What lives there? And how will it react to us coming to that place or using the laws of physics there to bend our own in our reality?
TIQ: Creating something brand new is hard. To put it mildly. What is it that drives you to continue on with writing this novel?
FT: I want to attempt to answer questions I have about the world as well. What is humanity without humans? How do we define being human and the human experience when no human exists anymore but the things we left behind do? Another is a question raised by Jurassic Park: Do you own a creature if you genetically engineered them? Now let’s make that creature a full fledged person with sentience and sapience, then ask the question again.
How do you enforce the law in space when no way can you monitor or watch it all? When in no way can you communicate in real time?
What is police corruption and how bad is it in a place where the vastness of space exists?
What will it be like when natural reproduction is no longer the only option?
I’m asking these questions not to be political but to ask in a way that we can tangibly touch. I could write a hundred research papers and never truly get an acceptable answer or one that the average person can touch, read, understand, comprehend. A fictional story suits better to ask these questions.
Also, I want to see what’s in the middle of this story I’ve created. I’ve wrote the ending first, then the beginning. But for me the writer, what happens in the middle? I also want to see what my own writing can do, standing apart and on its own. Without the help or a name of another source to prop it up.
I have an idea for four novels in this place I’ve redefined and created. Messi, the creator of HC SVNT Dracones has looked at it and said, “No, this is your own setting. I like it, I like your ideas but at this point, they are yours and this is your’s.” But I don’t know if I’ll ever get that far and I don’t know that without actually putting words to paper. I don’t know if my writing is actually worthy outside the context of written commissions and fanfiction without stretching out and writing this book to see if people find it worthy.
Lastly, I feel as if the media I see is stale and safe, all built upon IPs that already exist. If I’m going to try something different, if I’m going to dare to step out of that mold; now is the time to do it. When everything is the next Star Wars show, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones Prequel or based upon an already successful property, even if it’s good, it feels as if the expectations for it are monumental and it isn’t given a chance to experiment or breathe. So, I feel like if an Author wants to make their own universe and it have a chance, now is that time when people keep getting hit with the same thing over and over again; bring something different and as a friend of mine, Forest Rain, would say, “Dare to be Different.”
TIQ: Is there anything else you want to talk about?
FT: Thank you all for reading this far. I want everyone who has read this far to stand up, stretch, go get a cookie, and a drink of water; you deserve it. Thank you for reading this. Yes I’m addressing the audience directly right now.
I plan to release this Novel at Ciderfest this year if they will have me. I have but 3 chapters to finish writing and then it’s on to post production. I’m offering a pre-order to anyone who wants to help me publish it because I can’t afford to just outright publish it on my own. If I could, I wouldn’t have those pre-orders but I know I have to; I’m not some big publisher who can just do this without assistance.
So here: https://www.fiaurathetankgirl.com/shop/here-there-be-dragons-novel-pre-order
That is where you can order it in advance, as we did with the FoE Novels. But I’m going to take a step further, because you went out of your way to read this article and are still here, interested. Just for people on EQD:
EQDREADER
Will get you a discount on the book. I will remind you the price is based also upon me paying royalties to my artists and editors. This in addition to their upfront commission fees and external bank service costs that I pay for. I have included some artwork from the novel here for you all as well, that I hope EQD has seen fit to show you.
Thank you for at least taking the time to read this. A free version of the first few chapters are this book are up on Reddit, Sofurry and Furaffinity; not sure which link EQD will find acceptable if any but I will be posting the first six chapters for free for everyone and after the book comes out releasing up to Chapter 12, the point where the Third Act begins, for free to everyone in hopes to continuing the interest.
If it goes well enough, I will start the second novel and finish the fourth and final FoE: Dead Tree part next year. If it doesn’t. Then I’ll have to make the decision of what to do from there.
Thank you all for listening to a crazy middle-aged woman ramble. Please, at the very least if you ever learn anything from me, be Kind to each other and remember what Wandering Sunrise taught you if you’ve read Dead Tree: Do Better.
Links:
The Illustrious Q: Fiaura, could you please tell the readers of Equestria Daily, a little bit about yourself? You know, like what you are known for in the community, how long you have been going to conventions as either a vendor/community guest, and any notable works you have produced for the fandom?
Fiaura Tanks: I have been a community guest at conventions since 2016 and been a vendor since 2018. I have produced a ton of science panels, so many now that they eat up almost six gigabytes on my hard drive of just power points, their associated pictures, and the couple of video clips that go with them. Further, I am the author of Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree, the last of the major seven side stories currently recognized by the FoE Wiki, which was recognized in 2019. Sadly, I have had to put that series on hold.
TIQ: Speaking of Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree, where did you first get the inspiration for creating that story?
FT: It was strange to take a tabletop session, look at the major points, determine how I actually wanted the story to go and then write from there. The deeper you get into the book the less and less you see the tabletop story bleeding through but also the more you can see the roots of said tabletop session still buried in it.
It has been a wild ride full of ups and downs. Going to a convention in 2019 and having just ordered over 200 books only to leave with pre-orders for the next printing was an experience. It made me realize that maybe I have something I can write and be good at writing. It has been a teaching experience for me.
TIQ: The story thus far has been published into three physical volumes. However there hasn’t been an update to the fimfiction version of the story since July 2022. Could you explain a little bit about the lack of updates?
FT: I can’t afford to keep making it at this time. Simple as that. It costs me between 70 to 200 dollars to make one chapter. I have to pay my editors and then sometimes I need a piece of artwork for that chapter. Further, I realized that every book I’ve sold, all 2304 of them, I have made 0$ on. I’ve actually lost money due to the costs of publication, getting them to sight, and other costs from the books as well as investments in FoE projects that don’t make money but are fun to do, like the Audio Book or News from the Bunker Series with Dusty Katt and Inky Notebook of the Traveling Pony Museum, which is sadly now closed. This is because Kkat at the end of the day told me I wasn’t allowed to and if I still wanted to write the story and publish the book, those were the terms. So I obeyed them faithfully and rather than NOT respecting her wishes, I stopped work on FoE: Dead Tree when I could no longer afford it.
I’m not mad at Kkat for this, I think this is truly something nice and so long as she sticks to that principle I can respect her even more than I would have ever allowed myself. She did this purely for art and for the story, something I wish I could do today but know that I cannot do such a thing and still be able to keep the roof over my head.
TIQ: Are there any plans to finish Fallout: Equestria - Dead Tree, or is there something else that has been occupying your time?
FT: I desperately want to finish Dead Tree but at this time, I cannot. If things work out and I have the extra money to pursue a passion project again, I will most certainly be finishing Dead Tree. The ending is already written but I cannot share it until the middle is done if you want it to make sense.
In the mean time, I have been working on my own Original Series with full permission to use elements and inspiration from HC SVNT Dracones. I have been putting my efforts there towards a book that hopefully can pay for itself and then pay for me to finish the series. If I can afford to come back and Finish Dead Tree after this book is made, I am going to, it only has seventeen chapters to go and I really want to see my ending displayed to everyone else, I already wrote that part.
A series we are calling: Here, There Be Dragons for many reasons. Not only is it set after humanity has passed in a Hard Science Fiction World full of genetically engineered creatures but to me it is unknown territory to be allowed to write anything I want and make any cannon or ideas I wish without someone else calling any of the shots.
FT: Well for a start before I was a Brony I was a furry. One of the three open furries during the time that World of Tanks had professional gaming teams and I was on them, even went to a world championship in Warsaw twice. But also because the setting fascinates me. I have a background first in biology and secondary in science. Though mostly soft science based upon my degrees.
This allows me to combine them. Apply principles of newtonian physics with advanced understandings of the biological experiments on DNA we are doing even now. Plus let’s be honest, what anime fanboys don't think of catgirls in space isn’t what I do. And I wonder if they will like my more 1980s Feral Catgirls from a wasteland.
TIQ: I have read a lot of science fiction. My home library has well over one thousand science fiction novels I have read since I was a little boy. Yes, most of them are soft science fiction like Star Trek, but I’ve also read hard science fiction by Isaac Asimov and plenty of science fantasy novels—a.k.a. Star Wars—over the years. Of those three sub genres of science fiction, which would best describe Here, There be Dragons?
FT: Absolute Hard Science Fiction with a healthy dose of Eldritch Horror. I’m playing in a universe where Hard Science is king but only because magic can be described as dabbling with the powers of HP Lovecraft inspired Arkham Horror. Where you can imagine that every time you use it for power, there is a risk of something world ending coming to end your world.
With that in mind, ship combat is based upon the current interpretations with near future technology. Shields don’t exist, you have armor and hull reinforcements. Railguns and missiles are the primary weapons with laser point defense and autocannon point defense systems with a few things like plasma weapons for extreme close combat at ranges of less than a few kilometers.
TIQ: One of the fun things about Science Fiction is that the genre itself can be a set dressing for just about any other genre of story. Which is part of the reason why a good number of horror stories are also science fiction stories. What is the subgenre of Here, There be Dragons?
FT: Firmly within the realm of exploring the edge of the map. Understanding that the places you are going is beyond the point everyone has been. Things you have a chance to find may revolutionize the world as you know it. It may bring benefits never imagined before. But also foes to be faced break the rules and ignore the pre-defined laws you expect them to obey. The kind of inspiration I feel is the crew being a more found family interpretation of the crew from Mass Effect’s Normandy and the foe they face is akin to the Reapers but now how they were portrayed in the first game rather than a physical enemy, more one who can affect your mind and alter your personality first. The physical entity only comes out as some horror beyond the stars that wants to unleash more of itself upon the universe.
I had to see a setting I was allowed and seize upon the idea that your enemy isn’t necessarily able to be touched. Imagine a foe that appears to be made of solid liquid. Bullets pass through and rip flesh from it and leave holes gapping holes that simply wrap around and close, reforming as if the force of the impact never happened.
Only to find out that sort of enemy can appear anywhere, emerging from your best friend because he dug a little too deep and now they “Know” him well enough to use him to shred the bounds of reality and enter our world with intent to end you. An enemy that the more you know about them, the better you can fight them but so can they have a better chance of your own annihilation or to use you as a conduit into the universe to attack those you care most about.
TIQ: So since the novel will be the introduction to this completely brand new universe, with brand new characters, locations, social political structures… everything basically, how are you approaching the writing of this novel? Are you writing it in such a way that the audience will be able to pick up and understand what is going on fairly quickly or are you going for an “en media res” type of story where explanations will be at a minimum and the characters are fully living in their world?
FT: I prefer that explanations come because the characters in the world ask. You wouldn’t expect a Space Marine, trained to board ships and subdue enemy crews to understand how genetics work. You wouldn’t expect an archeologist and social savant to know how hacking a computer system works. A street cat burglar isn’t going to know the rotation of planets and where you can stand on the surface of Mercury or for how long but an engineer might.
So what I do is have each character with different personalities, different backgrounds, and different understandings of their worlds. When the reader doesn’t understand something, someone on the page isn’t going to and they are going to ask in their own way only to have the character next to them who does understand it, explain it.
This is how I did for Fallout: Equestria, either things were explained by intercharacter monologue between Pink and Sunrise or by the group around her, or in her case by her to someone else who asked the odd question about why she was fire-hardening sprinkles only for her to explain they made excellent shrapnel once hardened.
TIQ: What were some of the inspirations for Here, There be Dragons?
FT: I sat down one day and made characters I liked. People that I felt like at different points in my life if I had gone down a certain path, I would live a life similar to their’s. Then I use the personalities of my closest friends as templates to create those characters personalities and adjust for the character life experience. One is a deceased friend of mine, who was my best friend until the plague took him in 2021. Another is based upon a close friend of mine, another still is a combination of a person whom is a hospital janitor and O’Brien from Deep Space Nine and my own grandfather’s way of doing engineering and showing he cared.
I was inspired by a place that felt it needed to be spoken as well. A world where Corporations are more powerful than governments not unlike the one we live in where it feels that way sometimes. A world where even if you feel like you are getting somewhere, it just never quite gets there and about a found family that live like I do. On the edge of acceptable bureaucracy and looking for ways to leverage the system intended to keep me within control and in my place against itself in order to gain the things you want without actually breaking any laws.
All while knowing full well that you could be crushed if someone takes too much notice. It’s how it feels every single day being an independent creator and honestly, if a publisher made a compelling offer I don’t know I could resist. While at the same time knowing you can always find a way up and out; that you must find that way or be crushed.
TIQ: Of course no story is complete without fleshed out and fully realized characters. Please tell us a little bit about who the main cast of characters in Here, There be Dragons are and what were some of the inspirations for them?
FT: Before I tell you about them, I want to emphasize this. When I design a character, I make their parents first and then after that I figure out what they should look like as close to what I want them to adjust between the blend of parents and creator. Next I work on how they will fight because people don’t just fight because of how their bodies allow but also how they feel upon principle, how the experiences of any particular combat may have shaped them and how their body allows for. You take the best of all three to create a person's conversation style, personality, and fighting style. So with that said;
There is Cossette Orshan, a ktisune who is an archeologist specialized in humans. She is the first character you really meet and understand. She acquired cybernetic and bio-mechanical implants to allow her to exist for days at a time in the vacuum of space for the purpose of being able to go into old abandoned human ruins deeper than a suit may allow and access systems that suits and armor would interfere with. She relies upon talking her way through things, skirting the bounds of what is legal and what is simply not legislated, to use words to convince rather than brawn. Her weapon reflects that and how she presents herself is made to reflect that. She carries small knives that are easily mistaken for other things or that she can play off as Archeological tools rather than weapons. Things that can slip between armor plates into sensitive spots or disable sensors on a power armored suit, rather than outright kill the occupant.
Hoary, a person who was made by a corporation for the purpose of working for them, her whole life was made and designed to ensure she could not have a hope of ever leaving. A slave in all but name given a chance at freedom, she takes it. She is made to look like an Owl; which in this setting can be described as if you saw slenderman, a deep one, or worked at Freddy Fazbear’s pizza and turned around to see the bear standing over you. They don’t exist outside of genetically engineered blips specially made for a purpose. She is a geneticist trying to understand the secrets of her genome and working towards determining how to removing the remaining controls the Corporation who made her, have on her. She refuses to use guns, calling them brutal and unprofessional, instead relying upon her bio-augmented talons and beak that can tear through armor with effort and purely using her body as a weapon. She believes it allows her to control herself and prevent violating her oath to cause no harm by ensuring she doesn’t kill her target.
Alison Shadow, that isn’t her actual name merely the one she adopted because ten year old her thought it was cool. She is a literal Cat Burglar who is a house cat. Inspired by things like Aladdin or Oliver from Oliver and Company. She had a sister who played it as straight as possible, they lived in a commune, an apartment building owned by the tenants and run by elected residents who had no right to sell the place. Then well, she crossed someone and became a stowaway on their ship, the Adrift Sphere. She plays fast and loose with the rules and she knows that dead guards get you hunted down, but knocked out ones don’t. She carries a pair of tonfa batons and small machine pistols that are customized with suppressors and collect their own brass in side collectors rather than discard it, she aims for limbs with those
Jackson Blanc, an ex-police marine who had Stark White ships show up and destroy his patrol ship while they were preparing to board someone else and seize their vessel only to assume a new identity and stay with the crew. He’s a big soft boy, he isn’t the brightest but he is an excellent chef and definitely full of that dad energy you would expect of someone who shows up to your house and goes, “Did you eat today? Sleep? Shower? You got everything you need?” He’s the kind of person who shows their love and care by doing for you and by checking on you when you most need it. His combat style is a mix of hammering brute that uses his size and weight, he is a Dingo Taur creature and it introduces the idea of a taurian creature like a Centaur to the audience, as well as his massive strength to wield a heavy weapon. In his case one that is an ancient antique, an M2 Browning Heavy Machine Gun, complete with etchings from everywhere it’s been since WW1 France.
Wingman Riptide, a shark, a lemon shark to be exact. I chose a lemon shark because of their habit of creating pack feelings and ownership of the divers to the point they will ward off other sharks, even one’s bigger than them, from their special diver. He is the ship's engineer and he is altered to exist in the extreme temperatures of the ship’s coolant system. This let him redesign the entire core and weapon systems to allow him to swim around in them. He used to be a dock worker when the corps needed a scapegoat for the police, he got pushed down the stairs and out the door. His choice was to get onto the ship or go back to his home on Venus and work in the terraforming facilities. He uses a tech-compound bow that 3D prints arrows as needed for the user from a specialized quiver. He wants to keep a weapon he can use just as well underwater as above water and something that won’t fail when there isn’t an atmosphere. Also it utilizes his natural heavy strength since the thing has a draw weight that no human could hope to achieve.
Lexington Doran, an information broker working to acquire dirt on high ranking politicians and corporate interests. His job is computers, as well as operating the ship’s weapon suite but he’s more than that. He is the kind of person sitting on the border between going too deep into the conspiracy theories and being pulled back just enough to keep himself from tripping too hard, with the rest of the crew acting as his anchor.
He’s a gargoyle, a literal chimera and the first representation in the setting that a reader will get what happens when two parents are not of species compatible for children to create a child using their genetics and the ability to engineer a child. In his case, a crocodile mixed with a Brazilian bat. Though his wings only allow for him to glide since he doesn’t have hollow bones.
TIQ: One of the challenges you’ve setup for yourself is using the title Here, There be Dragons. That idiom has been used by sailors and map makers for centuries as a warning about the unexplored parts of the world and the dangers they might encounter. So why that particular title?
FT: For a start, for me this is unknown territory. I have written things using other people's OCs for nearly 4 years in college to make a living. Then I wrote using other properties like MLP, Fallout: Equestria, or even a tabletop game. But now, I don’t have any of that. I have a setting that I’ve been allowed to alter as I see fit and present a full reinterpretation of without any catch.
I have to come up with the characters and their place. While we run a tabletop game of HC SVNT Dracones on Sunday, I don’t draw from it to write my novel at all. If anything I go out of my way to ignore it or use it to experiment by stretching the bounds of the setting to redefine it as my own to the point I know it no longer looks like the setting I was handed. So for me, it is the edge of my map. I don’t know if such a thing will sell. I don’t know if such a thing will be interesting to people, and most importantly, I know if it fails; that I may never afford to be able to write a book ever again.
For my characters, it is their edge of the map. They know the solar system and we know of multiverse theory and multi-timeline theory but I have a different question, a different map edge. What exists in the space between those different places? What separates them? It can’t just be oblivion. So what lies in that place? What lives there? And how will it react to us coming to that place or using the laws of physics there to bend our own in our reality?
TIQ: Creating something brand new is hard. To put it mildly. What is it that drives you to continue on with writing this novel?
FT: I want to attempt to answer questions I have about the world as well. What is humanity without humans? How do we define being human and the human experience when no human exists anymore but the things we left behind do? Another is a question raised by Jurassic Park: Do you own a creature if you genetically engineered them? Now let’s make that creature a full fledged person with sentience and sapience, then ask the question again.
How do you enforce the law in space when no way can you monitor or watch it all? When in no way can you communicate in real time?
What is police corruption and how bad is it in a place where the vastness of space exists?
What will it be like when natural reproduction is no longer the only option?
I’m asking these questions not to be political but to ask in a way that we can tangibly touch. I could write a hundred research papers and never truly get an acceptable answer or one that the average person can touch, read, understand, comprehend. A fictional story suits better to ask these questions.
Also, I want to see what’s in the middle of this story I’ve created. I’ve wrote the ending first, then the beginning. But for me the writer, what happens in the middle? I also want to see what my own writing can do, standing apart and on its own. Without the help or a name of another source to prop it up.
I have an idea for four novels in this place I’ve redefined and created. Messi, the creator of HC SVNT Dracones has looked at it and said, “No, this is your own setting. I like it, I like your ideas but at this point, they are yours and this is your’s.” But I don’t know if I’ll ever get that far and I don’t know that without actually putting words to paper. I don’t know if my writing is actually worthy outside the context of written commissions and fanfiction without stretching out and writing this book to see if people find it worthy.
Lastly, I feel as if the media I see is stale and safe, all built upon IPs that already exist. If I’m going to try something different, if I’m going to dare to step out of that mold; now is the time to do it. When everything is the next Star Wars show, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones Prequel or based upon an already successful property, even if it’s good, it feels as if the expectations for it are monumental and it isn’t given a chance to experiment or breathe. So, I feel like if an Author wants to make their own universe and it have a chance, now is that time when people keep getting hit with the same thing over and over again; bring something different and as a friend of mine, Forest Rain, would say, “Dare to be Different.”
TIQ: Is there anything else you want to talk about?
FT: Thank you all for reading this far. I want everyone who has read this far to stand up, stretch, go get a cookie, and a drink of water; you deserve it. Thank you for reading this. Yes I’m addressing the audience directly right now.
I plan to release this Novel at Ciderfest this year if they will have me. I have but 3 chapters to finish writing and then it’s on to post production. I’m offering a pre-order to anyone who wants to help me publish it because I can’t afford to just outright publish it on my own. If I could, I wouldn’t have those pre-orders but I know I have to; I’m not some big publisher who can just do this without assistance.
So here: https://www.fiaurathetankgirl.com/shop/here-there-be-dragons-novel-pre-order
That is where you can order it in advance, as we did with the FoE Novels. But I’m going to take a step further, because you went out of your way to read this article and are still here, interested. Just for people on EQD:
EQDREADER
Will get you a discount on the book. I will remind you the price is based also upon me paying royalties to my artists and editors. This in addition to their upfront commission fees and external bank service costs that I pay for. I have included some artwork from the novel here for you all as well, that I hope EQD has seen fit to show you.
Thank you for at least taking the time to read this. A free version of the first few chapters are this book are up on Reddit, Sofurry and Furaffinity; not sure which link EQD will find acceptable if any but I will be posting the first six chapters for free for everyone and after the book comes out releasing up to Chapter 12, the point where the Third Act begins, for free to everyone in hopes to continuing the interest.
If it goes well enough, I will start the second novel and finish the fourth and final FoE: Dead Tree part next year. If it doesn’t. Then I’ll have to make the decision of what to do from there.
Thank you all for listening to a crazy middle-aged woman ramble. Please, at the very least if you ever learn anything from me, be Kind to each other and remember what Wandering Sunrise taught you if you’ve read Dead Tree: Do Better.
Links:
- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52994045/
- https://www.sofurry.com/view/2027517
- https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/156a5iv/here_there_be_dragons_chapter_1a_fox_and_owl/
Twitter: The Illustrious Q
