One of my favorite things about talking with other authors is discovering the story behind the story.
A finished book might sit neatly on a shelf, but the journey that brought it there is rarely quite so tidy. Sometimes an idea waits decades to be rediscovered. Sometimes real-life heartbreak finds its way into fiction. And sometimes the things an author loves, whether that is science, fantasy, romance, or exploring the complicated ways people deal with loss, become part of the worlds they create.
This week, I had the chance to sit down with two very different authors whose writing journeys prove there is no single path to telling a story.
Grant Pierce and The Faceless Chronicles
What happens when a story you started more than twenty years ago suddenly finds its way back to you?
For fantasy author Grant Pierce, The Faceless Chronicles began while he was in college. Life moved on, and so did Grant, but the story never completely disappeared.
Then, twenty-five years later, his daughter said something that reminded him of the manuscript.
What happens when a story you started more than twenty years ago suddenly finds its way back to you?
For fantasy author Grant Pierce, The Faceless Chronicles began while he was in college. Life moved on, and so did Grant, but the story never completely disappeared.
Then, twenty-five years later, his daughter said something that reminded him of the manuscript.
Grant pulled it back out and let her read it. Her reaction gave the story something it had been missing for years: a reason to keep going.
That moment ultimately brought Grant back to writing and to the world he had created decades earlier.
During our conversation, we talked about that unusual journey, his approach to fantasy, and the characters who inhabit The Faceless Chronicles. One part of our discussion that especially caught my attention involved his villain and a best friend who knows something that could destroy everything.
It raises a question I love in fiction: What do you do when loyalty and doing what is right are no longer the same thing?
Those kinds of choices can make fantasy feel surprisingly human. Beneath the world-building and larger conflicts are characters forced to decide what they are willing to protect, what they are willing to risk, and which secrets are too dangerous to keep.
And I have to admit, I also love the idea that a manuscript can sit quietly for twenty-five years and still not be finished with you.
Purchase Shapeshifter’s Gambit: Book 1
Michele Foreshee, The River Between and What Remains
My conversation with speculative fiction author Michele Foreshee took us in a very different direction.
Michele is the author of The River Between Us and What Remains, and our discussion moved through everything from science and speculative fiction to romance, heartbreak, and grief.
Michele has a genuine love of science, and that curiosity helps shape the way she approaches her stories. But what interested me just as much was the very human emotion underneath them.
We talked about how a devastating breakup influenced the romance she wrote, not simply by recreating what had happened, but by allowing her to explore what she hoped love could be.
That distinction stuck with me.
Writers borrow from life all the time, but fiction gives us the opportunity to do something different with those experiences. We can ask different questions. We can imagine different possibilities. We can explore what might have been, what we wish had been, or what we hope could still be.
Our conversation also touched on an underlying theme in Michele’s work: grief.
Grief is not always about one kind of loss, and it does not follow a convenient timeline. Through speculative fiction, Michele is able to explore how people carry loss, how they move through it, and what might be waiting on the other side.
It is one of the things I am quickly discovering through these author interviews. The genre printed on the cover only tells you part of the story.
Fantasy can be about loyalty and impossible choices. Speculative fiction can be about grief, hope, science, and love. And sometimes the most interesting part of a book is discovering the very real question hiding underneath an imaginary world.
Discovering the Story Behind the Story
I started these interviews as a way to support other authors and introduce readers to books they might not otherwise discover.
But I am finding that I am getting something out of them too.
Every author arrives at the page differently.
Grant Pierce returned to a story after twenty-five years because his daughter helped him see it again.
Michele Foreshee transformed pieces of heartbreak, hope, grief, and her love of science into speculative fiction.
Their books and genres may be different, but both conversations reminded me why I enjoy talking to authors so much. There is always another story behind the one we get to read.
If you enjoy discovering indie authors, hearing how books come together, and finding out what inspires the people who write them, I hope you’ll join me for more conversations on Written Wanderer Chapters
And, of course, you might just discover your next favorite book along the way.