🧙‍♂️🎃Interview with Erebus Esprit from Project Tartarus | New Shining Recs | I smell money

🎃This week, we hear from Erebus Esprit, author of the seriously fun Project Tartarus, give you some great new stories you should follow on Royal Road, and snoopy snoop on a vegetable!

WEEKLY RECS | INTERVIEW LINK | VEGETABLE SNOOPING |

Weekly Recommendations - Awesome New Stories you Should Follow for Mid October

Interview with Erebus Esprit from Project Tartarus

Project Tartarus from Erebus Esprit is a very unique and bingeworthy LitRPG where races clash, and a lovable main character slowly uncovers secrets and grows in a seriously well-developed world. This one caught me off guard, as Erebus released on Amazon first, and then published chapters on Royal Road. What I thought was going to be a standard LitRPG is so much deeper. Character development is out of this world, plot is awesome, the cultures at odds enriches the worldbuilding, and the magic system and monsters are seriously cool. I would highly recommend you check it out, as this is such a fantastic unique take on the genre, and I think all readers and authors would enjoy the heck out of it. Royal Road Link. Amazon Link.

Hello Erebus Esprit! Thanks for agreeing to an interview, it’s extremely appreciated. I know I already told you in our chats, but I’ve really been enjoying Project Tartarus. The first thing I wanted to ask was about how Project Tartarus came to be. How did you plan out your story? What inspired you to write a story like this as opposed to going the traditional fantasy route? Do you find yourself more of a pantser or a planner when it comes to writing?

Hey Saga! Thanks for having me on. I’m glad you’re enjoying it! Project Tartarus was born about four years ago (almost to the day). I’d been reading LitRPG for a couple years by then, but was only really familiar with a couple published ones (and didn’t even know about Royal Road until last year). Chaos Seeds: The Land by Aleron Kong was my first introduction to LitRPGs, but every one I read always felt like something was missing, so I wanted to take my Sword and Sorcery background and create an involved world of LitRPG adventure fantasy. I’ve always loved Greek Mythology and I had the idea to merge the two concepts into a single crafted story.

I planned out the story in novels, as that’s how I tend to think of them. By the time I start a novel, I already know how it will end, and I had an ending in mind for the series since I started it, it’s just a matter of reaching that point. I decided to make this story a traditional LitRPG for two reasons, the first is that I really loved the world of Chaos Seeds and how everything had a skill and I wanted to make a story like that, but I also feel like the genre constantly gets a reputation for “trash fantasy” or “turn your brain off” stories and I felt that was undeserved, so I wanted to make a story that tries to marry the two concepts of Epic Fantasy and LitRPG. I’m midway between pantsing and plotting. I know my start, I know my end, I have milestones, but the route itself is all discovery writing. I don’t know how I’ll get from Point A to B to F, but I’ve got my vector and I’ll follow it ‘til I get where I’m going.

Characters and their development is central to your story. Arche’s journey from the naïve newcomer to…well, no spoilers, shows us the power of identity and growth. Lyssa is an awesomely cold character and my personal favorite. What’s your approach to crafting characters? I think you’ve done a really great job of blending character and plot progression. Do you plan out your characters journey from the get-go or have a general direction on where you’re going? Do you have a series of traits that you want to touch on and grow? How do you approach writing relationships between characters? I know this is a lot of questions about characters, but yours are well done. What considerations do you take when writing characters of different races and magic systems?

I’m really glad to hear you say that. I approach character writing from the perspective of “everyone’s the protagonist of their own story.” What that means from a character perspective is that everyone has their own goals, ambitions, fears, and desires. The reader may not know what those are at any given point in the story, but the author should. I don’t necessarily plan out character arcs from the beginning, but I do have general arcs in mind for the major players. I’ve lived mentally in this world long enough that I don’t need to write down major things like that, but for anyone starting a new story, I recommend cataloguing it somewhere. I use Excel for note taking and I have over a dozen different sheets in one file, all full of different trackers and ideas.

Relationships between characters is a tricky balance. A lot of my characters have “trauma bonded” to each other, though they wouldn’t necessarily call it that. I wanted to throw idiosyncrasies into the mix, along with differences, but I also wanted to ensure there was nuance in depiction. Part of that approach is how I represent the different races, which gets into even more details in book 2. The gist of it is that there are stereotypes, stories that the characters native to the world grew up with that influence how they see others, and those stories will be true or false to a point.

Lyssa as one of the primary characters is an elf, so I did a lot of consideration on what that would mean for them as a society, how they would view others, what considerations they would have when it came to history and historical conflicts, what their relationship with time is. Lyssa is also my wife’s favorite character, so I wanted to make sure she wasn’t some flat, two-dimensional cutout of a fantasy elf.

I’m glad you picked up on identity and growth. Being part of Progression Fantasy, growth is certainly a necessity, especially for the plot as it develops, but growth of identity is also a very important aspect as identity is really at the heart of this story. Arche starts off as an amnesiac, a complete loss of identity, and his primary focus is on recovering the identity that he’s lost. Along the way, he starts establishing a new identity based on his actions and interactions. Most all of the other characters struggle with identity as well at various points along their arcs. I think there’s something striking in the dichotomies between “Who I was,” “Who I am,” and “Who I want to be.”

Worldbuilding in Project Tartarus stands apart. You’ve got unique monsters, and cool race building. What went into your worldbuilding?  It’s something I think that comes naturally to you, and I’d like to know about your secret sauce to getting races and monsters flowing well together. When your working through the way a race operates, like elves not using currency the same way humans do, is it to serve the story, or something that you think adds flavor? What about magic systems? Yours builds in a great way, and I’d like to know what went into that planning and scoping.

I had a lot of inspiration from looking at ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Egyptian, and Libyan myths and monsters. It’s hard to take those tales and periods of history in a vacuum without seeing what crossover they had, so I used that as a springboard for the world as a whole. The world is called Tartarus, but it’s not just the Greeks, it’s just primarily the Greeks. Hybrid creatures were a very popular motif in ancient Greek stories, so I made a race whose whole deal is that they’re hybrids, joined by only a few carry-over features, and called them the Beastmar. They’re not the only hybrids creatures in the world, I have traditional mythos monsters as well, but I wanted to establish that this wasn’t going to be a rehash of familiar myths, there’s going to be original work here as well.

When it comes to worldbuilding of races, I wanted to showcase different schools of thought that I thought would be congruent with those races and how they perceive things. Elves live a very long time, but the isolated communities tend to remain pretty small. Without contact to the outside world, currency becomes less and less important, especially over time. What made more sense for a people like that (to me, at least) was a system of favors or contributions to a greater good. To put it simply, I see elves as perfectionists because they have the time to truly get something right. Because they are so much longer-lived, they take their time with things and they are much more risk-adverse, so their progression isn’t nearly as quick as the shorter-lived (so-called ‘mortal’) races because they take very low-risk, low-reward paths. I wanted to make decisions that both served the story, made sense in the context it’s given, and adds that spice fantasy is so famous for.

Magic systems goes a little differently. I was much less strong on what the magic system was going to be and how exactly it was going to work. I wanted to use Mana as a resource, but the nitty gritty of how spells worked wasn’t something I had planned out very well. Somewhere in the middle of book 2, I really landed on how I wanted things to work and what kinds of magic I wanted to use, how I wanted it to be studied or learned, and what some of the hidden costs might be.

Alright, here’s something I just need to know. You first published on Amazon, and then later started uploading chapters to Royal Road. A totally different model than most people. It seems to be working for you. Your Amazon posting has sales and good reviews, and your story is growing on Royal Road. Do you think your method has viability in the market as a whole? Or would you change the way you approached your release now that you’ve garnered a following on Royal Road? What your experience been like on Royal Road? And what are your plans for the future?

I’ve always had confidence in my story, but the primary issue I ran into was visibility, which is what drove me to Royal Road. This genre features a wide range of stories that never end, droning on for millions of words, and there’s a sort of unwritten rule that the readers don’t want to engage with a story unless they either know it will end or there’s enough content out to justify the risk of reading a story that won’t end. While I am happy with the path I took, it’s not a path I would necessarily recommend others to take and it’s likely not what I would do if I had the option again. I can’t say I’m completely dissatisfied with it because it led me to my narrator, Mikael Naramore, who has done an absolutely phenomenal job at bringing my story to life and breathing voice into these characters.

I have plans for a second series, completely divorced from Project Tartarus, that I’ve fooled around with, but I don’t plan on doing the same release pattern as I had for PT. As of right now, I plan to eventually release that on RR, once PT is finished, and see where that story takes me from there. My experience on RR so far has been very pleasant and I’ve been happily surprised with my steady growth. I hope to make the RS list, but at the same time I’m not shopping for a publisher for it (#SelfPublishedGang), so as long as new readers keep finding it, I’m happy.

From our conversations, I know you’ve written a lot. You also have been a real awesome person to have in the community with providing insights and support. Do you have any advice for people coming into the space and staying sane? How many words are you trying to write a week? Do you have a schedule? How do you keep such a level head!?

I have written quite a bit. If we count one novella and one short story collection, Project Tartarus: Arche is my fifth book, and I’m currently working on number seven. I’ve been on the writing scene for a long time, but very much done it alone for a long time. I was glad to be able to connect with more people in the space and share some of the tips and techniques I’ve learned over the years and through my master’s course, which I’m currently pursuing as a path to switch careers into becoming a writing professor at a university. My advice to people to stay sane is to take breaks. It’s easy to feel an overwhelming pressure to post post post write write write post post post and it’s ok to take time for yourself. I have weeks where I don’t write a word. I have editing streaks where I don’t add to a story for months because I’m busy polishing what’s already been written.

Otherwise, I spend a lot of my time writing. Most lunch breaks are spent writing and I often write into the evenings as well. I’ve gotten to a point where I can feel myself getting antsy while playing a video game because I know I’d rather be writing. I’ve had that bug for years and its been great motivation. That said, I’m not a fast writer. I’ve written about 500k words for Project Tartarus over 4 years, which, while substantial, is not the quantity I’d like it to be at. Granted, I have a full-time job, master’s courses, and a social life, so there’s only so many concessions I can make before balance is upset, but I’m moving into a position in my life where I can focus more on writing and craft and helping others, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I can tell you’re well read from reading your story. Now for a different kind of question, if you could be reborn into any other story in the entire world, what would it be? Also, since you’re well read (because I analyze people through their writing and I know👀), do you have 5 books that you would recommend people check out? Either for purely entertainment purposes or to develop their skills?

As much as LitRPG has captured my attention for the past seven years, if I had to pick a world to be reborn into, I’d have to pick one of the stories that utterly enthralled me as a child: Redwall by Brian Jacques. Such vivid descriptions and details, and such a focus on things I have grown to cherish in my own life: peace, and the courage to defend it.

Now, five books I’d recommend. Let’s see.

1. The Knights of Eternity series by Rachel Ni Chuirc because she is a phenomenal character writer and, looking at it from a craft perspective, could definitely teach a thing or two to anyone worried about character depth. It’s so well written, I can’t stop singing its praises

2. The Princess Bride by William Goldman because to this day I have yet to read another book quite like it (and also it’s my favorite movie; the two are almost nothing alike)

3. The Bartimaeus Sequence series by Jonathan Stroud because, though written for a younger audience, really helps encapsulate that sort of human but non-human thought processes that other creatures should have, along with some phenomenal world-building and societal/class-structure clashes

4.  The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Most people have heard of this one, I’m sure, but if you’re trying to figure out how to write a story with deep, multiple perspective characters and a huge emphasis on world-building, this is your bible

5. Poetics by Aristotle. I’m pulling this one out because something I always try to do in my stories, and something I wish more writers would do, is think one level deeper. Always try to go that one level deeper into meaning, and philosophy is a great way to get there. You don’t have to agree with it, but you should be thinking about it and making conscious decisions about what you include in your story.

Thank you so much Erebus Esprit for the interview :). If you want to check out Project Tartarus, check it out here: Link.

Snoopy Snoopings on a vegtable

Just for your weekly inspiration to go for the bank, here’s what the Author of Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube pulls in. It’s a super fun story, and I love seeing authors get their nice piece of the pie 🥧.

Thanks for reading!
More interviews coming,

🧙‍♂️Saga Scribe