Interview with Author Gregory Wunderlin
I’m excited to chat with Gregroy Wunderlin, author of the sci-fantasy book, The Soul of Chaos .
WS: Welcome! Thank you for being willing to chat with me. Will you tell me a little bit about yourself? GW: “Heya. Would you believe that this is the hardest part for me? Surprise, an artist with a fragile sense of self. On all counts, I’m a pretty standard dude, except for that I’ve managed to, somehow, engineer my life to work from my couch while playing the games that people told me were a waste of time as a kid. I don’t think anyone foresaw designing and running TTRPGs as a legit career path in the late 90s, and well, that’s who I am. Tell me something is a waste of time, and I’ll completely ignore you for decades and somehow pay my rent with it. Also, I have 3 cats. I really like cats. I’m married, also, but you know. Cats.”
WS: Will you talk a bit about The Soul of Chaos ?
GW: The most difficult thing about this book is qualifying it as a single entity. I’ve been trying to come up with a 5 word pitch for it, but encapsulating the full breadth needs more air. It’s a fantasy novel, sure, and it’s classic, but modernized. It goes out of its way to avoid tropes, while letting you get comfortable in familiar archetypes. It’s also sci-fantasy, with magical technology and lost civilizations. It’s about people trying to get by in a world so ridden with corruption that the best they can do is survive. And, you know. Explosions. There’s a lot of explosions.
It’s also a beginning. These days, people expect a lot from beginnings, but they need to do a lot of heavy lifting and TSoC sets you up for a tremendous amount of shenanigans. Not only by introducing you to being thrown into the deep end, but immersing you in the world out of the gate.
WS: It has been described as an epic fantasy with hints of several other literary styles, including mystery and powder fantasy. What inspired you to draw from so many unique and creative subgenres?
GW: I don’t think I can write something that’s solidly in a single subgenre. I consume a ton of media, and the stuff that always, always, draws me in is when ideas merge to create an abominable genre mash. Swords and magic are cool, but what does that world look like if there are suddenly flintlocks? Okay, now what if they need to use those flintlocks to fight interdimensional shadow demons? Those kinds of questions lead to unique situations, and that’s where the genre starts to blur. So, what’s the inspiration? It’s curiosity and theory, doing that classic craftwork and trying to push the needle a bit further in the direction of weird.
WS: What were some obstacles to writing The Soul of Chaos ?
GW: TSoC is the first book I ever wrote. Sure, I’ve written my million words in other formats, but stringing the ideation of thousands of those words into a single concept? That’s difficult. I had to learn a lot and do it while working full time and trying to establish a career in a niche, creative market. Besides that, you have your usual writing hang-ups: how do I make something unique? Is my story different enough, but familiar enough, to stand out and not alienate an audience?
A writer’s ability to agonize over superfluous details is legendary, and I’m not one to depart from tradition (at least here).
WS: What are some victories?
GW: I wrote a book! Yeah! And, I got my first book published. It’s a small press, so I’m not living that six-figure advance dream, but it’s a foot in the door and the start of something. I consider that a victory. Otherwise, I’m happy with the end result, and that in itself is a win.
WS: What comes first to you when writing, the characters or the plot?
GW: The plot. The ending, specifically. I don’t write anything until I know, exactly, how it ends, and everything sort of derives from there. In The Soul of Chaos, for instance, I worked out a scene at the very end of the series, and the world and characters all came from that single scene. There’s a bit of exploratory writing in getting to that ending, but I find that direction to be immensely helpful and rids me of the habit of meandering.
WS: You also design custom content for D&D. Does your TTRPG experience influence your writing in any way?
GW: Absolutely. It’s inescapable, really. The kind of TTRPG work I do demands mechanics for even minutia, so that detailed concept building bleeds over into fiction world building and story work. While I don’t lay it out like you’d find it in a player’s guide, magic is always categorized in its source and specifics of how it operates, and practitioners therein fall into easily distinguishable archetypes.
Characters, too, you can sort of trace to classes, and I’m a big fan of party building, letting everyone shine and contribute to the final confluence of victory. Or, ya know, a wipe. It’s an interesting narrative tool also. I run a whole hell of a lot of games, D&D and otherwise, and you learn, in real time, what kind of stories, characters, and interactions people respond well to.
WS: What are some of your favorite books or authors?
GW: I’m all over the place. Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors as I love irreverence in all its forms. Le Guin is probably my favorite classical fantasy author, along with Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Elizabeth Haydon, and Glen Cook. For Sci Fi, I love me some Andy Weir and Blake Crouch, and Michael A. Stackpole. Horror? T. Kingfisher (who else?). I think maybe we’ll toss Neil Gaiman and Garth Nix in there to round things out a bit, and that’s a pretty good snapshot of who I am as a reader. I’ll give a shoutout to modern CRPGs though, specifically Pillars of Eternity, as that gaming medium is as narratively driven as any novel, and you can find some incredible writing to rival the literary field.
Gregory Wunderlin: Website: https://www.gregorywunderlin.com TTRPG Stuff: https://www.gregorywunderlin.com/ttrpg.html Soul of Chaos Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCYLTQRM
