Tag: fantasy author

Spotlight author! S.S Frankowska

Posted on by T. Maxwell-Harrison

I’ve managed to have a chat with yet another incredible writer. This time Sandra S. Frankowska is telling me about her writing journey and about her incredibly inspiring fantasy series! I hope you enjoy what she had to say, I know I loved every minute and thank you for taking the time to read!

S.S. Frankowska

Sandra S. Frankowska is the author of the epic fantasy series Heroes Of the Shadow. When she is not writing, Sandra is either working at the ed-tech start-up, reading, painting or rock climbing.

Some of Frankowska’s favourite reads include The Lord Of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Journey to the Center of the Earth by J. Verne, The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, Dark Tower by S. King, Jurassic Park by M. Crichton, The Drift by C. Aufenthie and The Hunger Games by S. Collins.

Where do you live?

Recently moved out from London to a small village in Kent, UK called South Darenth.

Why are you a writer?

My passion for writing comes from my passion for reading. For as long as I can remember, I always enjoyed discovering other worlds and losing myself in them. Writing was about the same, just on the brand new levels. I plotted my series in my head long before I wrote the very first word on paper. I drew places and creatures that existed nowhere but in my mind to get them out of my head. Drawing soon wasn’t enough. I painted, sculptured, and tried other forms of expressing it, but with time, nothing worked. My characters began to appear to tell their stories, and I found myself plotting it all on paper before I even realised that this was what I was doing.

Eventually, writing became a coping mechanism for me. It was a way to take a step away from the crazy world we live in and immerse myself in the new place, which only I could explore. It became a way for me to process things I found difficult to process otherwise. To express things that matters to me, that I often felt no one else cared about.

As the first chapters formed, I realised I have a story to tell. A story that I couldn’t find anywhere else, and that I enjoyed. A story that I was looking for in other books, but it wasn’t there. How could it be there? It was inside me this whole time.

What do you enjoy about writing?

There are many things I love about writing.

First one is plotting. I spend a lot of time daydreaming, with my mind travelling across different worlds and timelines to see how the story will develop. I treasure these moments a lot. Being able to see all of that in my head makes me to realise how gifted and lucky I am. Detaching myself from excel tables, grocery planning and paying bills to figure out how the world with dinosaurs and dragons living in one place could look like makes me feel complete. I may be physically still here, but with my mind, I can be just anywhere. Isn’t human brain amazing?

Second thing I love about writing is how it makes me feel the emotions that not only are not mine but also belong to a fictional character. Yet, they are real to me. I write a scene and I catch myself smiling. I write a scene and suddenly realise that my heart is speeding up. My characters are somewhere high up and I feel dizzy. None of this happened, and yet I felt it all.

Finally, writing is self-discovery. My plot and my characters force me to ask myself questions I wouldn’t ask myself otherwise. To understand the complexity of thousands of different experiences that impact the smallest decisions we take. To see how resilient and brave I am. Writing and publishing isn’t an easy process. Many of us experience self-doubts on regular basis, struggles to be seen, and receive little to no support on the way. Realising how much strength you have to continue, nevertheless, should be a huge thing. It was for me. I never knew I had it until I started to write.

Tell us about your most recent works

My debut epic fantasy novel came out last year. “Heroes Of the Shadow. Blue Scar Indeabinito” is a first book in the 24-books-long planned series. It’s a story of a soldier, Thomas McCartney, who was taken to another world called the Indeabinito. It’s a world filled with mythical creatures and other humanoid races, some of which remind him of things he knew (like mermaids and centaurs), some are completely new to him.

While the Indeabinito world has a lot to offer, Thomas actually spends most of his time trying to find a way back to his home. His father is a soldier, and so is he. Taken to another world, he’s worried that people will consider his disappearance a one thing that he would never do: a desertion.

If you could write a book in a new genre, which would you choose?

Based on books that I love, my first choice to try something new, would be a dystopian fiction.

Do you have any role models or people who inspired you to write?

I rarely take people for role models (too easy to get disappointed). There are, however, authors whose art inspired me to write. The two key series that made me to write were The Chronicles of Narnia and Jurassic Park + Jurassic World. The first one, for the simple reason: I loved the idea of the portals that existed in our world and could take you to somewhere else. Exploring Narnia made me to fall in love with fantasy and limitless possibilities it offers. That was my “what” to write.


Jurassic Park and Jurassic World made me to realise the impact of a good story. While I enjoyed the movies, these books carried so much more in them. Particularly Jurassic Park has this one scene that explains how systems used in the park were designed with logical error, and how simple and easy to miss that error was. Everything that happened later was just a huge consequence of one wrong assumption. The way M. Crichton plotted important messages into the world that didn’t exist but felt as if it could be real, was my “why” to write.

Are you working on anything at the moment?

I’m currently working on getting my second book in the series ready to publish later this year, while also outlining book #3.

Where can people buy your books?

My books at the moment are only available on Amazon.

What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?

First of all, you are only aspiring until you start to write. As soon as you started, you are a writer, and never let anyone take it away from you. Other than that, treat anything you hear regarding the writing process as an advice, not as a rule. Writing is an art. There is no such a thing like one size fits all. We all do it in different ways. That’s why our stories are unique. Try different things, experiment, but never force yourself into something that doesn’t work for you.

Writing is not easy, but you should enjoy it. Otherwise, what’s the point?

http://getbook.at/HOS – FIND HEROES OF THE SHADOW HERE

It was incredible to speak to such a talented author. I thank you for your continued support and for reading, so if you liked, like, comment and follow and reblog!

Spotlight #2 Chris Profeta

Posted on by T. Maxwell-Harrison

Writing spotlight number 2 is indie author/writer Chris. A fantasy writer predominantly on Wattpad where you can read his fantasy epic for free. I had the pleasure of talking to Christopher about his work and he wanted to sum up his writing life which is great. So without further introduction, please enjoy his story on creating his work The Search for the Eoz Potion. He had a rather philosophical and religious outlook on his work, which was different.

Everything is Temporary

I’m not a good writer.  I struggle to fill in the minor details of a story and to have them amount to any kind of larger purpose.  I’m also really bad with typos, but that’s not relevant to this blog pist…I mean, “post.”  (I also have a cheesy sense of humor.)

About five years ago, I had an idea for a fantasy story.  I had never written one before and didn’t really even enjoy reading them much, but my kids and I had just finished the Harry Potter series and were struggling to find something new to read together.  Like any good father/writer, I decided I would write one for them.  This is where my problem with being a bad writer becomes important.  Better, I suppose, to be a bad writer than a bad father.

Frustrated, I decided to turn to the children for help.  I explained the basic idea – a girl searching in a secret world for a magic potion to cure her sick friend – then gave each child a character to help develop.  They came up with the personality, backstory, physical description, and all the other details. We mapped out a basic plot diagram and then I worked on fitting all the pieces together into one coherent story.  Once I was able to convince them to hold off on the giant half chicken/half penguin monster until the sequel (stay on the lookout for that one, folks…), we ended up with what I thought was a pretty solid story about sacrifice and friendship that we called “The Search for the Eoz Potion.”  I have been posting it free on Wattpad here.

So that took care of the specific details of the story, but what about the second part of writing I’m bad at, giving the story a larger meaning?  This is something I always overthought as a writer, but this time around it kind of took care of itself.  

About the same time that I was writing the book, I had the opportunity to learn from a man who is both a Jewish Rabbi and a Lutheran Pastor.  Over the course of a week long lecture series, he taught about the original Hebrew text of some of the more famous passages from both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible including the book of Ecclesiasties.  He taught us that the famous proclamation from Solomon that “everything is meaningless” is better translated as everything is “vapor” or “breath.”  The Hebrew word “chevel” that is often translated as “meaningless” is better understood, he argued, as referring to something that is temporary.  

So where is the connection, you may ask.  Well, I have always shied away from stories about fantasy worlds because of how complex they can be to write (again, see opening line about my writing ability), but also because as a reader myself I often found them to be far fetched and removed from reality.  I preferred stories that spoke to what I saw around me, but when I would try to write them, they were too boring to even force my closest friends and family to read.

Chevel solved these problems.  It gave me a better appreciation of how books that create fantasy worlds that exist parallel to our own reality can help us to better understand the world.  What we experience everyday is meaningless, it is temporary, it is a vapor that exists only briefly.  There is, in fact, something more.  Obviously when we put it in its biblical context it means something much more complex than a simple blog post could uncover, but I’ve learned that fantasy writing is far more consequential than I ever truly appreciated.

In “The Search for the Eoz Potion,” for example, the main characters’ time in the “fantasy world” gives them a deeper sense of purpose in the “real world.”  There is a moment when one of the characters has a flashback to her life back home.  She remembers the pressures her parents put on her to be the best at school, in her extracurricular activities, and in sports.  She recognizes that her inability to ever live up to their expectations is crippling her, and she then comes to the following realization:

“School, student council, softball, none of it mattered in the Garden.  She liked that.  She had one goal, one thing to focus on – finding the Eoz Potion.”

Chevel.