Book Tour Q&A: The Bleeding Stone by Joseph John Lee
- Fiction Fans
- Jun 25, 2023
- 8 min read
Today we're taking part in the book tour organized by Escapist Book Company for The Bleeding Stone by Joseph John Lee! Continue reading for the book blurb and a Q&A with the author.
About the book
The island nation of Ferranda is the jewel of the Acrarian Kingdom, and its Founder, Aritz a Mata, is revered as a god amongst men. But twenty-five years ago, Aritz was merely a man, a colonizer, an Invader seeking glory and fame in the name of his King and Queen, and Ferranda was a nameless union of indigenous Tribes, reverent of the heightened powers and aptitudes granted to them by their Animal Deities, but sundered by the foreigners claiming their lands to the south.
In the unconquered north, the Stone Tribe has for fifteen years offered a safe haven for the southern Tribes displaced by Aritz's Invaders, whose occupying march north has been ostensibly halted by a dense forest barrier dividing north and south. Among the Stone people lives Sen, an outcast for the circumstances of her birth, preserved in society only by her status as daughter of her Tribe's Chief. Forever relegated to the fringes of society, she is forced to watch as countless of her kin, including her sister and brother, complete their rites of passage into adulthood and accordingly earn their aptitudes by the Deity to whom they share an affinity - the Bear, the Wolf, or the Owl.
Despite this, Sen finds comfort in her life of forced solitude with her close inner circle, but hers is a comfort in days of waning tenuous peace. When Aritz's technologically-advanced forces push north, Sen is thrust into a singular quest to rescue one of her precious few captured in the ensuing struggle. While her goal is earnest - save someone dear to her and prove her worth to her Tribe - her people's goal is far more dire: survival in the face of uncertainty.
On to the interview...!
Thank you so much for joining us for this Q&A! We’ll start off with one of our standard podcast opening questions–tell us something great that’s happened recently.
I just released the sequel to The Bleeding Stone - The Children of the Black Moon - on May 30, and the same week, I landed a nice promotion at my job!
What are you currently reading or what’s up next on your TBR? What made you pick up this book?
At the time of writing, I’m close to the end of Voice of War by Zack Argyle. I heard it had clear Stormlight Archive influences so I had to jump on that - plus, Zack has always seemed like a great guy so finally decided to give his books a shot. Really enjoying it!
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always had a bit of a creative gene, and as a kid, I was always writing whatever weird stories popped into my head - even when they made absolutely no sense at all. I kept on with it up through high school, crafting stories with hilariously bad dialogue that was lifted from whatever video game I was playing at the time, even when the particular line barely fit at all in the context of what I was writing. Needless to say, most of what I wrote back then was terrible.
Creative writing fell off the docket for a while once I went to uni and I was focused instead on my academic pursuits. After eight years pursuing a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees in history, though, I burnt out and became a lapsed academic and found some comfort in fantasy fiction while I dug myself out of that rut. It was at this time - around 2018 - that I started back up with writing creatively as an outlet to make writing fun for me again. The impetus for this was an open call for novellas through Tor.com; it wasn’t a successful submission, but it set me back on that path and has resulted in manuscripts for a few short stories, a few novellas, and three finished novels - two of which are now published!
How do you spend your free time when you’re not reading or writing? Do you have any hobbies or interests that you can talk to us about?
I’m generally found with a book in my hand or sitting myself on the couch with a video game if I’m not writing. I’m a fan of craft beer and enjoy stopping by the various breweries in my area. And, depending on the season, I’m either a happy or an angry Red Sox fan.
Who are your favorite current writers and who are your greatest influences?
As far as literary influences, I’m particularly drawn to John Gwynne for his grand epic battle sequences; Joe Abercrombie for his expert character work and biting prose; and Brandon Sanderson with his imaginative worlds and innovative magic systems. I also draw a lot of storytelling influences from video game writers such as Yoko Taro and Tetsuya Takahashi, primarily for their philosophical approaches to thematic symbolism and examinations of the human condition.
If you could collaborate with any one author, who would it be and why?
I think John Gwynne would be an incredible author to work with. I like writing big battle scenes and no one does battles better than Gwynne. It’d be a blast to pick his brain, see how he draws on his work as a Viking re-enactor, and see what madness we could create together!
How much do you plan when you write? What’s your writing process like?
It’s all dependent on the length of the work. If I’m writing a short story or a novella, I’ll keep a smaller amount of notes, sometimes just jotting stuff down in a notebook. At the very least, I like to know where I’m going with the plot before I start writing.
With larger novels - and especially series - I outline literally everything except for the minutiae of character descriptions. It’s better for my process where I can sprinkle hints and foreshadowing chapters or even entire books in advance, and I’m not the type of person to go way back to add something and set up a new plot point that I thought up mid-book. With my outlines, I try to stick to the core plot points as much as possible and add supplementary worldbuilding as I go along.
When I sit down to write, I try to get, at minimum, 1000-2000 words down. At the moment, my goal is getting a chapter done each week, regardless of how long or short I anticipate the chapter being.
Is this your first book? If so, what lessons have you learned from writing it? If not, what lessons did you learn from writing earlier books that you brought into this one?
The Bleeding Stone is my first published book, though not the first I had written. I had previously written two novellas for a currently sidelined project and a standalone novel that I plan to rework and publish after I wrap up the final book in the Spellbinders trilogy.
With The Bleeding Stone, I’ve definitely felt I’ve refined some of the nuance of writing in a way I hadn’t with my prior projects - the goal is always to get better with each book - but what I’ve taken away the most from this book is how to properly set up and write a full series. It’s one thing to outline three books, it’s another thing entirely to keep your own continuity consistent across those three books. It was challenging in a way I wasn’t fully expecting, but fully rewarding.
Prior to starting this series in 2020, I had gotten a lot of headway on the first book in a massive series that was one of those “magnum opus” type deals, and even wrote the first 70,000 words. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I simply wasn’t ready for the demands of plotting, planning, and writing an enormous epic fantasy series. The Spellbinders and the Gunslingers has been a great stepping stone toward that, and I’ll return to it likely around 2025 at the earliest. But I wouldn’t feel confident in starting it if I didn’t have the experience with The Bleeding Stone and its sequels.
What do you think characterizes your writing style?
Snappy dialogue, deep characters, lyrical prose, and fantasy applications of real-world events and observations.
How much of yourself do you write into your stories?
It varies from story to story. With regards to The Bleeding Stone specifically, there is a sibling dynamic featured that I drew in part from my relationships with my own siblings. Beyond that, there’s not much of myself written into this series.
A different book I’ve written - though not yet published - has much more of myself in the main character and his closest friend, modeled after me and my own best friend, drawing especially on interactions from around that time in my life.
What comes first to you when you’re writing, the world, the characters, or the storyline?
Can I go off-script and say the titles? Because that’s strangely enough the first thing that comes to me, usually in nondescript situations. Before I even came up with a single idea for what would become The Bleeding Stone, I was walking to my then-partner-now-fiance’s apartment and had a brain blast and thought, “Huh, ‘Spellbinders and Gunslingers’ would be a cool name for a story.” That was the original title for the book, until I eventually changed it to its current title and decided to name the series The Spellbinders and the Gunslingers.
It wasn’t until a couple months later that I actually started to devise a plot, but it was the storyline and themes that I started to chart out first, then the world and magic, and then the characters. That’s more or less the standard order of operations for me - and going by the Google doc I keep of title ideas for short stories without any plot details attached, it doesn’t seem like that will change any time soon.
Do you have a favorite quote from your book that you can share with us? What about this quote in particular makes it your favorite?
“A people and culture do not cease to exist simply because your eyes have shut.”
There’s a similar line in a song from Rise Against called “From Heads Unworthy” that wound up informing a key theme running through the series: historical erasure. On the whole, The Spellbinders and the Gunslingers has a focus on deconstructing history as written by the victors, drawing from my own experiences and frustrations with how history is taught in the US, especially with regards to indigenous and minority populations. The series became a great outlet for me to air those frustrations.
Is there anything you can tell us about any current projects you’re working on?
I’m working on the final book in The Spellbinders and the Gunslingers trilogy, with an anticipated release date of early 2024. I also plan to write another prequel novella after finishing the first draft of Book Three, with a plan to release it before Book Three’s release.
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions for us! Do you have any parting thoughts or comments you’d like to leave for our readers?
Thanks for having me! To all the readers out there, I’d love it if you gave this series a look, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. This community is wonderful, and it’s because of the fine people like you who are always willing to give new books a shot.
And finally, where can you be found on the internet if our readers want to hear more from you?
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @joelee__
I also have a website: http://joseph-john-lee.com. I have a newsletter signup on my website and by signing up, you can receive my prequel novella Pale Night, Red Fields for free.
Where to buy the book:
Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/m0Ep8W
Amazon: https://amzn.to/427GINk
