An Interview with J.P. Weaver
Hello and welcome to another author interview. Today we are joined by J.P. Weaver, a Royal Road author whose work includes the Riverfolk series and Red Mist.
Thank you joining with us today, Weaver
It's a pleasure as always to speak with someone who is passionate about their work.
So Weaver, people that have read your work would call it as part of the “Weaververse”. Can you tell us a bit about that and which stories might be connected?
So of course all of the forthcoming Bad Company novels(Bad Company, Team Pathfinder) are explicitly linked. Red Mist shares a world with Tales of the Riverfolk, both start in the same place and certain characters cross over(Stone, Lord Richards makes a cameo, River the druid) but Tales of the Riverfolk was definitely meant as a satire and just for fun, or at least it was. Sect Leader is standalone.
What would that be a satire of?
Red Mist itself was a mash up of redwall, mistborn, pride and prejudice and Bridgeton. Red Mist was the gentry, and Riverfolk the working class. In a way it's a satire of itself(Riverfolk).
Mistborn and Jane Austen? What a strange mash up. Tell us, do either of those authors influence your work as a whole?
My wife is a huge Austen fan so I read all the books and I like the themes, but it's a little… dated? Like women as property, doesn't jibe well, so she used the books to show women able to make choices(where others could only dream) and it was done well. Her and C.L. Polk writes romance that makes it easy for me to write something that my wife would like.
Brandon Sanderson is a huge guy for clear, clean writing and I want to emulate that style and it's been a huge boon to me to read all of his books. I main-lined the wheel of time last year and then the greater cosmere and it's a trip. Plus his lectures are something I consistently recommend to writers.
I caught pieces of Sandersons lectures. Perhaps I’ll look into those in the future. Now what of your other books? Are there any authors, books, or events in your life that influenced Bad Company and Sect Leader?
The number one book series that I listened to over and over again was the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. It's written in an epistolary style, first person accounts and it's quite compelling. Bad Company would not have existed without that idea of Von Neumann probes, with human AIs as pilots. That combined with Colombus Day, the whole Ex Force series made me say, what if Bob was a tired depressed Army Major? (Or divorced lesbian Space Force Major?)
For Sect Leader the obvious candidates are Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliazer Yuekowsy, he makes me want to go back into computer science. You can see clear lessons in HPMOR, though in Sect Leader I am also trying to teach Effective Altruism principles(in a very small way). The other cultivator novels that I drew greatly upon are Beware of Chicken, Cultivating Earth(dropped), The arrogant young master, Qi equals MC^2 and Enduring Good. The last two are explicitly Rationalist fic just like HPMOR with a different spin.
Can you explain what a cultivator novel is?
Sure. So in Chinese fiction, Xianxia Is like heroes of the heavens, people who spent their lives using qi(Energy) as a force to advance, fight monsters, become immortal etc. There's a lot of common tropes, like the arrogant young master, harems etc. It's fantasy, but eastern. It is very popular on Royal Road but the most recognizable and commercially successful example that everyone and their mother should read(after Sect Leader of course) is cradle. Will Wight adapts a ton of those elements throughout his series, that of progressing to a new level, hitting a new series of challenges etc. Most Xianxia are progression fantasy.
Will Wight is most likely the most popular independent author that I’ve come across. What about you? Do you plan to publish other places after Royal Road?
Undoubtedly I will do an ebook(Riverfolk Volume One is getting copyedited for print now) once the fiction is complete and up to standard. I am not a fan of Kindle Unlimited, except that I am told it is great for military science fiction. I do have people ready to do an audiobook version of everything I have written so far since that's half of the game now or more. I was planning on trying to Traditionally publish Bad Company but more and more it makes no sense when I am self publishing everything else.
Excellent! Audio books are exciting! Will there be a chance to see a physical copy of Riverfolk on our bookshelves in the near future?
You'll be the first one to get it as I had an idea to make the books look like issues of a manga, and then add some illustrations. That is assuming that I get the patreon support to pay for artists. One way or the other it will get made.
Did you first start on Royal Road and what drew you to the site?
I wrote with my writing groups for about a year before I even touched Royal Road(Bad Company is on its sixth draft if you can believe that). The reason I stayed was because one of my writing groups made me read the mother of learning and of course there was no audiobook at that time(in between the free version and the audible one). So I had to read that after listening to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality on audio, and I was like, what else is on here?
And then my writing partner was trying to write a maiden arc for her heroine (K.M. Weilands life arcs) and I was like… I could write a maiden arc! About a mouse that decides to become a druid! Because the hero arc is great and all but what about some love for the other parts of life? So in a way, her story spawned… the Weaververse. (It is still unpublished but she wrote two reader magnets that are close to completion.) And of course Royal Road was where Red Mist ended up.
That’s awesome! So perhaps we can get an excerpt from Red Mist?
From Ch 2- Beasts in the Pen
“Freya, eventually you’re going to have to grow up and face some adult responsibilities. Why just yesterday your mother was talking about bringing some pup suitors around,” his eyes glazed over.
“Are you remembering the story about how you were betrothed to Old Gran? You just told me that story yesterday!” she said.
“Don’t begrudge me the good times. You see most of the people that got married from my litter, well they married for connections, but I found love,” Grandpaw said.
Freya stared at him for a minute as the beasts danced around the pen.
“Just because it happened to work out for you, you think that I should just go along with whoever she picks?” Freya said.
“Well, more or less,” he said.
“Just because I should do the right thing.”
Freya wondered if running away would help in the long term, but she always wanted to face her problems head-on. She trusted old gran even if she was a little off her rocker at times.
“Do the right thing for the family, Freya but make sure that you consider what the right thing is for you also. A pup that cannot grow won’t make much of herself.”
Freya paused to toss a seed in between the two beasts. Predictably both wanted to charge it but then realized that they would run into each other, so they just stood there, glaring.
“You can be who your mother wants you to be, pup. Or you can be who you want you to be, and none of us can pick that for you.” Grandpaw said.
“Aww thanks, Grandpaw,” she said.
Grandpaw sighed deeply.
“Well at least you’ll know that your mother thinks that she’s found the right one for you,” he said.
“Right, it’s not as if she’d just let me ride one of these magnificent winged beasts out of here, at least not without some training,” Freya said, thinking quite the opposite.
I think we would like to know what are your plans for future projects?
I am planning to wrap Riverfolk Volume 2 in the next three months if not sooner and probably pause that indefinitely. Red Mist I want to complete this year as well as starting Red Mist Volume 2(working title “The Druid Hero”).
Bad Company is about to finally finish edits and then will be self published onto Kindle and KU, then audible. Bad Company- Team Pathfinder the reader magnet is in heavy editing.
If I reach a certain point in Sect Leader I will put it up as an ebook, but that is a while away. I am also working on a how-to book for authors, "How to Write Progression Fantasy" , the book that I would have wanted to read myself.
Well thank you for taking a moment of your time to talk to us! Before you go can you share some parting wisdom for aspiring young writers?
Get or make a writing group and put your fiction url into your discord profile! The best marketing is baked in(write a good product). Oh and read about marketing(David Gaughran has a great free course).
Thank you once again to J.P. Weaver. You can find Red Mist and his other works on Royal Road, links provided below!
Read "Tales of the Riverfolk Company" here
Read "Sect Leader: Cold Hard Truth" here