We look back at the first book publication for the Thread of Souls fantasy series with some “behind the scenes” trivia!
It was this week in June of 2019 that the first book in our epic fantasy series, Thread of Souls, was released! With the upcoming release of Book III, we wanted to take a look back and share some interesting trivia with you.
The Writing Process
We started writing Book I: Phantom Five early in 2018. As this fantasy series is based off our multi-year TTRPG campaign, we had to go back to our original notes. It took some time to compile what we had and put it in chronological order. As we explored in our article on this subject, converting a D&D campaign into a book series isn’t a simple copy/paste matter. Some things simply don’t work for a book, and others have to be approached differently. As this was our first time attempting something like this, we had to do a lot of thought about how this conversion process would look.
We also decided early on to have this has a multiple POV (third person limited) book. It was the only proper way to tell the story of these characters with all the heart and depth that required. So after breaking down the plot and dividing it into chapters, it became a matter of who had the most impact in telling that chapter. And then ensuring there was a good balance in characters.
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone. But a lot of the early writing took place at an office desk during slow hours before we turned fully to self-employment! As any writer knows, it can be hard to find time to sit down and write while balancing all the other demands of life. But once we started, there was no stopping! This series is a work of pure passion.
Let’s not talk about the editing process. As any writer knows, it’s just hell.
TTRPG Comparison
Note: There are some minor spoilers for Phantom Five in this section.
We thought it would be fun to share a bit of side-by-side on differences and similarities between the game and the book.
- While climbing down a rope into a well, Sen spills some rum out on Jade below him.
- In the game, Jade rolled low on her athletics check, causing her to slip. The rum was used narratively to explain the struggle.
- The group makes their way up a series of floating islands.
- In the game, this played out much the same. But in the game, we were in possession of a flying carpet. We didn’t realize until the end we could have used the flying carpet simply to fly to the top. The flying carpet was never featured in the book, but it always gives us a good laugh!
- Taliesin and Ruuda’s Plot
- We follow Taliesin and Ruuda on and off throughout the book, but none of that was played out in-game. Actually, they did not join the game as characters until much later (level 10). All that is included is backstory that was role-played in a 3-hour long car drive.
- The Camels
- The group uses camels to cross the desert, and Artemis gives cute names to them. In the TTRPG game, one of the names was Camelot. It is unfortunate that could not be included in the book!