What's the story behind the story? What inspired you to write this book?
Every book in my Far Away Places series starts the same way: with a classic story I can’t stop turning over, and a question about what it would look like somewhere stranger. One earlier book grew out of The Lady of Shalott. Another sent a modern traveler back in time to meet the Victorian poets. For this one, I wanted Shakespeare, but not the Shakespeare everyone already knows. I wanted the tangled, overstuffed plotting of a Hamlet or a Les Misérables, and it turns out the lesser-known plays are where the wildest machinery lives. That’s how I found Cymbeline. A secret marriage, a banished husband, a wager over a wife’s fidelity, a heroine who flees in disguise, two princes stolen from the cradle and raised in the wilderness, a feigned death, a battlefield where half the cast meets without recognizing each other, and, in the final act, a god descending on an eagle. It’s already a fantasy novel. It just doesn’t know it yet.
What hooked me most was the “proof.” In the play, the villain doesn’t invent evidence against Imogen. He gathers real details and bends them into a lie. That felt like a job for the fae. My Verdant Reckoning can’t lie, but it can mislead with the truth, and everything it grants comes with a price. Once I had that, the rest fell into place: dragons as sapient partners rather than mounts, a kingdom quietly carrying a thirty-year-old debt, and a heroine who owes the Reckoning nothing.
The title comes from the funeral song the lost princes sing over Imogen, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, nor the furious winter’s rages.” In the play, it’s sung over a woman who isn’t actually dead. I couldn’t resist building a story around that.
What's your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Detective Fiction!
What books are on your TBR pile right now?
When I have time, I will revisit Raymond Feist and his many books, along with some of the oldies and goodies from Heinlein, Asimov, and so many others!
What scene in your book was your favorite to write?
My favorite scene was “The Battlefield Convergence.” It is the most action-packed scene. It has the book’s only true battle: a dawn raid on the supply column, a burning wagon, smoke thick enough to hide everything past thirty paces, and the tall, still fae figure watching from the tree line. The climax is Malcolm overdrawing on Skirra’s bond mid-charge and collapsing, with Rowan and Vaerith scrambling to save him. The Wren/Emrys near-miss in the smoke also happens here.
Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)
For this series, introducing the fae in their various permutations is key—each of the 6 current books has some type of “outside force” involved, and sometimes even a raven or two!
Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?
Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat—have to be brave for fantasy fiction—not only to interest the author, but to create one’s own path and perhaps something of note!
If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?
I like writing about the mystery and history of poems from the Romantic Period—I do hope that some of this is captured into each of the volumes in Far Away Places!
C. Xavier is the author of the new book Nor The Furious Winter's Rages (Far Away Places)
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