I’ve always loved myths and legends – they seem like fairytales (and some of them are) – but sometimes they resonate so much that they make you wonder... what if that could have really happened?   I wanted to ask those questions in a story by wondering what would happen if two pretty normal people were chosen to be the beginning of another generation of Demigods.   What kind of adventures would they have?  What pantheons would be involved?  How would the divine interact with the mundane?

            In crafting the story of Mandate of Heaven, I knew I wanted the character’s adventures to begin slow, and be relatively ‘normal’ – and amp up to the truly crazy and divine with time and experience.  Originally designed as a serial, Mandate of Heaven is easily read as a novel, and I hope the format of this book is one that some people will appreciate.  Its smaller chapters may provide an easier way for those trying to get into the story, rather than the excessively long chapters I used in Call of the Void, part one and part two.  The story arc of Mandate of Heaven should carry our heroes and heroines from mortals, to powerful Demigods, and eventually to the halls of the Gods themselves.

            The journey of Stephanie and Andrew – and later Billy and the treesprites – I think is an interesting shadow of the heroic journey, and I strove to make each of the characters admirable and fallible in their own way.  A lot of people complain about ‘Mary Sue’ characters, where the primary characters have few if any flaws, and no real drama to affect them – and I truly hope I’ve avoided that trap here.  It’s not as easy to write about a fallible demigod as you might expect – but even Hercules was a hard-drinking, violent barbarian... so I hope my characters are in good company.

Kathryn Churchill