Story Behind The Story Archives - Dayreads Book Publishing

Finding Freya

The story was inspired by a typical scene in a typical Hollywood film. A man and a woman are running away from a killer. The woman is wearing high heels, tripping over and falling. Instead of jumping up and running, she is reaching out her hand. The man is grabbing it, and she is suddenly able to get up and run again. I know several women personally and every one of them can get up and run unaided, particularly when being chased by a killer robot, a hungry dinosaur, or a psychotic assassin.

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It all began the morning her kitchen went mad

Leave a Comment / Steve Dean, Story Behind The Story / Steve Dean

Of all my novels, Armageddon Girl took the longest to write. The version that made it out into the world was number four, that’s far more than my usual one. I’m talking about major rewrites here, not drafts and partial edits. Unusually for me, I didn’t keep those early documents but deleted huge sections and started again. Modern technology allows anyone who’s creating documents to save as many versions as they want, which is what I always do, with this one exception. So, most of this is going to come from memory.

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Steve Dean on The Story Behind Novel Made Reborn

Mage Reborn: From Magical Beginnings

Leave a Comment / Steve Dean, Story Behind The Story / Steve Dean

When it was my turn to be the Dungeon Master, I began writing a scenario and I got to thinking about this problem. A powerful mage could bring down the city walls and decimate an army, but then had to go and have a rest to learn more spells.

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Throb! The Making of A Barbarian

Leave a Comment / Steve Dean, Story Behind The Story / Steve Dean

Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the origins of Throb and his band of trusty companions. “Throb!” is an adult novel, a comedy, set in a fantasy world. Writing it, I decided to go for more mature content and made it full-on adult.

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Steve Dean on his novel Wayland Snowball

Wayland Snowball – The Birth of An Anti-Hero

1 Comment / Steve Dean, Story Behind The Story / Steve Dean

Some say Wayland Snowball is ‘quirky.’ They also say I was eating a certain type of fungus when writing this novel. I’ll admit it’s a bit ‘out there’, but there’s nothing illicit in its origins.

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Monster Farm—How to Grow a Novel

Leave a Comment / Steve Dean, Story Behind The Story / Steve Dean

Compared to my others, this novel came from a more vague idea, and I took some time to get to the final story. Here, I go into more detail about how the novel, eventually, took its final form.

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Gnomads—The Rise of a Humble Hero

Leave a Comment / Steve Dean, Story Behind The Story / Steve Dean

The story started when I was dragged to a car boot sale myself. I didn’t find a magic pendant, nor a lost Turner seascape or a forgotten Clarice Cliff jug. What I did find was the name Wildgust and a story about travelling to an alternate dimension. The title came very soon. I wrote the words ‘mad gnomes.’

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Soulkeepers—Where it all began

Leave a Comment / Steve Dean, Story Behind The Story / Steve Dean

If you are wondering where I get my ideas from, the short answer is ‘everywhere’. We don’t have space for a long answer, but ideas can come from many different places. Each of my novels was inspired by a different event. In this article, I’ll tell you where the specific ideas that led to Soulkeepers came from.

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