A.G. Meier's Champions Awakening: Interstellar War, Settled One Duel at a Time

A.G. Meier joins Mookie on the 64th episode of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory to talk about Champions Awakening, his debut novel and the first book in the True Power saga. Adam's been telling stories his whole life, long before he ever sat down to write one. As a kid, he was the one at the family cottage every summer who'd get a dozen cousins gathered around a campfire and make up scary stories on the spot, purely from instinct, reading the crowd as he went. That same impulse carried straight into adulthood, where, behind the wheel for hours at a stretch, he'd build entire scenes in his head, characters, conflicts, whole worlds, working out how to get from one dramatic beat to the next just to keep himself entertained on the road. He calls it always being "in Storyland," and he means it literally: once he builds a character enough in his own mind, that character becomes real to him, with a voice, a personality, and a will of their own on the page.A separation, raising three kids largely on his own, and eventually meeting a partner who gave him the time and encouragement to actually sit down and write finally turned decades of daydreaming into a finished manuscript. Once he started, he wrote for four hours a day, every day, for three straight months, discovering along the way that he's a committed "pantser," someone who knows roughly where a scene needs to land but has no idea how he'll get there until he's actually writing it.The novel imagines a great interstellar war resolved through single combat, each planet birthing its own champion to fight on its behalf rather than risk mutual annihilation, and Adam walks through the specific, almost logistical daydream that sparked the idea in the first place. He and Mookie dig into how personal the book still is despite being pure invention, his own dog appears as a beloved character, his father inspired another, and how a good soundtrack playing in his head while he drives can build an entire scene before a single word gets written. Their conversation is about the particular kind of person who can't stop imagining entire worlds and at long last found a way to get them out of his head and onto the page.The GuestA.G. Meier is a Master Electrician from Hamilton, Ontario, and the author of Champions Awakening, Book 1 of The True Power Saga, published under his own imprint, Gold Crown Empire. He grew up spending summers at his family's cottage in Northern Ontario, where he first started telling stories around the campfire for his cousins. More books in the Gold Crown Empire universe are already underway.Visit his website: https://www.goldcrownempire.comGet Champions Awakening: https://www.amazon.ca/Champions-Awakening-G-Meier/dp/B0HD696TDKWant to be on the show? Have feedback? Send Mookie a text!Support the show