Something Fishy This Way Comes: Fantasy Worlds with Benjamin Schwarting, Ep 86

Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet! Benjamin Schwarting is a fantasy author, high school English teacher, and co-owner of Williams & Rose Publishing. Author of The Sum of Ages series & the Daughters of the Storm prequel series, Ben's work emphasizes writing complex fantasy cultures that highlight real-world issues of systemic oppression and social injustice. After earning his MAT, Ben has taught as an adjunct professor of Education at the College of Idaho and designed creative writing and young author's courses for high schoolers. We talked about languages, cultural differences, the inspirations behind Ben's two fantasy series, and much more. 00:00 START 05:45 Drink 1: Vieux Carre 8:20 Reading 1: Out-swimming Destiny 17:50 Connection to Asian Cultures 23:26 A Cascade of Consequences and the 5 Ideas 27:26 Drink 2: Dark and Stormy 29:38 Reading 2: 5 Trapped in a Trunk 33:45 Getting in a Character's Mind 35:59 The Bechtold Test and Erasing Part of Humanity  41:45 Drink 3: Fish House Punch 44:14 Reading 3: The Bartender's Shady Business 52:50 Writing villains who aren't 1-dimensional 55:15 Biggest difficulties for new writers   Visit our PATREON for our extended AFTER HOURS with Ashley and Andrea Www.booksandbrews.net www.lauravosika.com www.gabrielshornpress.com www.glenmirrilfarms.wordpress.com Www.benjaminschwarting.com  ~ ~ ~ If you enjoy our interviews or have benefited from them, we invite you to help us continue our work. It takes a great deal of time and money to produce Books and Brews. We've been doing interviews since January 2017 as a free service to authors. We continue to promote those authors on our social media for years after their interviews. Subscribing, following, liking, commenting and sharing all help us to keep doing what we do. A $5 tip helps us pay for our many expenses: Libsyn hosting, web hosting, Google meets, providing the drinks for the interview and the many hours of preparation and editing that go into each episode. Patreon: patreon.com/BooksandBrewswithLauraVosika  Tip Jar: paypal.me/booksandbrewsMN * Books and Brews products: https://www.zazzle.com/store/books_an… (more to come) Sponsor an episode to promote your product or service: contact us [email protected] COMING NEXT MONTH:  Randy Lerch — memoir, former MBL player  UPCOMING EVENTS: Gabriel's Horn is accepting submissions for its anthology NEW THEMES: CHILDREN and AMERICA.  See Laura's interview at Central Valley Talk Our theme music is from www.bensound.com. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to get notifications of all our new videos. We have now interviewed more than 115 authors! Would you like to be featured? Leave a comment. https://www.youtube.com/@booksandbrews