We asked Freya if should shed some light on the gaming influences on her writing…
Kia ora (that’s Kiwi or New Zealand for hello!)
Thanks for having me on your blog today. I’m here to talk about my new epic fantasy from Angry Robot Books. Heartwood is book 1 of The Elemental Wars, and book 2, Sunstone, is due for publication next March/April.
You asked me about how gaming influenced Heartwood. I’m very happy to talk about gaming! I play MMORPGs like Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft, PC & PS3 games like Assassin’s Creed, Skyrim and Lara Croft, roleplay games like D&D and Pathfinder, tabletop games like Warhammer and Warmachine, and historical and fantasy board games. Actually, now I spell it all out, it makes me sound like a right nerd. Oh well, if the cap fits…
Has it had an influence on my writing? Absolutely! In many, many ways. Let’s start with setting. I have a degree in history and archaeology so I’ve been steeped in the medieval period for a long time. I have folders and folders of research. But of course it’s always good to have visual images to 
help with world building. Watching movies like Kingdom of Heaven, Black Death, Henry V and even A Knight’s Tale is a fun way to research the period and to get a flavour of food, clothing, armour, names and language of the period. And equally playing fantasy games which have a quasi-medieval setting is also a fun way to aid the creative process. The artwork in games like Guild Wars 2 is just superb, and hubby and I spend hours adventuring in the lands and taking time to look at the buildings, the paintings on the walls, and the clothing of the characters. My characters take holidays snaps as they adventure, and you can find some of these on my website!
In Guild Wars 2 there are many things you can do from picking herbs and chopping down trees, to crafting clothing and cooking (I’m a master chef in the game although in real life I’m lucky if I can boil an egg), to helping villagers find lost relics and feeding bears with tasty fish. However, combat is a large part of the game, and of course it’s the main part of most computer games. They receive a lot of criticism for this, and I know that sometimes the gratuitous violence makes me a bit o.O. But personally, I love the combat side of games. I enjoy Assassin’s Creed both for the look of the game and the combat. I loved Doom 3 both because it scared the crap out of me and it was huge fun to blast zombies with the plasma gun (I clocked the game although I admit to using God mode for part of it!). And I love GW2 because I get to fight with greatswords, longbows, sword and shield, pistols, axes and daggers. I’m pretty sure Procella—female Dux of the Heartwood army—uses a form of shield bash in the last stand, LOL. And have you ever seen a raid on an MMO game? I’m pretty sure a lot of battle is like that—an absolute melee of people and weapons and not really knowing who is killing whom. Computer games are great fun, even if they don’t always provide a realistic view of warfare. Tabletop gaming is another area that helps with writing battles on a larger scale. It’s fun to re-enact historical battles or try out tactics like cavalry charges or attacks from the rear to see what sort of an impact they might have had.
The last area where gaming has had an influence on my fantasy writing is in the gender balance. In the medieval world, the role of women generally isn’t an important one. Of course there are exceptions and we can all name important female figures in history like Boudicca, Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, but in general a woman’s place was in the home, bringing up the children and looking after the family (and don’t think I can’t hear those of you males who are muttering that it still is!) But although I worked hard to make Heartwood a traditional epic fantasy in many ways, I very much wanted women to have an important role in the story—I wanted gender to be irrelevant in the same way that it is in the gaming world. If I play a female warrior on GW2, for example, she’ll have exactly the same stats as a male warrior. I know that in real life, women aren’t generally as strong as men, but I love that in gaming this doesn’t play a part, and this was a major influence on the way I write about women in Heartwood. I didn’t want to make a big statement about women—I wanted it to not be an issue, the way I don’t want it to be an issue in real life. So in Heartwood, the Militis or holy knights are both men and women, and Procella is the highly respected leader of the army. Both sexes have weapons training and have to spend a certain amount of time in the Exercitus army out on Isenbard’s Wall, which stands between two warring nations. And I really enjoyed writing a story where—for the Heartwood knights at least—gender doesn’t enter into the equation.
So anyway, I’ve waffled enough. If I don’t stop now I’ll talk about gaming all night! Hopefully it’s given you a little insight into the creation of Heartwood and its world.
Freya
Heartwood publishes in US/Canada in physical and electronic format on 29 October 2013 and in the UK on 7 November 2013
