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Welcome to another episode of the Fantasy Writers Tool Shed.

I'm your host Richie Billing.

And today I'm delighted to be joined by author HB Renault.

Welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

Thanks so much, I'm so excited to be here.

Thank you very much for joining me.

I know you're a very busy person because as well as being a writer, you're also an emergency physician and a military officer as well.

Is that right?

That is correct, yes.

I am quite busy all of the time so.

Where did you find that I was a wrist?

In between so I work in the ER so it's it's very shift based, which is nice and so we kind of like group our shifts specifically and then I normally have a couple days off to do some writing and it kind of works as sort of a decompression for me because it it's quite stressful as as you can imagine.

And so I love writing and and getting to explore worlds that way.

I.

Suppose just having that quiet time after such a hectic environment and the the like the length of shifts as well.

You're in there for a long long time, aren't you?

So.

Yeah, it depends on the hospital, but it ranges from 8 to 12 hours is the typical.

Yeah, I mean, I'm only doing 8 hours in an office sometimes in the 12 hours in an emergency room is insane.

It's definitely it's, it's a Sprint for sure.

Yeah, so I'll verify.

It's really good.

What about your background in the military?

So I actually joined the, I grew up in the Air Force, so moved around every couple years growing up.

So I was, I was familiar with the lifestyle, but my family, they're all Air Force pilots.

So my eyes are terrible and I get a plane sick.

So that was never going to be a good career path for me.

So I knew I wanted to go into medicine.

And here in the States, there's a program where the the military will basically pay for your medical school for you in in exchange for serving afterwards.

Yeah, there you go.

Nice work.

And so how did you get into writing?

Where does it all begin for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think probably like most writers you probably talk to, I loved writing as a child.

I was very loved books and the Harry Potter series and Tamara Pierce and all of the the fantasy authors that I just loved was obsessed with Lord of the Rings for a period of time.

So it was always kind of writing stories as a child and kind of, you know, you get older into secondary school and have to kind of focus on, you know, what, what you're going to do in the world and kind of who you're going to be.

And I got really into science and medicine and so kind of had to put it on the back burner for a little while.

And it was actually COVID when I really kind of picked it back up again.

COVID hit right when I was in the middle of medical school.

And it was a really stressful time and really challenging for healthcare workers everywhere.

And I really found, you know, I wasn't able to see people outside of work.

And when I was at work, it was a stressful place to be.

And so coming home, I dived into fantasy again.

And that's when I started writing again and really started exploring stories.

And it was really kind of a a reprieve in a really tough time for me.

It's it's great that you, you found that.

Was it like, did you, did you start by reading fantasy books and then decide to just write or did you just dive straight into the writing?

I definitely read a lot of fantasy books growing up and had continued to kind of read when I was in school.

I did a lot of audio books just because that was what I had time for and it would kind of put my brain in a different gear from all the non fiction I was constantly reading all day.

So I listened to a lot of fantasy audio books and really fell in love again with with the genre and so definitely got into that first.

But when COVID hit, it was kind of like, oh, well, this is my chance.

I'd kind of always had in the back of my mind that I'd like to write at some point.

And so I finally had a little bit of time when everything was shut down and I wasn't at work to actually start writing.

Did you just dive straight into a novel or did you like start writing short of fiction?

Or how does it all begin?

For me, I think I needed sort of the, the goal of a longer project was kind of important for me as kind of a distraction.

And so short fiction, I, you know, I started with scenes.

I had scenes in my head that I wanted to write and so I would write those.

But they were all, I quickly realized that they were all building towards a much longer story, a much longer series.

And so yeah, for me, I just kind of dove straight into the To the deep ends on a full, full length novel.

Nice, so is this the the remnants?

Is was an earlier version of the your new.

Book, no.

So this is actually a book called Chaos Looming, which I published back in 2020 actually.

And so that was the first book I ever wrote, which was the first in the Legion of New Most series.

It was a very fun, fun dive.

And I'm still I have one book left in the series to finally finish it out.

But it's with an entropy based magic system and lots of fun, very kind of sword and sorcery style, although it has a little bit of cross worlds fantasy twist to it.

So that was that was the first book that I wrote back in COVID times.

Oh, nice, so you've got a new book coming out as well, and this one's called The Remnants.

Yes, yeah.

So the Remnant is in the same universe as Chaos Looming and the rest of the Legion of New most series, but in a completely new setting, which was a lot of fun to really explore a new setting and kind of come up with what the culture looked like.

And I got to do a lot of fun world building with it.

So yeah.

What do you do?

You like expanding the world that you've already created by doing these different stories?

Is that something that you like to do?

Yes, yeah.

I have a really bad habit of all of the minor side characters that show up all need a back story.

And, you know, most writers can just, you know, write a few notes on what that back story is, but I have a really bad habit of spinning those notes into another full length story.

So I have kind of my main series and then I have a lot of shorter novellas.

And The Remnant is a full length novel, but it's actually the younger sister of one of the main characters in Chaos Looming who's the primary character.

That's really cool.

I like the way you do that.

I mean, I'm a big fan of that approach as well.

Just try and populate the world or the universe and with all these different stories and like you say, it gives you a freedom to like keep it all linked, but move on to different parts of the world or different time points in time.

It's it's quite liberating to do that.

And also I think it's really efficient because you don't have to keep creating new fantasy worlds all the time.

Yeah, no, it's a lot of fun from from a writer's perspective.

I really enjoy it.

It's a little bit challenging I think for readers sometimes to figure out, OK, what, what story should I read next?

Like where does this take place?

When does this take place?

So I have my website, I have like full blown like infographics and things explaining when all these books take place relative to each other.

So, but that adds to the lore too.

That's a really good idea.

So tell us about the new book.

Yeah.

So the new book, I would classify it as YA mostly just because of the age of the main character.

And so the main character's name is Basha, and she lives in this very unique fantasy setting, which is kind of an island, archipelago of city states that are primarily defined by the fact that they are constantly having to build upwards to escape rising tides.

And so the water levels continue to rise and they're running out of space kind of in these islands.

And so they just kind of continue raising the sea levels and boarding up each layer of the city beneath.

And it creates this massive labyrinth of layers of cities, city beneath the primary city.

And so it creates this very kind of vertical tiered structure, which has been a lot of fun to play with.

And the ideas of underworlds and the world above versus the world below and things that people choose to bury.

And it's played a lot with the magic system in this world and kind of the political intrigue because this is a minor spoiler for Chaos Looming.

But again, it's kind of a side point.

But Basha's older sister ends up dying in the main series.

And this book starts when she's just discovered the news of that.

And it kind of sets her on this journey where she was always the second daughter and was never supposed to have much come of her life.

And she's now raised and elevated to the position of Signet, which is kind of the heir apparent to the clan system that rules the city state she lives in.

And so it's her kind of coming to terms both with her grief as well as this new role that she's been forced upon, while at the same time uncovering the secrets of what exactly happened to her.

And a lot of those secrets are kind of buried in this undercity that she alone kind of has a unique magic system and is able to explore in a way that other people aren't.

That sounds fantastic to be honest.

It's like so interesting the way you've created the setting and drawn upon a few real world issues as well with levels, which is really good to see and and how it's impacted and shaped humanity on in that sort of environment Sounds fantastic.

So tell us what the magic system?

Yeah.

So it's an extension of the main magic system in the primary series, which is called numinancy.

And it's actually an entropy based magic system.

So entropy is kind of a physics term.

This is where you hear all my my science nerdiness kind of come out.

But entropy is this idea that everything in the universe is trending towards greater and greater disorder.

And so the magic system is a harnessing of that power in various forms.

And so Basha's specific type of numinancy, what she calls map minding, and it's basically where within her head she's able to create maps and basically kind of see levels below and around her and kind of get a sense for topographic landscapes in a way that other people aren't.

It's kind of a very different kind of spin, I think on the way a lot of people use magic because hers is very much, it's a very internal magic system, but it allows for her to explore this kind of underworld setting that most people in her world don't dare explore because she has this ability.

That's really cool.

It's I've never heard of before.

And like I say, it's unique because it's it's an internal thing.

And is that unique to her?

Are there other people who have that ability?

So there's a little bit of inheritance involved, and it's something that I don't go too deep into in the book, but her aunt has somewhat similar abilities, but none manifest in quite the same way as hers.

Nice.

So if people have unique abilities like this, are they more sort after by like certain groups or certain individuals because they can do these cool things?

Yeah.

So that actually plays a pretty important role within the clan system.

And so these magic abilities tend to show up in the remnants.

And so kind of within the political structure, you have the signet, which is the first born within the clan, the head clan families that take over and kind of have this leadership role.

And the second born is always termed the remnant and the remnants kind of plays this support role within the broader political system.

And it's kind of, it's kind of a balancing mechanism actually, that the remnants of these clans tend to have abilities of some kind that lay into the magic system itself.

So they're highly prized, but it's kind of this double edged sword of they will never be the ones that truly hold political power.

They're always kind of the ones in behind the scenes and supporting the signets and supporting their clans.

And that that whole system that has been in place for generations is really inverted when Bosh's sister dies and suddenly she's the signet, but also has these strange abilities that nobody fully understands.

Very nice, like it.

So when does it come out?

So I'm actually doing a Kickstarter for it.

And so the first access, the Kickstarter goes live April first.

No, not an April Fool's joke.

So it goes live April 1st and the Kickstarter will go for a few weeks.

And so everyone will have access to the e-book if they back the Kickstarter by end of April.

And then I'm also going to be doing hardcover collector's editions that will be signed and with all the fun sprayed edges and foiled, foiled covers, those will be being sent out in May, June of this year.

So April is is the time if if people want to back the Kickstarter and get access either to just the e-book version or if they want these cool collectors editions, that's going to be when they can get it.

Very nice, that sounds amazing.

Hopefully all goes well.

Hopefully this is my first time running a Kickstarter, so it's been a learning process, but everyone's been really enthusiastic and so just really grateful to my readers and everyone who's excited about the book.

So what was it?

Have you found the experience and Kickstarter was a quite difficult setup or is it being quite smooth sailing so far?

The initial setup on the website is pretty straightforward.

It does require pretty much all the successful Kickstarters require you to make a video, which might be a little bit of a foreign concept for some authors that do more either through audio means or just don't like showing their faces in general.

A big part of Kickstarter is, is kind of getting that personal connection with backers.

And so they do pretty strongly recommend doing the video.

So that's probably the biggest kind of initial hurdle to get over.

And then of course, anytime you're doing special editions, it means contracting with printers and finding, getting doing all the design elements.

And so not all of your standard cover designers are comfortable with doing foil designs or sprayed edge designs.

And so there's always a little bit of a learning curve for those, but the actual initial setup part is pretty straightforward.

That's good.

I've never don't think I've ever asked anyone like how they went about getting them sort of special editions set up because they are becoming so popular, aren't they?

And chance of someone from publishing and they were saying that's the biggest change that they've noticed and there's a big demand for these really, really are stunning.

Some of them, especially the sprayed edges and even some of the hand painted edgy ones.

I mean, it's amazing.

So how how did you go about getting all that set up?

Yeah.

So I had already been working with a company called Bookvault, which is actually based out of the UK primarily, but they do have AUS printing sites.

And so I've been working with them to do a lot of the direct sales on my website.

So I already kind of had a bit of a relationship, had an account set up with them and they have been great and in working with and kind of all their online FAQs and things have been really helpful in terms of how constructing kind of the Photoshop files and things for that.

And so they're the ones that I went with.

Nice.

And is it do they just take a cut for the printing or how does it work in terms of like doing those direct sales?

Yeah.

So the direct sales they it's, it's very similar to if you do like paperback sales with Amazon or anything, it's, it's still kind of a print on demand type service.

So you're not buying a big print run, at least I'm not.

I'm sure there's more successful authors who can kind of do kind of the big print run things.

But for most smaller Indies it's kind of just a print on demand system.

And so you set up your book files with them and you coordinate kind of the printing through, I use Shopify for my website, and you basically designate whether or not you want them to print from the US versus the UK depending on the location that someone's ordering from.

That sounds very easy.

It's a great reason it's.

Pretty straightforward.

The price is pretty good as well compared to Amazon for example.

Yeah, I thought they were pretty comparable to Amazon.

I think Amazon's slightly cheaper, but in terms of the actual printing, but then they take more of a cut later on.

So it still ended up being cheaper for me to sell books direct through Book Vault.

The main downside to it is that that you do have to pay for shipping, right?

And so most people just have the customer pay for shipping.

And so that's that's the biggest hurdle is I typically will price lower on my website in order to compensate for the fact that people are having to pay for shipping.

But even with pricing lower, I'm still able to make the same amount of money, if that makes sense, just because the printing costs less than through Amazon.

Awesome.

That's great advice.

So anyone who wants to try that, there you go.

You know what to do.

Something I was really keen to ask you about was your expertise and experience as a doctor like that.

Long ago I was at a panel, A fantasy con, and I was part of this panel.

I used to be a lawyer, and this panel was all about representing injuries, depicting them, and making the sort of impact that these injuries can have as realistic and compelling as possible.

And I suppose that's why I was on the panel as a lawyer, because I used to do like, serious injuries at work and stuff.

So I was very much part of the aftermath of like seeing people trying to rebuild their lives after they've had an injury.

But there was a doctor on the panel and she was absolutely brilliant to explain and like the how you can accurately portray an injury in a story, the immediate impact and like treating the wounds and stuff like that.

So what can you tell us about this?

And like, what's your view of it in fantasy as a whole?

Do you think it's quite accurately done?

Is it quite poorly done or is a bit of a mixed bag?

Yeah, I think it's a bit of a mixed bag.

I think fantasy writers suffer from kind of the Hollywood syndrome of they write injuries the way they see them in movies, understandably, because most people don't see real life serious injuries very often.

And the thing with Hollywood is that they tend to lean into those injuries which have a very visual element to them, right.

So it's the blood and the guts and the spraying of blood and things that Hollywood really kind of leans into.

And so I, I do find that I feel like it gets a little repetitive in writing in terms of people really focus on, you know, battle scenes where just getting sliced and diced is the most significant thing that happens.

And it's just who can avoid getting sliced the most.

And I really would encourage authors to kind of expand and kind of broaden their concepts for what serious injuries can look like.

You know, we kind of within the trauma, the trauma world and trauma medicine, we talk about the ABC's in terms of like airway breathing, circulation.

And it seems like when people are kind of writing injuries, they really kind of skip over those first two and jump straight to the circulation or the bleeding issue.

And of course, those are important.

And blood loss is a huge problem in trauma and a huge killer of people.

But at the same time, there's a lot that you can do in other forms of injuries that you we, we are uniquely positioned as writers to portray the extent of those injuries because we're not limited by the visual medium of Hollywood.

Nice.

Are you explained?

So tell us more about like what kind of injuries you've you've seen done quite badly or what kind of pitfalls Price is going to avoid?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the miraculous recoveries are always the the pet peeves, right of that.

You know, someone had a serious injury, they were just like stabbed in the gut and like 3 days later they're like back, right back at it.

And it's like doing their doing their warrior thing and or they have a horrible fracture.

And, you know, in reality, this fracture would take weeks to months to heal.

And like a few days later, they're totally fine.

And, you know, I think in fantasy, we definitely have the advantage of, you know, magical healing.

And you can definitely incorporate that type of thing in your story.

But I would just really encourage authors to be careful, right?

And set those types of things up early on in terms of what are the limits to the magical healing capabilities that this world has?

What are the costs to those healing things and kind of really establishing that early so that when it's time for your character to have a major injury, it doesn't, it doesn't cheapen it when you know they're totally fine two days later.

It's a real tension killer, isn't?

It it is, yes.

Yeah, yeah, Other things are like blood loss.

I feel like people really kind of underestimate the effect on fighting capability that that would have.

You know, within the military, typically if you donate even just a unit of blood, like you're out of Commission for like 72 hours minimum, right?

Obviously that gets waived in like a serious combat situation where that's not an option, but like just donating a unit of blood.

So like 500 milliliters or so really kind of decreases.

It increases is fatigue like it decreases your healing capabilities later on.

It has a lot of impacts.

It affects how you think and process things.

It can cause people to pass out and have hypotensive episodes.

And so I think we kind of skip over a lot that, you know, the hero just keeps getting keeps getting hit or slashed and they just keep going on.

And I think a better way to kind of show that would be that each, each even minor injury carries a greater cost over time and it compounds on itself.

Yeah, that's a really good way to look at it.

So say like, I mean typical fantasy battle, you've got your hero fighting with swords or Spears or whatever.

Take take.

Usually they just take an insane amount of like you say, slashes and cuts to the arms.

Like I mean, how how realistically like how many like injuries like that could someone withstand before?

Like you say, it will get too much.

Yeah, I mean, so it depends a lot, right.

So obviously like slashes and things to the arms are not going to be as impactful as anything to the torso.

What we call like the box is like the chest and abdomen area.

So you could take a lot of like superficial injuries to your extremities and be fine.

You know, luckily evolutionarily like all of our like major, the major blood vessels tend to be located like what we call like medially, so closer to your torso.

So the inner parts of your legs, the inner parts of your arms.

And so that's why you can see people getting like the outsides of their arms and legs just totally banged up and they keep going.

But you know, single bad cut to the inside of the leg and they can die from that, right?

And so I think taking into account location is really important and kind of where on the body is this person being hit is really important.

And also trying to go beyond kind of penetrating injury.

I feel like, you know, we all love like the sword and sorcery, like sword injuries are kind of the classic like like slashing type injuries, but there's so many other great like blunt trauma is a huge killer, right?

And it's something that you can play a lot with the tension of the writing because you can have blunt trauma to the abdomen and be totally fine externally and you look completely fine.

Meanwhile, you have severe internal bleeding that's just kind of slowly killing you over time.

And I think there's a lot of great dramatic tension that people can use if they start using blunt trauma, burns, head trauma, like airway issues, right?

So people like gurgling on blood and vomit and those types of things can cause a lot of other injuries and things to have to to deal with that kind of add a little bit more variety to the standard issue stuff.

That's really good points.

And you're dead right about blood trauma.

I mean, if you look back at like medieval history and like most fantasy does take inspiration from that medieval setting like it was you were dealing with like walking like tanks, weren't you in the former nights?

And one of the main ways to kill them was just lodging them to death with a big heavy Mace or something or a warhammer or something and then get them on the floor and then try and stab them through gaps in the in their armor.

But it's it's really good point that you make because there are all these different varieties and what you've said there about like someone suffering like a blunt force trauma wounds.

Like you could prolong that over days, I suppose.

Like I see you see it quite commonly, don't you?

When someone takes like a stab wound to the gust, they don't die straight away, but then over the course of a few days, they know it's going one way.

It's quite a common one that in fantasy.

Isn't that the gut wound?

Yep, and infection risk and all of those things because these gross battlefields that people are getting stabbed on.

Yeah, and it it must have been truly horrendous to be on a medieval battlefield.

Yeah, I can't imagine.

It's, it's insane, like to even begin to describe the types of injuries that those weapons would inflict on people.

Like, I mean, you imagine you've seen an awful lot, but what do you think it would have been like as like a doctor back then?

Oh gosh.

Well, I mean, they really didn't have much of A medical system in general.

Like the concept of battlefield medicine is actually pretty recent kind of Civil War era and Napoleonic wars in Europe.

That's kind of when we first start seeing concepts of ambulances and this idea that we should.

So triage is like the French concept from the Napoleonic Wars, which were developed.

And that's kind of when we first really start seeing this idea that we could even try to save people on the battlefield and bring them back.

You look much farther historically to that.

And people were essentially left there and it was up to their families who were either like camp followers and following along with the armies to go and retrieve them.

So there really wasn't even any sort of organized way of actually caring for soldiers once they've been injured in these settings.

So I can imagine it would be absolutely horrific because it's just people slowly dying on a battlefield and not able to be evacuated.

Yeah.

And then like you mentioned before, infections and stuff.

So treating the wounds like, like being unable to treat the wounds and not having the knowledge.

So what would that have been like and how do you think people can depict that challenge in fantasy?

Yeah, I think infection's a real challenge and I think most fantasy writers kind of try to get around that issue by creating some sort of like healing magic system, some sort of like herbal type treatments or things to try to to try to indicate that the that the infection risk has been minimized.

But the reality we know is that even, you know, even today, some of our most high-powered antibiotics really struggle against battlefield type injuries.

We in the civilian medicine, we try really hard to do what we call like antibiotic stewardship and kind of just do the bare minimum that is absolutely necessary because of the high rates of antibiotic resistance.

But in the military, we really kind of hit people real, real hard upfront with all of the big gun antibiotics just because we know, I mean, you can look to the First World War is kind of the classic of when like gas gangrene was just an absolutely horrific killer of soldiers.

And you get these horrible like foul smelling wounds with these blistering pus fills lesions that really kind of just take like an otherwise very mild superficial, like cut to a leg or an arm and just turn it into just this horrible mess.

Again, not to get too graphic on your podcast, but it would, it would be very disgusting.

And you can imagine.

Yeah, I, I think playing a lot with smells in particular would be a really powerful way to kind of show this and kind of the image of these kind of mangled wounds with horrible smells and pus and all those things kind of draining from them to really kind of show the effect.

Or what kind of smells then, if you've smelled these kind of wounds before?

Describe them.

I don't even how would I even describe them?

It's like, if you can imagine like the the kind of the almost like singed nose hair type smell where it's like it makes you want to gag when you inhale it.

And so we will like even like in a hospital setting will a lot of times put hand sanitizer like inside of our face masks just because otherwise you would just want to vomit when you smell some of these wounds.

We get a lot of like diabetic foot ulcers and things where it's just people have like toes falling off and all of these really horrific ones.

And, and they, yeah, it's, it's this combination of this kind of nose curdling smell kind of with this like slow seepage of drainage that really kind of turns your stomach.

I honestly don't know how you do that job.

It depends on the day.

Sometimes I wonder too.

What you say, it's good to say you all for your stories.

One thing I was going to ask you about was the depiction of mental trauma.

And I mean, we just described some really horrific things there, like the mental consequences of that isn't always accounted for and fantasy stories I've found.

I mean, what do you think about that side of things?

Yeah, I think it's a really important point.

And you know, we put our characters through a lot of horrific things that if they were real, they would not be OK mentally afterwards.

I think it's really important for authors to be able to kind of show that reality to you.

I think it adds some realism and some lifelike nature to what it is like to experience just even just secondhand exposure to some of these things in terms of like how you would.

Are you kind of asking how you would depict that?

Yeah.

And like in a sort of natural and sort of compelling way, it's, it's always a bit tricky I think.

And yeah, I think because it is is potentially tricky, I think some people just skip it.

Yeah, Yeah.

I think showing the multifaceted nature of it is really important.

And so it kind of there's a lot when you talk about PTSD or other kind of acute stress reactions, there's kind of a differentiation between the stuff that people are experiencing consciously and what they're experiencing subconsciously.

And I think that is a really key distinction that people can make.

And so for a lot of people, their bodies are having reactions that they cognitively may not be fully understanding what's happening, right?

So a particular sound or a smell or an image or something will trigger something in their body where their heart starts racing, they are breathing really quickly, they feel the need to escape kind of like that desire to get out kind of thing and they don't fully understand why.

What's causing that.

And for a lot of people, we call, you know, we people use the term triggers and triggering type stuff, but that is kind of at its core, it's your body reacting to something that your mind may or may not fully comprehend why you're having this reaction to it.

So I think that's one element that people can kind of show is that, you know, even like the most stoic characters and, and sometimes more so with your more stoic characters who don't take time to process the trauma that they've experienced.

A lot of that, I think leaning into some of the more physical reactions that their bodies are having can be an important way of kind of bridging that gap when the character for reasons of kind of their own character development isn't in a place mentally to really deal with that situation, You can kind of depict it within their bodies.

And then from on the more cognitive side, I think it's also important to show coping mechanisms, both good and bad, right?

People have a lot of different coping mechanisms they use to try to calm their bodies down, right?

And that's where you get into, you know, substance use, alcohol consumption, all of those things.

But at the same time, we also know from like PTSD research that having strong social support networks are a key mitigating factor in kind of long term impacts of these conditions.

And so people can people can take a lot mentally when they have a support system in place to process it with, especially if that support system themselves has some experience with what that person is experiencing.

That's really, really interesting and really, really helpful to to have that understanding.

So thanks very much for that.

Have you ever tried to or included anything like this in your own stories?

Yeah, so they actually the remnant is really on on one level it's it's a fun fantasy world building mystery type adventure, and on the other level it really is kind of an exploration of grief.

So less on the PTSD side, but more kind of how does someone cope with feelings of guilt and shame around the death of a loved one and and kind of how do they deal with that long term?

And so Basha has a number of things that kind of trigger these sort of physical reactions in the same way that a comma response might be, but they are linked to kind of memories of her sister.

And I got to play a lot in this book with incorporating flashbacks and kind of how kind of a second, a second timeline narrative through flashbacks can kind of add to the overall character development of the story, which was really fun to play with.

Yeah, it's a very clever way of doing it.

Nice.

Like the sound there.

I've got one more question for you and given your experience and have been in the military and how have you found that when it comes to writing action scenes in your stories?

Yeah, Well, first, first I should say that, you know, I've definitely had the combat arms training and tactical field movement, but you know, if the doctors on the front lines, then things have gone terribly wrong.

So, yeah, yeah.

So take take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

A lot of what I focus on is more, I've had a lot of training in kind of broader kind of military strategy themes.

And so advice I would give to authors is along the lines of establishing kind of concepts of fog of war and friction.

And there's this great kind of military thinker, Carl von Klauswitz.

I don't if you're familiar with him, olds like Prussian military strategist guy who wrote a lot of books about this stuff, but he talks a lot about how kind of friction is sort of this difference between war in theory and war in practice.

And he talks he's he's the one that really current coined the term fog of war.

And so one thing I really try to do with my like battle and action scenes is really try to differentiate establishing upfront kind of what the goals of the battle are, right?

Like what is the character trying to get out of it?

But then having all of that very quickly fall apart, right?

Because the reality of battle on the ground, right is that you often have very little sense of where you are relative to where everybody else is.

The topography and the terrain play a huge impact.

Weather plays a really important aspect kind of in the the battle itself.

And so a lot of how I write, I write a very kind of close third person POV typically is kind of my preferred writing style.

And so I focus a lot on what the character can see and hear and feel and kind of use that to kind of amplify the sense of the chaotic situation of kind of the initial goals quickly falling apart.

That's really cool.

They can say.

It's great to have that close intimate sort of perspective.

People have always like popped up on our writing group and just asking like, how can you show was a way like what else is going on on the battles, the battlefield as well?

And I just simple thing is just using different perspectives, isn't it, that are based in in different parts and and make you say, given their chaosic nature and like the sort of the descendants of the fog of war, and there's that many people involved in some battles, like thousands and thousands.

Like different things could be going on in completely different parts.

Like one, one line could be clap, one part of the line could be collapsing, the other one could be pushing forwards.

And it's amazing like because you say sometimes you're so zoned in on on that one perspective.

They might have done amazingly well and one defeated their part of the enemy, but then you turn around after like defeating them all and the rest of the army is just in ruin.

Yeah.

So thank you very much for for chatting with me.

It's been so interesting and insightful and I've learned so much just from you talking about the way you approach your stories and your experiences doing your incredible job.

And it's obviously serving in the armed forces as well.

So thank you very much.

Absolutely no.

Thank you for having me.

It was it was great to chat with you.

No problem, that's I wish you the very best of luck with the Kickstarter.

If anyone wants to learn more, where's the best place to go?

Probably my website, so www.hbrenault and that's Ren eau.com and they'll have links to the Kickstarter and all of my other works too.

Awesome.

You'll find links in the description as well.

And yeah, thank you very much again.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

I wish you the very best of luck with the book and hopefully come back soon and tell us more about what's been going on in the world of writing of.

Course.

Thanks so much.

And thank you everyone for listening.