Interview: R.J. Hanson on Stalking Shadows and the Bloodlines Reforged Saga

1Q) You often share on Facebook that characters in Stratvs are based on 20+ year-old tabletop games. What do the people who played the characters that became the people of Stratvs think of them?
- A) Oddly enough, most of them haven’t read the books. My wife loves that Dru is so aloof, and intellectual, and seems to always be in control even when she’s not. My son is very proud of my representation of Rogash and how he lets everyone believe he’s stupid but is actually remarkably shrewd.
2Q)You said you had notes to keep track of Roland’s journey and other events of the last 20 years in Stratvs, and that your daughter asked if you were ever going to do anything with them. Did you type them out, or write them down by hand? Do they still exist in some form?
- A) They should still be with his character sheet. Handwritten notes in the back. I’ll see about getting some pics.

Original character folders and sheets. The Bloodlines Reforged Saga is partially based on 2 1/2 decades of Tabletop RPG gaming sessions.

3Q) There’s been a large gap between Lords of Order and Chaos #3, Whetstones of the Will, and #4, Stalking Shadows. What has been the biggest hurdle to overcum when writing the newest novel?
- A) The biggest hurdle was covid. I was hospitalized for it Nov of 2020, and have had it at least once since then. It took a lot out of me and took me a long time to fully recover. Another issue I ran into was the battle at the Blue Tower. Most of the major players in that battle are much smarter than me, so I had to imagine what someone more intelligent than myself would do, do that, and then imagine what someone smarter than me would do in response. It was pretty much the same thing with the hunt for Ashdow.
4Q) You’ve written a few short stories set in Stratvs, what made you want to tell those specific stories? Do you ever see yourself continuing them or expanding upon them?
- A) The short stories I’ve written thus far have been an effort to give some back story for different characters that wouldn’t fit well in the novels where they appeared. I do plan on expanding on most of them if not all of them.

5Q) Out of all of the Bloodlines Reforged Saga, what has been your proudest accomplishment?
- A) I’m the proudest of the personalities and interplay between Rogash and Silas. They are a very odd match and neither given to making new friends easily. Yet, in the RPG (aka in real life), they did work together rather well and complimented each other’s abilities in an uncanny fashion.
6Q)What are your hopes for the future of the saga?
- A) My primary hope is that I live long enough to finish telling the main story. After that, I hope to have the time to explore some of the other characters adjacent to the main story and write a series set a few hundred years before Roland’s Path began.

7Q)Will we ever get to see the Heirs of Vanity cast and the Lords of Order and Chaos cast in the same book?
- A) Absolutely. It’s taking some figuring out, but you’ll see some crossover toward the end of Stalking Shadows and in Roland’s Sorrow. I wouldn’t say we ever get ‘tired’ of a certain setting but we have played in many different settings. It’s sort of like being in a toy store and picking up a toy and thinking, ‘man, this is great, it’s so cool… wait, look there’s another cool toy over there! Let’s check it out!’ We’ve played sci-fi campaigns (one of which I played a Predator), campaigns set in the Fallout universe from the video games and multiverse campaigns sort of homebrewed and based on Stephen King’s universe of the Dark Tower series.
8Q) Do you ever struggle to create or maintain the lore of such a vast and old saga? Do you ever get bogged down in researching your own notes to keep them consistent?
- A) Creating the lore is easy and quite enjoyable. Maintaining and keeping track of it is a slog.

9Q) Bloodlines Reforged already has/mentions Dragons and Krakens. Do you plan to use any more mythical creatures in Stratvs? Such as Minotaurs, Hydra, and Sea Serpents? If so, what do you think might be the challenges of writing such creatures and how will the current cast play into it?
- A) Absolutely I think the main challenge with traditional mythical creatures is twofold.
  - 1) It can be easy to bore the reader with them because some have been overused.
  - 2) The other challenge is to bring something new to such an old creature.
10Q) How far ahead do you plan scenes or books in the Bloodlines Reforged Saga? Do you have a ‘grand outline; or do you improvise as you go along?
- A) I definitely have a grand outline covering the next hundred years or so. But, as to the details on how to get there or make it happen, a lot of that is by the seat of my pants writing.

Tie-in media explaining lore can be found on the official website for the saga.

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