Why I wrote SON OF THE THUNDER GODDESS
February Update
Hi everyone,
The book launch for Son of the Thunder Goddess is now only a few days away! I am incredibly excited to share this story with all of you and to hear what you think of it. I’ve already received the first very generous, positive review from one of my early readers:
In this post, I’d like to take a moment to share some of my personal reasons for writing this story and also give you a sense of what to expect in the future.
Son of the Thunder Goddess is set in a world that I’ve been developing for several years now. My personal approach to worldbuilding has always been that it needs to be in service to the story, rather than worldbuilding for worldbuilding’s sake. This means that with every new project I’ve worked on, the worldbuilding has become more and more detailed in order to answer the demands of each story. And while the world I’ve developed is vast, I have taken the approach of depth over breadth, and have focused all of my writing thus far (and the corresponding worldbuilding) on developing the history, culture, politics, religion, myth, and lore of the peoples residing in the archipelago of Moralann.
Moralann is based on the British Isles; the more you read through my work the more obvious that inspiration will become. I began my exploration and development of Moralann through an epic fantasy novel set in a period roughly analogous to the British Isles in the thirteenth century. This book, War of Princes, follows the talented but arrogant warrior Connal, a prince of the islands of Ellthiar.1 Betrayed and exiled, he finds himself embroiled in the conflicts of the mainland, drawn into a holy war which tests the limits of courage and conscience, threatening to pull him ever further from the land he loves.
I completed the final draft of War of Princes a year ago, after going through many rounds of drafting and self-editing and working with critique partners. You’ll hear more about this book in the months to come, since I do plan to bring it to market, hopefully in 2026, once I am in a position to figure out funding (professional editing costs are high for a 140,000 word book).
After writing War of Princes, I wanted to do something very different, using the setting of Moralann again, but coming at it from a different angle. I’ve long been a fan of ancient history, with a special love of all things Roman and Celtic. While a number of fantasy works do take inspiration from antiquity, this still seems to be an underrepresented period, at least when compared to late medieval Europe. My idea was to tell a story set in a period heavily inspired by Iron Age Celtic Britain, many hundreds of years before the events of War of Princes. To this end, in Son of the Thunder Goddess you will find many aspects evocative of the world of the ancient Celts: druids and megaliths, gods and demigods, heroic duels preceded by ritual insults, tattooed warriors, scythed chariots, and much more.
I’ve mentioned gods and religion a few times now. That’s because religion is a key component of the worldbuilding and thematic material of this story. In fact, it is a preoccupation I carry into nearly everything I write. Son of the Thunder Goddess is set in a heroic era, a time in which the myths and legends of later years are forged, an age when gods walk upon the earth and interfere in the affairs of men. And while the people of Logren, a smaller region within the much larger archipelago of Moralann, worship the divine pantheon of the Sutathar, there is another god, more ancient than these, working secretly to undo them. This god, known only as the Maker, has, after long years of obscurity, chosen to reveal himself at last to the lowly shepherd Athewain, whom he selects as the instrument of his will.
I don’t want to give too much away right now, since this strife among the gods plays a significant role in this story. But in some future post, I’d like to do a whole writeup about my approach to religion in fantasy and how the in-world pantheon is essentially monolatrous, rather than following the more typical fantasy approaches of polytheism, henotheism, or dualism.
With this book, I also set out to write something short. Like, 20,000 words short. Epic Fantasy often comes with a certain expectation of length, where “epicness” directly corresponds to page count. And as much as I love thick, chunky tomes with long, intricate stories, I don’t think a story needs to be long to be epic. Rather, I see “epic” as having more to do with the nature of the story: the stakes of the narrative, the themes, characters, setting, etc.
Along with epic fantasy, I have also been deeply inspired by the parallel tradition of Heroic Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery, which tends to tell shorter stories focused on the exploits of an individual hero. Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and Michael Moorcocks’ Elric of Melniboné are great examples of this genre, and both have been especially influential to me. Like Howard and Moorcock, I wanted to tell a short, self-contained fantasy story that introduces Athewain and his quest to avenge his family.
My vision for The Lays of Athewain is to create a long series of largely self-contained novellas. Readers of Son of the Thunder Goddess will receive a complete story and won’t have to wait for the next book for a satisfying ending. That said, the novellas will build on each other to tell a much larger, grander story tracing the whole of Athewain’s life and deeds (like the Conan or Elric series). It’ll be an epic journey, and one that I am excited to embark on with all of you.
Other News: “The Songweaver”
In other news, I’m excited to announce that I have a short story releasing, also on March 5 (I didn’t coordinate this timing, but it’s pretty cool)! My story, “The Songweaver,” is being published by Baubles from Bones, a new, up-and-coming SFF magazine based in Pittsburgh, PA. Below is the logline:
When the god-eagle Banilur attacks his homeland and kidnaps his nephew, Connal seeks the help of the famed songweaver Ilenna to help him outwit his all-powerful enemy.
For any of you who have previously read my short story, “The Kelpie” (free for anyone who subscribes to this newsletter), “The Songweaver” follows the continued adventures of Connal and his quest to protect his homeland of Cregeirran from the monsters that threaten it.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew LiVecchi
Recent Posts:
"All things belong to the brave": Gauls, Romans, and the Battle of the Allia
Inside the Anglo-Saxon Shield-Wall: Exploring the Battle of Maldon
This is the same Connal who features in my two short stories, “The Kelpie” and “The Songweaver.”