I was glad for a chance to sit down this month with Joe Bouchelle IV, author of The Shineden. Joe and I grew up in the same stretch of rural Virginia, jumping over creeks, pretending to duel each other with stick swords, and swapping book recommendations.
I vividly recall borrowing Joe’s copy of Eldest (by Christopher Paolini) and sitting down in my family’s 90+ degree van to start reading it while I waited for my father to drive me home. This was the same summer I got serious about writing my own stories. 20 years later, Joe and I are both still writing stories like we had in our heads then.
This interview will dig into Joe’s path to getting The Shineden from idea to finished manuscript, along with a hint or two at what he’s writing now. Here’s a summary of our conversation with some jump links to each section.
- What Joe is writing now
- Origins of The Shineden
- Influences on Joe’s writing
- Big moments in the The Shineden
What Joe is writing now
Stephen
Welcome, Joe. To start us off, how would you introduce yourself?
Joe
My name’s Joe Bouchelle IV. I’m the lead author at JB IV Writing.
Stephen
I know I’m already interrupting, but what’s JB IV Writing?
Joe
It came about because I was going through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), and I wanted to do a dust jacket on the hard cover. My formatting was all wrong, so I went through B&N Press, but they require you to have your publisher’s name on the spine. So I just put JB IV Writing. And that’s how that came about.
For now, I’m a part of a bookshop that’s for independent authors. I could see maybe in the future operating JB IV Writing more as a business.
Stephen
So obviously The Shineden is a big project for JB IV Writing in recent months. Anything else on your shelf right now?
Joe
Yeah. I just published book one of The Shineden series a few months ago. Book two, Panalsi, is scheduled for release on March 1st, 2025. I’m still working on finishing that one, but here’s hoping. I’m also working on a kind of dystopian fantasy series, and then a low fantasy series.
Stephen
So you’ve got plenty to write. Do you plan to intersperse the publication dates for these series?
Joe
The goal right now is to get books one and two of The Shineden out, and then the first book of the dystopian fantasy. I’m planning to do that exclusively through Salient Books.
I don’t have a timeline set right now, but if things go how I want them to, I’d like to be able to release a new book every year to perhaps a year-and-a-half. I’ll probably do the first dystopian novel, books three and four of Shineden, and then finish the dystopian series.
The pace is always crazy, though. I published The Shineden on the 5th of June. When it came out, I wanted to start working on book two immediately, but my wife Marisa told me I needed to take a week and relax. So I wrote chapters one through five in like a week, but since then it has tapered.
Origins of The Shineden
Stephen
I hear you on the ebb and flow of projects. With life happening al the time, can you tell me more about your writing motivation, both for The Shineden and other projects? You’ve mentioned in social and other places that this story idea has been in your head a long time. So why now? How did you get to the point of writing it?
Joe
So for your readers who don’t know, you and I pretty much grew up together near the Blue Ridge Mountains. That was where my story ideas started to come. It was being outside, growing up reading Tolkien, and immersing myself in both things. I’ve had the idea for Falduen in my head since I was fifteen—this kid who wants to grow up, wants to be special, wants to help his mom. That’s really his driving force, to protect his mother. So I’ve had that idea since I was fifteen, but never really finished creating it until this year.
Most of my readers have said that the early chapters drag on a little bit (although others have said, “Oh, you’re just world-building. It’s fantasy.”). Well, I wrote those chapters like fifteen years ago. The idea for Falduen came in, and I started creating this world when I was about seventeen. I wrote the first four chapters and then it sort of died out.
Later on, I took a creative writing class in college and started writing again a lot. I noticed as I was writing short stories that I was putting elements of Falduen in these stories, so the idea was always there.
Marisa knew I had started Falduen. She and I would leave sometimes to visit her family in Illinois for the weekend. When we would drive, I would always look at road signs, and if I saw words that were weird, I’d write them down. Pax, for instance, is the name of a little community off of highway 64 in Kentucky, and I saw a sign for it while I was driving and I said, “Write that down. I’m going to make a character called Pax.” That was 2014.
I started gathering info. Started getting more ideas. But it still took a long time to get there. After several years, I got a job teaching English at American Leadership Academy, and I was teaching 8th graders and 9th graders a segment about fantasy. We had a curriculum and set stories we were supposed to read, but I also told my students I had a book in the works, and they kind of lost their minds. I think I had seven chapters done at that point, so far less than half—unpolished writing I hadn’t updated since I was seventeen. We just started reading through it. I was the teacher who said everyone had to read out loud. So we would just read around the room. As we did that, it started to really develop the story more for me. By the end of that school year I had ten chapters.
Bt then life happened again. I was a stay at home dad for a while. I tried podcasting, streaming, working from home, everything except going back to writing. Then we moved to Illinois for me to coach soccer, and the head coach had to go home to Chile, so the coaching staff fell apart, and Marisa and I decided it would be best for me to leave the program. The day after I left, Marisa came up and said, “Why don’t you finish your book?” So I said, “Okay.”
We made a little home office, and I just started cranking it out. Everything just kind of came together and started to make sense. And so that’s really how it came to be. It felt like a rush job. With this first book, I had no publication date. I had nothing set in stone. In fact, I didn’t even advertise beforehand. I just wrote, until I was finishing the last seven chapters in a couple months, which for me was really fast since those are probably the chapters with the most depth, where the most happens.
Stephen
Light spoiler warning for blog readers. I’m somewhere in that chunk as we’re talking now, at the part where he gets his companion.
Joe
That’s a scene I really loved writing. By the way, on my website I have two quizzes for readers to find out what your companion would be and what color orb you’d have.
Influences on Joe’s writing
Stephen
Link here, for the blog readers. So, I’d love to get into the books, movies, stories and other influences on your writing? This could be anything you’ve read recently, or any hidden gems among books you love? Obviously Tolkien.
Joe
The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are probably the two biggest ones. Just the way Tolkien writes, the styles of his writing, the world-building. I talk frequently about how he describes Treebeard and just goes on and on about this tree, but I loved that. I loved how in depth and intense he would get with the descriptions of things. So Tolkien is a big one, probably the biggest.
Christopher Paolini, The Inheritance Cycle, is probably a big one. The Shineden book one is certainly similar to The Inheritance Cycle. Back in the day, you might have recommended The Bartimaeus Trilogy to me. I loved those books.
Suggested reading: Murtagh Brings Inheritance Sequel Energy in the Best Way
Stephen
I did indeed recommend those to several friends, so I’ll be glad to take credit for it.
Joe
They’re great, and almost no one knows about them. Those are probably the biggest influences in terms of books. But then just being outside all the time. Being out in the woods, adventuring, you know, putting myself in the kinds of environments the stories are in.
Stephen
Growing up in Rockbridge County, Virginia, you would love trees.
Joe
Yep. I think often about when you lived out in the county, and there was that giant field with the rope swing and the creek. The mountains will play a big role in my later books. Mountains will be very important.
Stephen
Did you read Redwall as well? I was very into those books when we were kids.
Joe
Yes! I read Redwall too. I think I read all of the books that were out at the time. Brian Jacques started writing so many. The Long Patrol will forever be one of my favorite books. I would go back and re-read that one.
Stephen
So when talking about The Shineden, I’d love to give any blog readers a comparison, at least in terms of “If you’ve read this than you’ll like The Shineden.”
Joe
Although I haven’t really specified it, the first book definitely leans more toward YA, more like Eragon than The Return of the King. It’s about a kid, like Eragon. The second book gets pretty heavy really fast. The end of The Shineden introduces a storyline that leads right into book two. But if you’re a big reader, I kind of feel like The Shineden could be 11 years and up, or at least 13 and up.
Stephen
You mentioned that Falduen was one of the first elements that came to being. Where else did the story go from there? Was it more characters, the world, a scene, or the wider plot?
Joe
Something that drives a lot of people crazy is that I’m a huge pantser. I don’t plan. I have some little notebooks that are supposed to be the book in the book—every chapter, character descriptions, language notes, everything. But when it comes to actually writing the story, I am horrendous at planning out.
I’ll go back and take notes about chapters, and then jump around and change stuff in the manuscript. Growing up, my dad always taught us to begin with the end in mind. So again, it’s irritating to a lot of people, but when I come up with a story, I have the beginning and how it’s going to end, and then I just fill everything in as I go. Book one topped off at 57,000 words, which is of course pretty short for a fantasy novel. Book two will be 85,000 – 90,000 words. And that’s just because I keep getting more and more story, but I also know how book two has to end, so as the story keeps developing, the story keeps getting longer.
Little easter egg. The first paragraph each of the first and the last chapter mirror each other. I don’t know why I did that, but for book two it will be exciting. I’m really excited for book two in general. I feel like my writing has improved significantly for book two. Since the story has already established itself, the first chapter of book two takes you right back into it. It comes out with a bang, to say the least. I think the flow is better, and I won’t have four chapters from when I was seventeen and four from being 25 and 10 from 32…it’s all from right now, when I’m just more experienced.
Big moments in the The Shineden
Stephen
Well as we tease book two, can you tell us about moments that matter in book one. Are there any key scenes you really wanted the reader to feel? Any moments you especially wanted to hit hard in a particular way? More light spoilers ahead.
Joe
Obviously Falduen finding the orb is one scene in which I tried to be almost overly detailed, to really create a vivid image in the reader’s mind. I just wanted to make it real enough to where people can start connecting with the character. Another one I love is when Stephen rolls over and sees this figure standing in the woods (Pax), but just this figure is standing in the woods with their arms out and just taking out this group of Trite-Karshüre. I love to write Pax.
I also really like the scene with Falduen, when he and Thomas are up in the trees at night and see the Krooga in the woods and the fire explodes. Thomas has to explain that Falduen did that, that it came from him. I really wanted this scene to have a subliminal message, subtle idea that Falduen did this thing he didn’t even know he was capable of doing, to help understand that he is capable of doing so much more than he has been in the past.
And I always loved writing Maldis.
Stephen
Yeah, I think most people love writing villains.
Joe
I wanted to portray the intensity of some of the emotions Anduen is going through, though, for that scene with Maldis in Ren. But any of his stuff is fun to write.
Last two: I would say is one you’re about to read. Falduen and his companion have bonded, and I won’t spoil it too much, but they’ve bonded and his companion tells him to say something to everyone else. When I wrote it I got goosebumps, and I had Marisa read it, and I heard her from the living room say “Why do I have goosebumps right now?” and I knew where she was.
My absolute favorite scene, to visualize, was the introduction to Yewlsfaera. The process of this table separating and this forge rising up in this beautiful cavern where so many races—elves and dwarves and dragons and Mellavian—would be…I just loved it.
Yewslfaera is actually an anagram, by the way, for always free. I do this a lot in my writing. I don’t necessarily always do it in English. In book two, and actually Ävsial, the world where it takes place, is Lithuanian for freedom (backwards).
One of my favorite parts of doing all this has been the Elvish alphabet. I have notebook on notebook of the grammar rules and language for all the world I’m creating. A special edition of The Shineden is coming out November 1st with map, languages, alphabets, pronunciation guide and other supplemental items as well as concept art that is mind-blowing. This will be exclusively through B&N and the Salient bookshop.
Stephen
Thanks for digging into books, influences, and writing. Any other things you want to share today?
Joe
Just that I’m so excited for book two. Of course when you release a book you’re supposed to market the book you have out, not the book you don’t have out, but it has been so fun to write. There are new characters, and I’ve tried to bring in more female characters as well so it’s not just male-dominated fantasy series. But I have some really funny characters in book two, and we’ll get really in depth with Pax’s past, so that’s interesting.
Book two will deal a lot with a prophecy that was made way back when. There are aspects of it that are applicable specifically to Falduen and his companion, and other aspects that kind of leave things open-ended, so that will be really fun. There will be several new locations, one really big one introduced a little later from where I am in the writing right now. You’ll meet more Krooga—a lot of Krooga in book two. Readers will also be introduced to their language which has been really difficult but enjoyable to work on.
One spoiler I can share: I don’t know how many will read this, but the lucky few: Pax is actually going to get a dragon in book two. But not as a companion. They won’t bond like a Shineden does. But Pax will have a dragon.
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About the Author
Stephen Taylor is the author of The Witherclaw Trilogy as well as short fiction appearing in The Future Fire, MYTHIC Magazine, The Centropic Oracle, and other publications. His short story “Only an Ocean” won a Silver Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. When he’s not writing, he’s often playing his violin or wandering in the woods.
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