Interview: Tori Tecken talks about The Blood Stones

I recently read The Blood Stones by Tori Tecken—and not only was I lucky enough to get some of the author’s time to talk about the book, but I found a lot to love in this book. As part of my ongoing creator series, here’s a trimmed down version of the conversation Tori and I had.

Tori Tecken is a writer, reader, booktuber and the author of The Blood Stones (most recently) as well as the paranormal novel Phased.

I hope you enjoy the conversation! We did dig into a few spoilers for The Blood Stones, so I’ve included specific spoiler warnings where needed.

Here’s a quick breakdown of topics we’ve covered, with jump links for each main section.

• Influential books
• Narrative structure in The Blood Stones
• High-Impact Moments in The Blood Stones
• Sneak peak: Future of Legends of Bruhai books

You can learn more about Tori and her books at www.toritecken.com.

Influential books and such

Stephen
Thank you for taking time to talk. I’m excited to discuss your book and writing and all things fantasy and science fiction fandom. I would love to hear, just in your own words, how you would want to be introduced.

Tori
Absolutely. I am Tori Tecken, and I am an author, booktuber, mom. I am kind of in my second chapter of a writing career now. I was a child author when I was in high school, and now I’m kind of opening the next chapter of my writing life. My newest book is The Blood Stones. So that’s kind of the nutshell.

Stephen
You’ve written in a few different genres, correct? And isn’t your current project something of a fantasy western?

Tori
Yeah, I’m currently doing what I call a fantasy western because fantasy Yukon Gold Rush isn’t a subgenre yet.

Stephen
Not that I’ve encountered.

Tori
But it should be I think.

Stephen
So epic fantasy with The Blood Stones, a western fantasy in the works now.

Tori
Yep. And Phased is technically paranormal. I suppose it’s also urban fantasy, and young adult fantasy, so it kind of fits into multiple categories.

Stephen
Well I know from your BookTube channel and such that you read across some varied genres. Before we get into The Blood Stones, I’d love to talk about sort of books and influences generally—just the types of stuff you like to read and how you identify yourself as a reader and fan.

Tori
There are so many.

I mean, storytelling has been a foundational thing in my life since I was a kid. My grandfather is very much a storyteller, and I was raised listening to war stories of the civil and world wars. I think that foundational love of storytelling kind of led me to immediately look for anything I could get my hands on as a young reader.

My interest was really in stories with strong emotional impact. One of my foundational favorites was White Fang by Jack London. That was a big influence on me. Also Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

This one’s going to sound funny, but I grew up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Yu-Gi-Oh! So those sort of blew open the fantasy and motley crew kind of aspect that I love so much now, not to mention friend and sibling themes, since those themes are big in both.

As an adult, I’d say probably my biggest two influences in storytelling up to this point have been Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen and Pierce Brown’s Red Rising books.

But truly there are so many authors and so many amazing fantasy series out there. I get anxious quite often because I can’t read them fast enough.

I’ve always been very inspired by movies as well. As you mentioned, I’m working on my fantasy western right now, and Young Guns—one of my favorite films of all time—is another influence. Yet another story with a motley crew, since I’m a big nerd for motley crews.

But really, any kind of genre, any kind of storytelling that brings me in and gives me that emotional impact with characters that I can really believe in is typically going to win me over.

Stephen
This is really interesting, especially as I think about The Blood Stones. We’re going to have to come back to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because now I have in my mind this image of “what if the Bruhai were like the turtles?”

Tori
Right.

Stephen
And what if Thamujin was like Splinter, just a little meaner.

Tori
You know what’s funny about that, actually? So master Lohi, when I was designing his character, I sat there and I was like, “How do I want to imagine this character?” And I came to: “If master Splinter was human and kind of evil.”

Stephen
I split between reading and listening to the audio book, and a few voices sometimes made me think of Splinter in the older live action Turtle movies.

Tori
Yeah, Andrew did a great job with the audiobook.

Stephen
Well, before we leave influences behind, I’d love to talk Malazan for a minute and to hear how you first found Malazan, and whether you were one of the people who was all but told it was too hard up front. I’m one of those readers who put it off for almost 20 years after I first learned about the series, and I know lots of others have been intimidated too, but I finally started reading it last year. I just finished Memories of Ice, actually right before I picked up The Blood Stones.

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Suggested reading: Malazan Isn’t as Difficult as People Say: A Mid-Read Perspective on the Series’ Learning Curve

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Tori
I’m really glad I didn’t know that. Those are big footsteps to follow.

Stephen
No pressure.

Tori
So I had kind of a nonconventional approach to Malazan. I was in college and I was just starting to get into adult epic fantasy. I had read Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, and then I read The Godspeaker Trilogy by Karen Miller. Then a friend of mine, who was a big fantasy geek, handed me Gardens of the Moon in mass market paperback, which looks very non intimidating. And he said he thought I would enjoy it.

So that was my third adult epic fantasy read ever. I had no idea what was going on the whole time I read it. I was so confused. But it was also just amazing because it was so much bigger and more deep and introspective and poetic than anything I had ever imagined fantasy could be.

And when I read Deadhouse Gates shortly after that, it just became one of my favorite fantasy books of all time. The ending of that book in particular has stayed with me for over a decade. I won’t say anything for the sake of spoilers, for any blog readers who just have no idea. But I cannot get the ending out of my head still. It’s one of my top fantasy influences in terms of single novels. Ericson’s awareness of the human experience is just mind-blowing to me.

Stephen
Light spoiler warning for The Blood Stones. I will tell you there were a few scenes in The Blood Stones—such as when Syndri and company are leaving, going out on the planes, and it’s looking a little desperate—that I really believed they were going to fail and get totally demolished. And I had a very similar feeling reading Erikson’s Deadhouse Gates. I thought, “Oh, they’re just not going to make it.” The odds are so stacked against them, to such an extent that I just didn’t believe they could survive.

And so it had a very strong impact that at least many of your characters actually make it out.

Tori
That’s right. It’s always really encouraging when readers feel that pulled into the story. That’s really rewarding for me as the author.

Stephen
I definitely want to talk about some of those high impact moments coming up, because there are some really strong ones.

Before that, though: Obviously a lot of people know about Stephen Erickson and Pierce Brown. But I would love to hear just briefly any sort of hidden gems books you love, books that are off the beaten path.

Tori
Sure. I would say some recent ones that I’ve really loved include an epic fantasy series that I do not think gets enough attention for how incredibly masterful it is at character work—which is Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet. If you are a character-focused reader, it’s just incredible.

I would also say my favorite indie series right now is The Mortal Techniques by Rob J Hayes. It’s a very Wuxia, Asian-inspired kind of series. You’ve got samurai and vengeful spirits and lots of appeal for people who grew up loving shōnen anime. It’s like candy for adults.

Other than that, some of the best world building I’ve read recently has to be Andrew D Meredith’s Kallattian Saga.

I also really enjoyed  Daughter of the Forest by Juliette Marillier. It has kind of a fairy tale fantasy vibe, and her character work again is just beautiful. I actually just got a chance to talk to her on my channel in March. She’s close to 80 now, and she’s just an incredible wealth of writing philosophy and knowledge in addition to being just a wonderful writer.

Narrative structure in The Blood Stones

Stephen
Thanks for sharing these. So I’d love to dig deeper on your book now. One of the first things that really struck me with The Blood Stones was the structure of the book. Light spoilers ahead once more.

We’ve got an opening section that happens, and then another section that happens about three years later, and yet another section that happens about three years after that. Structurally, it reminded me of works I’ve read in the 80s and 90s, like some of R. A. Salvatore’s earlier books. But not a lot of recent works do the same kind of smaller story sections spread over time. How did this time jump structure come about with The Blood Stones?

Tori
So when I originally started writing The Blood Stones, it was going to be a single POV, just Gehrin’s point of view. And I got about three chapters into the book before I realized that that was a horrible decision because Gehrin on his own couldn’t tell the full story. It was too big for him. I wanted his POV to bring the feeling that he’s so much smaller than the world around him.

In terms of structure, I think that’s where I can kind of tip my hat to the influences like Steven Erickson. When I read the first few Malazan books, it kind of jostled me out of the concept of “this is what a fantasy book looks like.” And it gave me a chance to kind of rethink and realize that I can do whatever I want with my book, and I can make it work with whatever story I’m trying to tell.

For instance, I love a good warrior school trope. I love it. But what I don’t love is hundreds of pages of training montage. Hate it.

So I was trying to figure out how to give the reader moments that are really important for building up these characters, and I wanted to strip away all that excess exposition in the montages—the things that at the end of the day are just words and extra pages without driving us further into the heart of the characters.

I fought with the overall timeline for months, because at first there’s a character that we don’t get introduced to until Part Two. And at first I had that character introduced right away, which didn’t work because then that character was so much older than Gehrin. By the time we got to the end of the book, it was a big mess. So I kind of just organically let it be what it was.

I got to a stopping point where I needed to jump ahead, and I just did it because that was the story I was telling, that that’s what felt the most true to the characters, and the story was ready to move forward in time.

Stephen
I love that. I feel like there’s way too much writing lore that advises against time jumps and tries to formalize everything. As if, when doing multiple POVs, you need to strictly alternate one chapter with character X and one chapter with character Y. And I don’t think that usually works.

Maybe this is too far future, but while we’re talking timeline, I’d love to hear if you expect there to be similar time jumps for other Legends of the Bruhai books.

Tori
It sounds weird, but I’m a discovery writer in the sense that I feel like the relationship I have to the story is that those characters come to life, and I’m bringing their lives and their stories and their voices to a page. If I get to a point where I feel like a time jump is necessary for the story that I’m telling, I’ll use it. If I don’t, I won’t.

I don’t know, in book two, that I’ll need a time jump like that. There’s a lot that needs to happen, and there are a lot of convergences, ramping up of conflict, as you might expect coming off of the end of book one. Books two and three are all sort of one giant conflict, unlike book one, so that will affect the structure a lot.

Stephen
Can you speak to the youth of the characters and how that affects the overall story shape? Like how you said you didn’t want the one character to be too old. To me it feels like the three most central characters in The Blood Stones are going through a similar coming of age journey, even though their lives are so different.

Tori
I have lots of thoughts on this topic actually. Coming of age stories are one of my favorite tropes in fantasy. It’s also a trope that rarely works for me. Maybe I’m just more picky about it, but I think that there’s something really powerful when you have a world that is just this epic scale, filled with these very adult conflicts that are vast and difficult, but when you get to see the world through the eyes of a young character who’s being thrown into an adult world that they’re not ready for yet.

I think it offers you a lot of opportunities to look at things instinctively and viscerally. Syndri’s character, I think in a lot of ways, represents that kind of visceral reaction to the world that we’re in. Writing her character was very fast and instinctual because of who she is as a person. Versus Gehrin, who’s trying to do the right thing and is carefully taking steps and thinking through each action that he takes. And Xario kind of represents an in between balance, like there’s they’re all coming at this from different perspectives.

One of the reasons that Master Lohi has so few chapters in the book is because he knows too much. I didn’t want the reader to feel like the world was smaller because master Lohi knows so much more of it. But with young characters, you can drive that feeling that the world is just so big and overwhelming.

But The Blood Stones is still very much an adult novel, because the world is not being made smaller to fit the perspectives of the characters. They’re being thrown into a world that’s far too large for them instead.

Stephen
As you described it, it just made me think of the portal portal fantasy premise of finding an easy way to show the world from a fresh perspective. You know, the idea of creating a character who doesn’t know anything about the world so there’s a natural reason to describe it and explore it.

Tori
Right. Of course, Gehrin doesn’t know all these things, of course, even Syndri doesn’t know much, since her world is so insular compared to a Lohi or another character.

Stephen
So I thought a few times of other adult books with characters training to become elite kinds of guards—like The Lightbringer Series by Brent Weeks, which I really love. These characters have really interesting but prolonged philosophical reactions, moral reactions to what’s happening in the world around them. And I thought it was really interesting how simple and sort of innocent it seems like Gehrin feels while having these experiences—and doing things that probably feel horrible to him. But rather than having three pages of feeling horrible about himself, which is common in a lot of adult fantasy, he kind of moves on without much direct commentary.

Tori
Exactly. I think part of this is because when you have young characters who are dealing with highly traumatic situations, a very normal reaction, in order to survive it, to compartmentalize and put the experience away somewhere. Your psyche is not going to stand up to much of that kind of trauma otherwise.

I was very interested, especially with Gehrin, to examine childhood trauma. How that’s dealt with in a young character internally, and how that all sets him up for character arc moments that are coming for him in the rest of the trilogy. Likewise I’m interested in exploring how that will somehow manifest when he’s older.

High-impact moments in The Blood Stones

Stephen
That brings me right back to moments that hit really hard in the book. One of the scenes that hit me hardest was (spoiler warning once again), a scene early in Part Three. Tirrim is making this big decision, and it’s happening in this place that Gehrin and others sort of associate with bad, compartmentalized memories. And then Gehrin has to confront him about this decision in that same place. It feels like even here, at the oldest Gehrin is in the book, he hasn’t figured out how to deal with all this other stuff other than just to leave it in the forest.

Tori
Yep. And that’s part of what makes Gehrin so malleable for characters like Master Lohi and Thamajin, right? They’re taking advantage of that in a way, of the fact that Gehrin hasn’t gained enough of himself yet to drive his own purpose and to step out of that kind of expected behavior. He has been kind of formed and forged by these older characters that know so much more about the world than he does.

Stephen
Yeah, and I think that is part of why the scene hits all the harder, without needing a bunch of reflective, sifting through—

Tori
Navel gazing?

Stephen
Totally. So that’s a scene that hit me hard. I’d love to hear your perspective on a few of those scenes that you really wanted to make an impact and be specifically unforgettable.

Tori
Sure. I’ll go through a couple of them.

The most edited scene in the entire book, is the very first one. Partially because that scene is such an important metaphor for a lot of the series as a whole, and it shapes so much of the rest of the story, especially with Gehrin’s character moving forward.

It was so important to me that every detail of that first scene was poignant and came across exactly the way that I wanted it. I think I rewrote the first scene eight or nine times. I wanted to hook the reader in right away at the beginning, but I also wanted this scene to be something that, when readers finish the whole series, that they can hearken back to and see the through lines all the way across three books.

Spoiler warning. In the middle of the book, when Syndri makes her very impulsive decision to kill another character, and the ramifications of that ending of that chapter—where she realizes what has happened and she takes action—this is another one for me. It was a really hard scene to write because Syndri is such an easy character to really get wrapped up in when I’m writing her. And it was such a gut punch for her character that I really felt it when I was writing this scene.

Later on, I think Gehrin’s first kill was a big one too. That one was probably the hardest scene for me to write in the entire book because, like you mentioned earlier, there’s an innocence to him that I think he still has to some degree, but there’s a really major break of that innocence and the first big sign of severe compartmentalization that he has to utilize.

Stephen
On the note of compartmentalization, I think there are a lot of writers who wouldn’t even go there with a child character or even with an older character in plenty of cases.

Tori
I think it’s reminiscent again of the kind of metaphor behind the scene. There’s a child being asked to step into an adult world that they’re not equipped for. And in a world that no one is ever equipped for, really.

And I wanted to show this brutal world through the eyes of a character who is so small. It was a slow process getting through this scene because it had to be really impactful, but it took a lot out of me as a writer as well.

Stephen
A few of my other favorites were the scenes with characters who get less page time, actually, like King Kinhariian and Xario. Their conversation was one of my very favorites.

Tori
I love that scene.

Stephen
I think their conversation makes them both feel like real people in a way we couldn’t have without that short little exchange.

Can you tell me about characters you loved writing who aren’t necessarily viewpoint characters or the ones with the most page time?

Tori
Yes. Any of the other Bruhai boys are an easy answer. Kajen specifically is great fun to write. I love him to bits and pieces. He’s the street urchin to Gehrin’s nobility, and I’m a firm believer that any good motley crew has some very sharp contrasts in it. You know it’s the Donnie to Raphael contrast. And then they all get put together in a little box and they have to play nicely. So Kajen was a big favorite of mine to write.

I would say within Syndri’s point of view I really had a good time writing the sibling dynamic, both with Senna, but also with her little brother Baya there. I was glad to get some little moments of sibling normalcy, which I think brought some humanity to a very barbaric culture and a storyline that was really important.

Stephen
It feels so rare to see depictions of families of more than two siblings in a book, even just three, you know, and you’ve got a few examples here, with Gehrin and Syndri. It was also nice to see a family with both parents present on page, since that’s hard to find in orphan farmboy epic fantasy—and in most genres.

Tori
Exactly. I mean that was one of the reasons why Ettlan survives. I was thinking of stakes for these characters, and death isn’t truly the worst you can give to most characters. So I love what that family dynamic allowed me to explore with Ettlan’s condition and how Syndri is being forced to relate to her differently now.

And it also opens the door a lot for Gehrin and his two brothers. I mean, with Xario and Gehrin there’s a discomfort between them that offers something interesting.

One other character was great fun to write, who only comes into a few scenes in the first book but will feature more later, is Itaki, who is the school brat, bully kind of character. And as he gets older, he’s this very slick guy who sort of has the court figured out. He’s kind of a slime ball. But I enjoy writing his character a lot.

Sneak peek: Future Legends of Bruhai Books

Stephen
That little hint for book two is a great jumping point. Can you share any sort of sneak peek into future Legends of Bruhai Books?

Tori
Well, book two, The Queen’s Wolf, is in the works currently. As might be expected, there will be a convergence of some storylines and a reconvergence of some other storylines that I’m really looking forward to.

A lot of people talk about The Blood Stones being kind of a set up to whatever’s going to happen in the next couple of books. And the explosion that I think a lot of people are waiting for is definitely going to be much more present in book two.

I’m very excited to get into it.

As for the trilogy itself, I’ve known where it’s going to end since I started book one. It’s actually the prequel series to a series that I started over a decade ago in college, which happens about half a generation after Legends of the Bruhai.

Eventually, when everything is said and done, there will be Legends of the Bruhai and then there will be a bridge novella that’s going to go back several thousands of years to show the story of where the magic went.

Stephen
That’s a great sneak peek.

Tori
I’m excited about it. I can’t write them fast enough.

Stephen
Well, as you said, fortunately there’s plenty of great stuff to read in the waiting time.

As you look ahead at these books, having the end in mind, I’d love to hear in your writing process and craft, where you start populating the story—whether it’s with the world itself or characters. Where do you start?

Tori
For me, character is almost always the heart and soul of everything I write. I say almost always, but in honesty it’s always.

This whole story started because I was doing some back story work on some characters for the second series, and I realized I had this kind of image in my head of this young boy and this culture that’s kind of adjacent to the series I was working on. So here was this young boy watching an execution, and I thought about how he would feel and how that would change him as he was growing. And that just exploded the entire story of Legends of the Bruhai, because I knew I’d always wanted to write a military school style motley crew of warriors. Gehrin was the catalyst for the entire trilogy, and the world just kind of kept expanding and building from there.

First his family showed up, and then it just kept building and building until you have this massive culture of people and all of this organic movement going on between the characters there. And then you have to figure out how to make it somewhat cohesive.

Stephen
So as a discovery writer, could you share any moments of that discovery process that you were especially excited or proud about?

Tori
Yeah. Syndri didn’t exist until almost the point where I added her into the book. I was writing the three perspectives that I already had up to that point, with Gehrin, Xario, and Master Lohi. And then I realized that I wanted a perspective from outside of Katesh and everything that was going on politically with them, because I’m a big believer that there’s a ripple effect. Everything we do or everything a country does ripples outward, and it affects other places and other people that sometimes you wouldn’t even think would be affected.

I knew that Syndri’s country was full of tribes of horse lords, and I wanted to play with that. I’m a big horse fanatic and so I opened the chapter that I was going to write and Syndri just appeared on the page, with her headstrong, kind of subversion of a strong female character. I wanted to combat the idea that we see so many of these very one-dimensional characters that are just strong female characters with big swords. And I wanted Syndri to be strong but also to be sort of a mess. She’s not actually the strongest woman in her little group, even in her family. She’s very impulsive and selfish, and I wanted to explore that kind of a character a little bit and see how I could break that trope down. So in very Syndri fashion, she just kind of charged onto the page and there she was.

Stephen
She’s definitely not a Mary Sue, and I think the contrast between her and her mom and of course, Senna, shows clearly that Syndri’s just her own person. Discovery and all.

Okay. One final question. What else do you want readers to know about the book now that it’s been out for a little while and you’ve had a little time to see how readers have responded?

Tori
Well, the first thing I have to say is that I really, honestly want to thank everybody who has opened this book because, like we’ve talked about, there are so many amazing books at our fingertips.

Stephen
I could have read Malazan book four.

Tori
I know! I still can’t believe that I had to follow Memories of Ice and all its goodness. I’m so glad you liked the book.

But I’m really grateful, because as an author it’s very vulnerable to put your work out there and hope that people read it and resonate with it. So I’m grateful for all the people that have really embraced these characters and fallen in love with them.

The story I’m telling is really my love letter to everything I love in fantasy. It’s my first published epic fantasy, and I’m very proud of it and of course so glad that it seems the characters are really resonating with so many people out there. That’s really rewarding.

As an author, there’s nothing that makes me want to keep writing more than that.

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