Introduction

Welcome to the return of the author interview series! Before we get into today’s interview, I wanted to let you know that I have a new horror flash up at Small Wonders magazine. It’s called “Any Good Sacrifice” and you can read it here. This was my very first pro sale (10 cents a word aka professional pay) and a magazine I’ve been reading and loving since they hopped on the scene. I feel so honored to be part of their November issue.

Author Interview

Today I’d like to introduce Lisa Tirreno, author of Prince of Fortune, a fantasy.

I’ll let her tell you more about it!

Questions

What was the first seed of inspiration for Prince of Fortune?

The idea really started with a dream: an incredibly vivid one that I had, of two teenage boys in old-fashioned clothing, chasing each other around a night market. At one point, one of them was leading the other by the hand, impishly gleeful, and the one being dragged along was just so happy to be there and to have the other's attention—he couldn’t believe it was happening. There was also a sense that they were taking a stolen moment for themselves, in the teeth of some bigger drama. When I woke up, I knew there was a story in there that I wanted to write.

The cheeky, impish one eventually became Lord Aubrey Ainsley and the one who couldn’t believe his luck became Saben’s prophesised future king, Edmund, the Prince of Fortune. 

Tell us a bit about how Seer magic works.

Magical gifts are rare in Saben. They manifest in a few different ways and the most common is having the Sight in some form or other. With Aubrey, it’s visions. He can See the past, present or future in a dream. He can’t choose what to See or when the dreams come, although there are ways to prompt them since the visions are important to their culture. 

It's all very different to Edmund’s plant and weather magic, which is the rarest kind and which hasn’t been held by anyone in centuries. He’s been pushed since he was a child to control and use his gift for his nation’s benefit; but war has been prophesised, and that means that anyone with a gift is expected to do their part. Seer magic has suddenly become very important, whereas Saben’s government isn’t sure how to use Edmund in a conflict, since his gift is more suited to peace. 

How do Edmund and Aubrey complement each other? How do they contrast?

Aubrey and Edmund are very much a case of opposites attracting. Edmund is the Crown Prince, and he takes his responsibilities very seriously. There have been many, many prophecies about what a great king he will be some day, and he feels the weight of every one, and worries that he’s going to let everyone down. 

Aubrey, meanwhile, doesn’t worry too much about anything, but cheerfully assumes things will work out. As the fourth son of an obscure baronet, nobody has any expectations of him at all: his future is a blank slate. When the story begins, the poor young man’s been champing at the bit to be introduced to real society, having been stuck in the country his whole life. While his “gift” is prophecy, Aubrey’s real superpower is people skills—something Edmund both naturally lacks, but also overly feels the lack of. Because of his position, Edmund’s been very sheltered from people, particularly people his own age, and that hasn’t helped. He was, in a lot of ways, in desperate need of someone like Aubrey to get him out of his own head. 

What influences did you draw from when writing Prince of Fortune? Other books, historical periods, vibes, etc.

The vibes are a fantasy version of Romantic-era Europe, so picture the very end of the 17th century, before industrialisation has taken off too much. There are whiffs of Jane Austen. The romance is quite sweet, so it’s been compared to Heartstopper or Red White and Royal Blue except very much sitting on the fantasy shelf: although that genre got pretty dark there for a while. I’ve been delighted to see cosy fantasy has since taken off—it was time—and while I love a dark novel as much as the next person, I really felt like we could all do with something a bit lighter, since the world itself has gotten quite dark. So, as I was drafting, I was keeping in my mind those more wholesome and naïve 80s/early 90s young adult fantasy novels I read in my formative years: authors like Robin McKinley, Anne McCaffrey, Patricia C. Wrede. I also felt that queer kids (and adults) deserved some kinder fiction since as a culture, we have a lot of tragic or badly stereotyped LGBT+ characters to make up for.

What tropes can we expect to find?

I always struggle with this question because I don’t think the book is especially tropey! Nobody starts out hating each other and there is never only one bed.

We have a noble prince and his devoted lover, both cinnamon rolls trying to do the best they can; a kingdom at stake, threatened both by political machinations inside it but also from an enemy just over the mountains; villainous sorcerers; spies. We have, in fact, many of the marks of an adventure novel as described by the grandfather at the start of The Princess Bride: fencing, fighting, monsters, escapes, true love and miracles.

It is also, in a lot of ways, a marriage plot, which has historically usually been given to a straight couple, in literature; and it sometimes thinks about being a novel of manners. You don’t see either of these that often in the young adult space so I’m hoping people find that quite fresh.  

What else do you want your readers to know that hasn't been asked?

I’ve had more than one person say that reading the book feels like a hug or a warm blanket. I do hope that the people looking for that sort of thing find Prince of Fortune. We all need something like that on the shelf, that we can turn to sometimes; that’s the sort of book I was hoping to write. I hope I succeeded.

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Find out more

Find out more about Lisa and her books at her website!