Featured Interview With Brett Currah
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised primarily in Red Deer, Alberta, but I also lived for seven years I Calgary, Alberta and was born in Regina, Saskatchewan. I am currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada with my wife and two pets Arwen and Cece.
I originally got into fantasy writing in kind of an odd way. I was never really that into reading in my earliest days. It was hard for me to say the least. The most exposure I got to reading was from my mother who read to me. My biggest exposure to fantasy was the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. To this day it is still one of my favorite games and yes I do own an ocarina. Besides that my other exposure to fantasy was the Harry Potter book series which I had my mother read to me when I was young and I continued to read when I got older.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I first got into writing when I was about eight years old. I was in grade two at the time and despite my limited reading ability my teacher discovered that I had quite the knack for writing during our creative writing assignment. From there the fires of passion were lit and I continued to write despite not being very good at the English language and having a constant frustration with reading. It was also that teacher who made me more confident in my reading abilities which allowed to read on my own. It would still be a while before I started reading regularity. I read casually in high school, but started seriously reading in college where I took every single class available to a Canadian history major.
I would never call my reading a fascination with reading, but I do have a fascination with the structure and what makes up a well written story. I also have a deep fascination with history which is why I take a great deal of care and time to put so much history into what I write and the setting that I am writing in.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Hands down my favorite authors are C. S. Lewis and Alexandre Dumas. Of course I can’t discredit authors like Stephen King with his fascinating stories that are just so well put together they are hard to put down.
While each of these writers inspire me to write, by far my biggest inspiration is life itself. I love, love, love to explore the world around me. One of my favorite past times is hiking. I think that is why so many of my works have these vast landscapes ready to be explored with the mind. I guess it isn’t so much a who inspires me, but a what that inspires me. With out my love for the rich history and the world around me I would never have the stories I do.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book, Under A Crimson Sky, is set primarily in the lands of Alriche which is an island content off the coast of the Elflands. Of course the elves have a name for their lands that is richer in meaning, but humans never bothered to learn it and just took to calling it the Elflands. Humanity is split into tow man groups. Average man and the Theocracy of wizards which control the northern isles. While neither like the other very much the somehow peacefully coexist. The only problem is the wizards have grown lazy in their vigilante watch over all the evil, twisted things in the world.
The one item in question is so evil and so disgusting in the world that it survives only in a single rare text and in the most obscure lore. This magical gemstone is so vilified that it doesn’t even have a name, but it is sought out by a name named Lord Rihm for him to gain magical abilities. The only problem is he doesn’t realize that this magic rock that he is looking for has a mind of its own and is set on regaining its own kingdom.
Dag, Kor-Voda, Gotrrak and Oremothe set out to combat this wicked Lord Rihm and the stone that takes over his mind. They don’t know if they can do it though. The rest of the world is squabbling and is so intent of seeing out its own interests that they are left to combat this foe on their own. Dag in particular struggles the most on their quest since he feels responsible for Lord Rihm finding the stone. Indeed it was Dag who had the soul rare text that led him to it, but in his defense he did not know the motives behind Lord Rihm until it was too late. If it were not for his friends, especially Kor-Voda even I do not think that he would have been able to redeem himself and go after Lord Rihm. It is a story about magic and war, but it is also a story about the bonds between these four travelers and how they keep each other going in the face of darkness.
Under A Crimson Sky took me four years to write. From the time I was eighteen to the age of twenty-four I worked on this project. It went through a number of changes. So many that I don’t even remember all of them. History changed in the world. How Lord Rihm came about the stone change. Its name change, how they defeated the darkness changed. Even some of the names of the characters changed. One thing that stayed constant was Dag and his friends Kor-Voda, Gottrak and Oremothe. They were the one constant just as my friends were the one constant through the unstable years of my early adult life. All I know is that I am happy with the finished product. The culture of Alriche is finally set in stone and will continue to grow and flourish as time goes on. By far I think that is one of the strongest parts of this story. This lore and history of Alriche and the wizards keeps me coming back to my first creation and reminding me off all the good and bad times we had together.
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