The Big Idea: John Gwynne

Posted on May 4, 2021    Posted by Athena Scalzi      3 Comments

In author John Gwynne’s Big Idea, he tells us of not only his love for Norse mythology, but also of his passion to write something fantastic that will evoke an array of emotions within his readers. Follow along as he describes what some of those emotions are, and how they contributed to writing his newest novel, The Shadow of the Gods.

JOHN GWYNNE:

My writing mantra is ‘write what you want to read,’ and I want to read books that sweep me away on an emotional rollercoaster, that carry me off to other worlds and engage me emotionally. I want to read a book where I become invested in the characters; I want to care, and I want to feel: fear, hate, love, and everything in-between.  I want to fist-pump the air at the victories and feel that knife-twist in the gut at the betrayals. All those things that have moved me as a reader and got me hooked on books. If my books give even a fraction of those precious moments back to my readers, then I will count my writing career a success.

My latest book, The Shadow of the Gods, is a love letter to my deep and abiding passion for all things Norse. That spark was lit when I was a child, with tales of Beowulf fighting monsters, of giants and serpents and fierce berserkers, and of Ragnarök, that end-of-days battle where the gods fought to extinction. That childhood passion has led me to picking up a shield and spear as an adult and becoming a Viking reenactor, and it has fueled this new book, filling it with longships and trolls, shield walls and berserkers, rune-magic and blood-oaths. 

But I hope that there is more to it than that. 

I try to write tales that entertain, that sweep the reader away to far off worlds and snare them in stories that are magical and brutal, heartbreaking and uplifting, intimate and epic, but I also try to write tales that challenge, that encourage us to hope, and to dare, and to live. The themes of family and friendship and love are at the core of everything that I write, because they are what we live for. Each other. Those we care about and love. This is the beating heart of the human condition. 

Don’t get me wrong, In The Shadow of the Gods you will not find a sentimental tale of happy families and true love’s first kiss and a happily ever after. This is a cold, harsh, brutal world where slavery is the highest currency and people carve a life with hard hearts and cold iron, but by writing about this type of world I try to challenge those hegemonic power systems of prejudice and elitism and gender politics. Power systems that are reflections of our own world. And in doing that, to perhaps light a spark of hope in the hearts of my characters and my readers alike, to perhaps make the reader think about the choices we make in our own lives, and how those small, daily choices matter. That when taken as a whole our choices will both define us, and steer our course through this dark, awful, wonderful, heart-breaking and beautiful world.

Quite a lot to hope for in a book about dragons and trolls and creatures that have an overwhelming hunger for human teeth, but I am a glass-half-full kind of man, and so I will choose to live in hope.

The Shadow of the Gods: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s website. Follow him on Twitter.