Exclusive Interview: “The Shiver Tree” Author Holly Searcy

 

It’s hardly surprising that many fantasy writers have played Dungeons & Dragons. Or that D&D has influenced their fantasy stories.

But in the following email interview with author Holly Searcy, she talks about how her high fantasy novel The Shiver Tree (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) wasn’t just written by a D&D player who was influenced by the role-playing adventure game. It actually started out as the backstory to her D&D character.

To begin, what is The Shiver Tree about, and what kind of a world does it take place in?

The Shiver Tree is a fantasy adventure that follows an elven druid named Kiana Paletine as she undertakes her very first quest with the hopes of figuring out how to reestablish the five lost Druid Orders. The druids have always been responsible for maintaining balance in the world, and after centuries without the Orders, chaos is starting to spread across the continent in the form of werewolf attacks, pirate raids, plagues, and other atrocities. Kiana soon learns of the existence of an ancient druidic artifact called the Shiver Seed, a relic of the lost Ice Druids, that has fallen into the hands of some nightmarish villains. Kiana and her friends take it upon themselves to retake the Seed.

The fictional world, Amarra, is inspired by a six-year, homebrew Dungeons & Dragons campaign I played in, now reshaped and molded to my literary purposes.

Where did you get the idea for the plot of The Shiver Tree?

Like the world, the story itself was inspired by our D&D game. When I first started playing the game, I had no idea what I was doing. I chose to play a druid because I love magic and animals…and because my husband, our DM, told me my character could have a pet fox. Since I didn’t know what to expect, I never created a backstory for my character. My brother played my sibling in the game, as well, so I let him come up with some backstory elements for me.

Five years into the campaign, I realized what he created made no sense for what my character had become, so I decided I wanted to set the record straight and tell the story of how I saw Kiana becoming an adventurer. We’d gone on a side quest in the game to an ice druid colony, and it was one of my favorite sessions. I decided to use that quest as inspiration for the novel since it tied into themes from the backstory I created. From there, after years of unsuccessfully trying to write a novel, the story just flowed out of me.

Is that why you made this story about a druid? I mean, making it about a warrior or a wizard would’ve been obvious, everyone writes about warriors and wizards, but you could’ve written it about a thief, a necromancer, a…uh, [checks the 1978 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook], oh yeah, a paladin, a cleric, a bard, a ranger…

All true! At this point I’ve played almost every D&D class across various mini-campaigns and one shots, and they all have their perks, but Kiana was my first character, and when the writing bug bit me again, that’s whose story I wanted to tell. They say to write what you know, and I’d inhabited her for six years. I loved so many elements from that campaign that I wanted to honor it, and her. And her pet fox. The story and world are largely unrecognizable from our game at this point, but I had so much fun throwing in little easter eggs for D&D players and my crew.

Speaking of which, did you ever consider trying to have this be an official Dungeons & Dragons novel?

Yes, the thought of contacting Wizards Of The Coast about publishing with them crossed my mind more than once. Ultimately, though, I didn’t want to feel tied to someone else’s systems and lore. Going back through the book and creating my own rules, magic system, and monsters helped make the book so much better, and there’s so much more creative freedom this way, which is the greatest joy of writing a book.

As you said, The Shiver Tree is a fantasy story. But do you think of it as a straight fantasy story or a medieval one, or maybe an epic medieval one, or something else?

I would call it high fantasy but not medieval, as the world doesn’t have that vibe. The journey is epic, four friends setting out to save the world, and they, ahem, level up in power as they go.

The Shiver Tree is your first novel. But I’m going to roll the dice (sorry) and say it’s not the first thing you’ve written. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on The Shiver Tree but not on anything else you’ve written?

Ha, never apologize for gaming puns. They are always welcome. And no, while this is my first novel, and the first of my writings to be published, it is not the first thing I’ve written. I majored in creative writing in college, I was a copywriter for years, and I’ve written a handful of short stories just for fun. I also started and stopped about half a dozen novels before this one popped into my head and I realized it’s the story I’ve truly been waiting to tell.

The Shiver Tree is also my first foray into high fantasy. I’ve had supernatural elements in other things I’ve written, but this was a full plunge into unfamiliar writing territory for me, and I loved every second of it.

I have to shout out to Terry Brooks and Jim Butcher as influences, the former for his incredible ability to build high-fantasy worlds, and the latter for the humor he infuses into his writing. I’d love to be even half as good at either of those things as those authors.

What about non-literary influences? Was The Shiver Tree influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games? Aside from Dungeons & Dragons, of course.

Probably subconsciously because I’m a big fan of movies and games, but I pretty much stuck to D&D for inspiration.

And what about your two wonderful black cats and your crazy orange tabby? How did they influence The Shiver Tree?

Our crazy ginger cat, Mozzie, had not yet become part of our family when I wrote this book, but he did inspire my most recent D&D character, a tabaxi monk with impulse control problems and slightly (very) obsessive behavior.

Our two black Turkish Angoras, Jinx and Loki, didn’t directly influence the novel, though there may or may not be striking similarities between Jinx and Kiana’s pet fox, Snow. Both are sweet, fluffy snack goblins.

Mozzie, Jinx, Loki

 

Now, fantasy novels are sometimes stand-alone stories, and sometimes they’re part of larger sagas. And D&D characters never just go on one adventure. What is The Shiver Tree? Is it a one-off or the start of a series?

It is, in fact, the start of a series. The first draft of book two is already complete.

I originally intended The Shiver Tree as a stand-alone, partially because when I wrote it I wasn’t planning on trying to get it published. I just wanted to tell Kiana’s story and share it with my friends. But I loved the book so much when I was done that I knew I wanted to continue the story. Thus began the process of transforming everything from a D&D story to my own world, magic system, characters, etc. So, so much editing, but all worth it. And then I got started on book two before I even knew if a publisher was interested in the first one.

So, what can you tell us about this series?

I’ve dubbed the series The Amarra Chronicles, with five books planned because that is how many Druid Orders there are, and therefore that is how many druidic Trees there are that need finding (really set myself up for a monumental task there). Each book will follow the quest to find one of the Trees.

And do you know what the other four books will be called, or when they’ll be out?

I do know what all of them will be called because each book will be named after one of the Trees — the list of which can be found in The Shiver Tree. Book two is written and book three is started, but I do not have information on release dates for future books at this time.

Earlier I asked if The Shiver Tree was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think The Shiver Tree could work as a movie, TV show, or game?

I would absolutely love to see The Shiver Tree adapted as a video game à la Baldur’s Gate 3 and / or into a movie.

If I had to pick one, though, I might have to go with video game, which is a little crazy since I’m big into movies and literally only play one video game (yes, B.G.3). I was not a video gamer before getting introduced to B.G.3, but Larian Studios did such an incredible job with characters and story that I can’t stop playing. Having people feel that way about The Shiver Tree would be hugely rewarding.

However, film adaptations of books always make me nervous, and Amarra has so many different regions and characters to explore that a video game would have plenty of fodder for questing and NPCs. People could experience so much more of the world, parallel to the books or set at another time.

And what if the good people at Wizards Of The Coast wanted to make it a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons?

How great would that be? I would absolutely be open to the idea of turning this into an official D&D campaign. That would make it a D&D campaign inspired by a book inspired by a D&D campaign, which is fun.

I’m actually already working on a one-shot that is tied to the book, in case readers who play D&D want to tackle a little quest in Amarra. Expanding that further would be a blast.

So, is there anything else you think potential readers need to know about The Shiver Tree?

Obviously I’ve hammered home the tie to Dungeons & Dragons, but of course I wrote the book to appeal to a wider audience than that. I tried to find a balance where both veteran fantasy readers and those newer to the genre can dive in and find things to love. My hope is that people have as much fun reading the adventure as I had writing it.

Finally, if someone enjoys The Shiver Tree, what fantasy novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they check out next?

Dragons Of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, for sure. It’s the first book in The Dragonlance Chronicles, another D&D-inspired fantasy series filled with magic and adventure.