The Story Behind Eve’s 15th Century Story

By Amalia Dillin.

It was very early in the writing process when I realized Eve’s marriage to Ryam DeLeon was pretty much critical background to the first book in the Fate of the Gods series. In the beginning, I just was never quite sure how to include it. Include journal entries sporadically throughout the book? Full-on flashbacks? Or leave the story out completely, letting Eve and Garrit’s discussions inform the reader to the most crucial elements?

By the time I sent FORGED BY FATE (then titled The Book of Generations) to World Weaver Press, I had settled on the multiple timeline framing for the first two books, and happily, that meant that I could include at least one chapter about Eve’s marriage to the Marquis from Thor’s perspective, but I knew even that wouldn’t be enough, ultimately. Not to satisfy me, anyway! 

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Thankfully, when I pitched the idea for a Eve/Ryam novella to Eileen at World Weaver, she was totally on board with the idea – and so began the writing of TAMING FATE, which tells the rest of the story beyond the small glimpse we got in FATE FORGOTTEN.* The story of how Eve and Ryam learned to love one another, which happened entirely off the page of the main series.

And unlike in FATE FORGOTTEN, the novella allowed me to tell the story at least partially from Eve’s point of view, giving her a voice in this pivotal moment of her past, rather than just seeing the story unfold through Thor’s eyes, or through the device of expansive journal entries. (I’m pretty sure I only wrote one before I realized it was a terrible idea. And not only because Ryam would have been writing in French.) 

Of all the pieces of Eve’s past, I felt that this was the most important to capture from her perspective. We needed to see her struggle with Ryam, to struggle with her life, her lives. We needed to see that when she tells Garrit she didn’t even like his many-times great-grandfather in the beginning of her marriage, she was telling the truth.

And in TAMING FATE, I hope you’ll enjoy seeing why.

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Amalia Dillin began as a Biology major before taking Latin and falling in love with old heroes and older gods. After that, she couldn't stop writing about them, with the occasional break for more contemporary subjects. Her short stories have been published by Daily Science Fiction and Birdville magazine, and she's also the author of the FATE OF THE GODS series and HONOR AMONG ORCS, the first book in the Orc Saga. Amalia lives in upstate New York with her husband, and dreams of the day when she will own goats--to pull her chariot through the sky, of course.

Learn more about Amalia at www.amaliadillin.com.

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