We wrote her casting spells out loud, like “Fireball!” or “Magma Strike!” when she was in the middle of a fight. We made her hot-tempered and gave her a chip on her shoulder because she hates orcs (for reasons you’ll read about in the book). We enjoyed writing character quirks and fleshing out Blaze’s personality. What could have possibly happened to each princess? It gave us an overall structure and turned the story into a mystery too. They would each go missing in search of their sister, and King Jasper III was determined to recruit heroes to find out what happened to them. We were pitched a couple of ideas but the one that stuck was a story centering around the five Princesses of Prophecy: Sapphire, Citrine, Emerald, Ruby and Amethyst. So Zac and I started drafting up story arcs for a 5 book series. It really gave you a glimpse into just how big the world of Super Dungeon is. They had these glass cases with tons of painted minis from all their games.

Deke showed me around and I met John and the rest of the team. I even took a trip up to Boise, Idaho in the middle of winter at Christmastime (I slept in a yurt) to see the Soda Pop warehouse and offices. So Zac and I pored through it, reading in-depth about every creature from Ice Kobolds to the Deeproot Tree, and every location from the Dragonback Peaks to the Wandering Monk Mountains. It was encyclopedic! I loved how thorough it was and the passion everyone at Ninja Division/Soda Pop had for the lore.

It wasn’t long after that Deke sent Zac, my co-author and, at the time, the Project Manager at Future House Publishing, a dump of google docs, games, and reading material.

Adam glendon sidwell