Ask Me Anything #1 - How It Began

Q: What got you into faeries to begin with? (Damien Jacobs)

A: Before I began all this, I was toying with several fantasy stories in my head. I've always enjoyed writing, but "back in the days," there weren't many outlets for the kind of erotica I liked, especially if you live in Quebec (small French population). Perhaps because of some latent OCD (or some inherent laziness), I didn't want to create something that was just a "one of" or to have to re-explain why something magical was happening every time. I have this inherent affection for things that are structured and efficient. While writing those stories, I was finding myself spending a lot of time in prelude and not as much writing the erotica itself. That meant I would start a story, get bored before I got to the sex part, and put it away.

Fast forward to a time of my life when I lived abroad. I found myself with much less of a social life, a great internet connection, and (quite fortunately) with a lot of disposable income (thanks to some very favorable tax laws in the country I lived in). I still had my Canadian salary, but with effectively less than 20% tax on it.

I had cash to spare (oh, those were the days!). Then at some point, I found myself reading Evil Inc (by Brad Guigar) and Exiern (by Drowemos). Both were self-published (and sexy), and it struck me that the creator of Exiern wasn't doing the art himself. If he could commission an artist, what was to stop me from doing the same? I had the spare cash anyway. Let's do it!

But I needed a unifying concept so I wouldn't (again) get lost in the preambles and/or bored. I don't exactly remembered the moment I thought about faeries, but I was very familiar with the concept from countless fantasy RPG sessions I played or DM'd. Why not bend the notion a little and turn them into wicked little creatures that cast sexual curses on humans? That way, I could cut straight to the action. All I needed was to find a main character despicable enough to warrant getting cursed. I took it one step further by creating a backstory where humans had been responsible for (almost literally) a faerie genocide.

Little side story: there was a series of books by Dave Duncan that I'd really liked: A Man of His Word.

In that narrative, faeries are the very source of magic in that world. If a single faerie shares her name with you, you gain a single talent. If you learn a second one, you become almost inhumanly talented at everything (in D&D terms, all stats at 18). If you learn three names, you're a Mage; at four names, you're a Warlock. No one had five names (I won't spoil the story any further). I loved the notion that faeries were the source of magic in that world, and I largely borrowed that for mine. I also borrowed part of the spelling.

So I was set. I had my casus belli, I had my cast of heroes of villains, and I had a budget. All I needed was a name. (I actually needed much more than that, as I'd later find out, but that's a story for another time.)

Then I remembered a line from one of my favorite movies (Legend):

I thought it was perfect! It was something I could have a character utter early on to explain why it was called this way (not that anyone would have a hard time figuring it out).

And that was that. I found myself an artist (then another), started producing comics, and it was all magical.

Except that it wasn't, but I'll save that for later. Let's see if you have any more questions.

--Jaycee