SPFBOX Interview with David Hopkins

Steve Hugh Westenra

2 years ago

Our SPFBOX interviews continue with David Hopkins, author of The Dryad’s Crown.

SPFBO (the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off) is a free online contest run by author Mark Lawrence. 300 authors compete across ten judging teams to see who will be the winner! You can read more about the contest here.

INTERVIEW WITH David Hopkins

Tell us a little about yourself and let our readers know which blog you’ve been assigned to for SPFBOX!

I’ve been assigned to the Before We Go blog.

A little about myself: The year was permanently 1985. I was a child of the suburbs, raised on breakfast cereal and Saturday morning cartoons. I rode my bike around town, and I explored the woods behind my house all summer long—building forts, climbing trees, and having adventures. I read comic books. I played D&D. I listened to heavy metal. My best friend had cable TV, which was a big deal. I would go over to my friend’s house to watch Beastmaster and Conan the Barbarian. My first fantasy books were Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks, The Dragonlance Chronicles, and The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I spent a significant portion of my childhood strung out on sugar and caffeine and crazy fantasy worlds.

It was a high that I’ve never been able to fully come down from.

After college, I wrote comic books. I pursued it for several years. I then started writing for a few magazines. I interviewed people and told their stories. This was where I honed my craft as a writer. The editors I worked with helped me become better. But ultimately, I came around to what I’ve always wanted to write, which is fantasy and speculative fiction. I found my voice through comics and journalism. Now, I spend most of my time thinking about the novel I’m writing and the 20 more I want to write.

What inspired you to write this book?

I read an article online (I forget the publication), which gave a scathing critique of the “strong female protagonist.” The article asserted that most of the strength is a masculine strength, so the underlying message seems to be that the only way to be strong is to be male—even if you’re female. I really took this critique to heart. And I wanted to create a character who was strong in different ways. Vulnerable in different ways. That was the initial spark for this story—but as I began writing, I realized I was telling the kind of sweeping epic fantasy that I’ve always wanted to write. Something with depth and scale and endless possibilities. That has motivated me to keep writing and expanding the territory of the narrative.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing or editing process? What’s most exciting to you about writing or editing?

I wrote comic books for about 8 years, and most of my outlining comes from that experience. It’s important to hit your page count. If we say the first issue will be 24 pages, then it needs to be 24 pages. So, when I plotted out The Dryad’s Crown, I knew it would be about 600 pages long. Lo and behold, I hit that page count almost exactly. I tend to jot notes in my steno notepad, and then I’ll take those notes and write out a 4 page treatment. Then I usually go through and annotate how long each section will be. From there, I write my first draft. I usually write about 350 to 500 words a day. After that draft, I give it to my wife to read. She’s not a fantasy fan, so her feedback is fairly unblemished by genre expectations—if something doesn’t make sense, she’s often always right about it, and I make some changes. Then it goes to Holly Walrath, my developmental editor. Here’s where most of the changes usually happen. Then, I have some beta readers, and finally two different copy editors who look at it.

My favorite edits are usually the next day edits. It’s exciting to mull over something you recently worked on, and then come back to it the next day with a fresh perspective. Some people won’t look at the first draft until it’s all done, but that’s not how I work. I’m constantly looping back and revising.

The Dryad’s Crown has a both/and quality. It is a character centric story that is also very plot heavy. It’s a violent story that also has warmth and humanity. It’s a story about found family and yet, the isolation is omnipresent. I think it’s a good novel for people who don’t want easy answers or solutions.

Who or what have been your major literary influences?

Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin’s craft is the best of any contemporary science fiction/fantasy author. Her work is so instructive. And fortunately, she’s been very generous with explaining her process. There are some great essays and interviews where she talks about how she writes. It’s a treasure. Shakespeare is also a huge influence. It probably goes without saying. Shakespeare has had an unseen hand in most long-form fiction for the past 400 years. I’m intentional about gleaning insight from Shakespeare’s work. If you see someone in my work who is vaguely like Falstaff or Iago, it’s probably not an accident.

What makes your SPFBOX book unique?

The Dryad’s Crown has a both/and quality. It is a character centric story that is also very plot heavy. It’s a violent story that also has warmth and humanity. It’s a story about found family and yet, the isolation is omnipresent. I think it’s a good novel for people who don’t want easy answers or solutions.

Do you have a favourite character from your SPFBOX entry? Tell us about them!

I have favorite characters who are my favorites for different reasons. Timon the priest, for being a minor character, has the most interesting story arc. He starts off as someone who has rejected his calling and instead sought comfort and routine. His choices had consequences, but his redemption doesn’t come until he meets the daughter of the person he initially let down. And through this process, he finds new purpose.

I found my voice through comics and journalism. Now, I spend most of my time thinking about the novel I’m writing and the 20 more I want to write.

How does your work fit into (or challenge) its genre?

My hope was to write an epic fantasy novel that would feel immediately recognizable (tropes, setting, etc) and then differentiate itself over the course of the story. Each reader may be challenged in different ways. Like Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, there’s a sense that no one gets where they’re going alone and no one ends up who they are just by themself. Like the dragons in Assassin’s Quest, we are shaped by the hands of other people. That idea is very much embedded in epic fantasy as a genre, but I hope there’s nuance in this story.

What do you hope readers take away from your SPFBOX entry?

To quote BookLife, I hope readers enjoy “a welcome, inventive, humane fantasy, set at the scale of a single fascinating life.” I want them to put the book down and feel like they’ve lived a whole life from the first page to the end.

What are you currently working on?

My third book in this series, The Summer Sword. It’s another chonker. I’m approaching the outlining process differently this time, so it’s a bit more time consuming. But the end product will make it worth it. I hope to release this book in 2025.

The Dryad’s Crown

Four titans sleep beneath the earth.
Only one fae can keep them from waking.

Silbrey is an orphaned wood nymph, taken from her forest home and raised in the corrupt city of Penderyn. The fae child grows up unaware of who she is, what she can do, and the calling of her kind.

Under the control of a cruel guildmaster, Silbrey is trained as an assassin. As an adult, she escapes her violent past to start a new life and a family. But a tragic death brings her back to the familiar cobbled streets to seek revenge.

This dark path leads Silbrey to uncover an even darker An ancient evil will wake the titans and break the world. Silbrey must travel with her daughter across a war-torn land to defeat that evil.

What begins as a fairy tale transforms into a multi-generational epic fantasy about love and loss—and a woman with a strange connection to nature.

The Dryad’s Crown is an emotional, coming-of-age fantasy debut. The first volume in a gritty saga, set in the immersive world of Efre Ousel.

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Purchase The Dryad’s Crown from Amazon.

DAVID HOPKINS is a fantasy novelist with an interest in Shakespeare, medieval history, fairy tales, and myth. He is the author of The Dryad’s Crown, a story set in the vast world of Efre Ousel. David is married to artist and designer, April Hopkins. They have two daughters, Kennedy and Greta, and a dog named Moose.

David is a full member of SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) and founder of Cake and Prose. David teaches classes through WritingWorkshops.com. He’s also an instructor for the ArmadilloCon writers workshop in Austin.

You can learn more about David by visiting thatdavidhopkins.com