Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I earned the Eagle Scout award in the Boy Scouts of America in 2015. In 2017, I graduated from Mountain Crest High School in Hyrum, Utah. About a year later, I began my studies majoring in psychology at Utah Valley University and took 2019-2020 off for a service mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. My first book, The Scar Came from Destiny znfp-I, was published last fall and based on a tabletop game I played with friends during my first few months of college. Since then I published one more book, a short story spinoff titled My Fanged Screams, and I am currently writing The Scar Came from Destiny znfp-II.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My current latest book is My Fanged Screams (short story technically), a short story spinoff of my main work The Scar Came from Destiny znfp-I and an origin story for a really interesting side character, an undead unicorn named Shadow Moon. Originally, she was a non-player character in the tabletop game SCD was based on and was designed my my game master. Her character had just enough interesting quirks in the game, that as I worked to deepen and develop it for purposes of a long-form novella I quickly became entranced! In fact, Shadow Moon was so fascinating to me that I found myself unsatisfied after writing SCD and that I had ideas for a more Shadow Moon centered story that couldn’t be told in SCD’s format. Can you believe this all happened during October?!
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I really think the secret to writing a good story is what I call the conundrum of pain. New writers tend to think that killing someone is the most painful thing you can do to them. While they might be ultimately right (real dead people aren’t around to tell us), killing a character doesn’t allow them to continue to exist in a way that empowers them to complain to readers about how terrible the author is. That’s the whole point of causing your characters pain: letting them complain to the readers until they know what an absolute dumpster fire the book is. That’s a good story. So the issue of writing a good story becomes an issue of ‘how do I destroy this fictional person’s life as efficiently as possible, while leaving them alive just enough to whine about it?’
What authors, or books have influenced you?
The short answer is, I get influenced by a LOT of things. In fact, I’ve kept a log of every creative work I drew inspiration from for my work and I’ve so far been inspired by fifty-some odd things across seven different media. For example, the very basis of SCD came from that tabletop game, which I think was a fan-made extension of Pathfinder (although most of the ideas involved were our own). Shadow Moon specifically drew inspiration from figures in a couple different media which I found to just radiate that eerily calm resentment that I think we all love about villains, like Salem from Rooster Teeth’s RWBY or the unbelievably famous Thanos from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I’ve also taken inspiration from my home medium of books (predominantly Brandon Mull and his work with his Fablehaven and Dragonwatch series) and even big-name YouTube gamers like Dream and Technoblade.
What are you working on now?
Currently I’m writing the second in my two-parter, The Scar Came from Destiny znfp-II. My goal is to finish the writing portion by the end of January, and I’m actually on schedule to finish that a week early! I’ll have the next three-ish months to draw (yes, I do almost all of the art myself, you’re welcome) and I’ll hit the big shiny publish button in about May.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Honestly, I don’t think I can really say. I haven’t been around long enough. I have tried a wide variety of things, between paying off advertisers on Instagram, doing my own promotion on Instagram, advertising through Amazon directly, and even calling in to have flyers put up in 40 libraries across three states in the US. So far, I’ve lost a lot of money doing Amazon advertising and paying off other Instagrammers, and neither those or the flyers have gotten me any sales. It’s pretty much only my own Instagram stuff that gets me the sales, so I’ve been focusing on that.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
My favorite quote in the MCU, as said by Shuri in 2018’s Black Panther, was “just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved”. People fall short of the great by settling for the good, but the opposite is equally true. People fall short of the great because they’re shooting for perfection, and the truth is that isn’t real. The greats are great because they started in the first place. Anything can be improved upon, but first thing’s first you just need something to start with! My most straightforward experience with that is chapter four of SCD. I narrated the chapter from the perspective of my fourth main character, a zebra named Zilharé. I didn’t know much about this character going into the project because I didn’t play her. How much did her player know? Even less! She was famous for designing tabletop characters without backstory or roleplaying and just being there for the fun of it. I’m not trying to say anything about that, because that suits her style of play and I love it for that, but it didn’t give me much of any significantly developed character. I ended up slapping traits like gen Z slang to her character (an exaggeration of the zany and comical energy the original had), and although it had a bit of tweaking to do, it was just that: tweaking. Zilharé had made progress developing as a character and I wouldn’t have gotten close to those results had I continued to do nothing.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I think it’s just that, to be honest. I don’t have that much more to say.
What are you reading now?
As far as reading, I’ve set my sights on nonfiction for the time being. I really like reading motivational or self-improvement stuff like The High Five Habit by Mel Robbins or The Book of Afformations by Noah St. John.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I think it’d be fun to write some of it myself, I certainly have some potential for compiling my writing advice into a book of its own, but I’m probably sticking to the fantasy world of Wildlight for now. I have a particularly fun mega-project planned for this summer once I have The Scar Came from Destiny znfp-II published, but that’s under wraps. You can give me a follow at @joshboswchey on Instagram if you want updates on that.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Eeeaasy. Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary, and assuming I had Kendra’s knapsack, the rest of the Fablehaven series and the Dragonwatch series for good measure.
Author Websites and Profiles
Josh Boucher Amazon Profile