Author bio (in his own words):
Seán O’Boyle is an Irish, London-based, fantasy writer. He’s always had a flair for the humourous, having dabbled in stand-up and creating sketches in university.
His love for fantasy grew during lockdown from reading huge epics, cozy tales and everything in between. From this the two loves married and his fantasy comedy adventure debut “The Ballad of Sprikit The Bard (And Company)” was born. His next book “Checks, Balances and Proper Procedure in Monster Hunting” is out June 20th 2025.
See the end of the interview for links to buy!
Hi Seán, thanks for chatting. Last time I interviewed you, a year or so ago, your debut fantasy comedy novel The Ballad of Sprikit The Bard (And Company) had just come out. Before we get onto your new novella set in the same world which is about to drop, can you tell me what your debut year’s been like? Good? Bad? Or pleasantly mediocre, like a weekend away with friends you’ve not seen for a while and haven’t aged that well?
Hey Ed, good to be back! Yes, it’s been quite a whirlwind of a year to be honest. It’s equal parts surreal and satisfying to see something I’ve been working on for years now out in the wild and available for everyone to read. Sales have been within my expectations for a self-published debut, and the reception of Goodreads and Amazon has been overwhelmingly positive.
Every so often I get tagged in something that has praise for me and Sprikit and I am truly humbled that people are taking time out to read my book, which is just one of hundreds of indie releases in the last year. So, yes, mostly a good debut experience.
For the record, all my friends are aging immaculately…well except for…ah nevermind.
Okay, onto your new release. Your novella Checks, Balances and Proper Procedure in Monster Hunting – which pleasingly continues your obsession with long book titles – comes out on June 20 and is set in the same world as your debut. Can you tell us what it’s about and what readers it might appeal to?
Checks is a side-novella set in the same world as my debut Sprikit. It’s a world I’ve now officially dubbed “The Wavering Plane”. For those who’ve read Sprikit, this novella is set in the great and extremely rule heavy nation of The Galzarian Empire where every facet of life has its own bureaucratic department (called Parliaments). The novella follows a Parliamentary Clerk called Rella who works for the Monstrosity Parliament. Her job is to write up full assessments of bestial encounters, ensuring the exceedingly long letter of Galzarian law has been followed. She’s your run-of-the-mill bored medieval office worker who has seen it all.
However, that changes when a case like no other lands on her desk. It soon transpires that it’s a total bureaucratic nightmare that only she can solve alone. Plus, she has these two co-complainants who are the worst part of the whole ordeal. One is the Slayer, a free-spirited mound of muscle who killed the beast in the first place. The other is Bek, the most rule conscious and law-abiding farmer in the whole Galzarian Empire. She has to navigate their insanity, while trying to do her job and keep it while she’s at it.
The story will certainly appeal to fans of Sprikit, who get to see a whole new part of the Plane which was merely hinted at in my debut. For new readers, it’s a perfectly entertaining standalone comedic fantasy tale that they’ll read in an afternoon or two.
The clear (and highly entertaining) dynamic in this novella is between a monster hunter who doesn’t really care about rules and an obsessive form-filling, bureaucratic empire who very much do. What made you want to write a novel about rules and forms, and how do you feel about bureaucracy yourself?
When I was writing Sprikit, I devised the idea of the three main nations of the Wavering Plane; the bureaucratic and overbearing Galzarian Empire, the mysterious Kingdom of Varrak and the ungoverned mess that is the Free Lands nestled between. The Galzarians are present in Sprikit as the antithesis of how the Free Lands operate. You spend a little time there for certain chapters, but they are very much character focused. You don’t get a true sense of how Galzar operates, only what other characters relay about it.
This novella was my chance to explore how the rule following and form-filling Empire truly operates. I find the setting to be highly relatable too as everyone has come into contact with some governmental department that was about as much fun as bobbing for apples in sand. We’ve all had to fill a form, then fill another until ultimately discovering that we filled the initial form incorrectly and then it’s to the back of the queue all over again.
Also, I work an office job where I deal with all kinds of clerical malarkey on a daily basis. Office lingo, the proper channels to follow, rules within rules and how to be equally polite but also cutting in an email. So, Checks is really an exploration of my experiences being on either side of the bureaucratical coin through the wonderful lens of a fantasy novel, where I take that concept to the extreme.
I watched Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece Brazil at the same time I was drafting the novella, as well. It’s an absolute riot of a film, and portrays this authoritarian bureaucratical society as a self-sustaining machine. There’s no real “big bad” in charge to point the finger at. Everyone is following the rules because they have to report to someone else, who reports to someone else. The state of that society is everyone’s fault, but also no-one’s. An element of that found its way into Checks.
I think an element of bureaucracy is required in life. Things have to operate, y’know. However, when bureaucracy becomes weaponised that becomes a problem. People can go mad with the tiniest bit of power. Then in other cases, people’s reputations or who they are related to can often help them skip certain steps in life too. That’s the ugly beauty of bureaucracy – the consistency of its inconsistency.
I might write that down…
Which of the characters in this novella do you associate with more? The laidback rule-breaking monster hunter, the uptight fastidious citizen or the well-meaning bureaucrat wearily trying to tame both of them? (or the mindless monster, I guess).
I am certainly more aligned with the well-meaning bureaucrat trying to tame both those crazy cats. That’s Rella, by the way, the main character. She’s sort of a self-insert in the sense she understands that what she does is mundane and needlessly complex, but it’s a job that has to get done. Forms are the currency of Galzar, and she is merely one quill in the inkpot.
And most jobs this easy don’t pay this well in the Empire of Galzar. If I lived in pseudo-medieval times, I’d like a clerical role rather than toiling in a field and either dying of toothrot, pillaging or a combination of both.
Also, like Rella, I’d find the two extremes of the Slayer and Bek incredibly irritating. Both make her job a hell of a lot harder for very different reasons. One shirks all the rules and does what he pleases, while the other thinks he knows better than the qualified clerk. That said, I wouldn’t mind having an axe like the Slayer’s.
I always think good fantasy comedy – as opposed to fantasy with a bit of wit in – is a tough genre, not just because you have to be funny but because the best of the genre also should (in my opinion) still make you care about the characters and surprise you with some heart, like a bad doctor doing surgery. Do you find it hard, and do you have any tips for those who want to write it to get the balance right?
There is no humour to writing comedy. You have to take it deadly serious. It’s as much a science as it is an art. You have to choose your words very carefully, almost like a mad scientist mixing chemicals in lab. Too much of the funny stuff, and you risk overwhelming the audience. Too little, and the readers begin to wonder if they bought the wrong book. Then of course, it has to actually be funny. How do I know what funny is? I have no clue! There is no objective definition of it. I just write what I think is funny, and hope to God that others do too.
It is a challenge, particularly when you want people to like your characters. The risk is that everyone comes across as a smarmy arsehole. Everyone can’t be Sprikit. If every character is Sprikit, I have failed as a writer. I’m really conscious of that so I create the characters first. I give them their core principles and traits. They always do x, they never do y. The humour stems from these core elements, and I never betray those principles. I want the humour to be true to the characters, which adds a layer of credibility to the whole story. For example, I’d never make Torg dumb for no reason for a cheap laugh. Torg is very intelligent and moral, but that also makes him naïve and a bit righteous in other ways which is where I find the humour.
If you don’t do that, then I think you risk creating a world where everything lack consequence, and it all feels a bit like watching an overly long Monty Python sketch where you feel the need to keep making things sillier to get a laugh. I love Python, for the record.
Who doesn’t?
This was a spin-off novella of your world; I presume there’s an outright sequel to Sprikit The Bard in the works? What can you tell us about it if so? We’ve seen two kingdoms now – are we venturing to other places?
Yes, Sprikit II is well underway. I’m making good progress on the first draft given that I have a day job and now two other books to plug and ensure are still in people’s minds day-to-day. I don’t want to divulge too much as its still early days and certain plot elements may change.
What I will say is with Sprikit I was proving to myself that I could write a novel. So, I kept things relatively simple as opposed to other fantasy debuts. Now with a couple of books under my belt, Sprikit II is where I really let loose and show you the bonkers things I have in my head. It’s going to be bigger, funnier but also somewhat darker in tone than Sprikit I. Sprikit and Company certainly ruffled some feathers that ought not to have been with their debut misadventure. Those consequences will become apparent from page 1 of Sprikit II.
You’ve been a published indie author for over a year now. Do you think this is the route you want to be on for good now? Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time? This isn’t a job interview, probably.
I am certainly very content with indie publishing. I like the flexibility and control that self-publishing offers me, and I want to stay on that path for as long as I can. In ten years’ time, the dream for me would be to have an agent and perhaps be dipping my toes in the trad world. For that, I feel like I need more books out there. If I can publish one new book, whether a mainline Sprikit or side-novella, each year, I’d be more than satisfied.
Have I got the job, Ed?
You’ll find out in two business days, don’t call us, we’ll call you.
You’re a member of an indie author collective called the Secret Scribes, who presumably take some time off every now and again from being secret to tell people about their books *faint percussion noise off stage*. Has this helped your debut process at all do you think?
When I released Sprikit, I was a fleet of one. If you weren’t sure what to do when you hit a roadblock, I was sort of stuck. Also, it was hard to stand out amongst the crowd, and to get any real momentum behind my writing. Having joined the Secret Scribes, who are all fantastic authors, I feel like there is more wind in my sail now. Plus, it’s great to have a community where you can bounce ideas off, troubleshoot problems and share your worries and woes (of which there are plenty in indie publishing)
The Scribes have done nothing but champion my work and are a genuine gang of wonderful individuals. We have become fast friends, and it does a lot to stem that isolating feeling of being a writer. And again, they are all fantastic authors. Read their books!
[No guns were held to Seán’s head in that last comment by the way]
This year by any measure has been a chaotic one for most people. How do you unwind from the stresses of life, other than alcohol or yelling?
Well, drunken screaming usually accounts for 60% of my de-stressing activities. So, the other 40% comes from reading other works (highlight this year has been the last First Law novel), watching prestige TV (loved Severance) and playing video games. That being said, I get a major sense of guilt when I boot up the console. “If I have time to game, well then, I have time to write”, I say to myself. That’s the Catholic part of me speaking.
I’ve also been getting back into my fitness and ran a 10k this year! Whatever I can do to stave off the inevitability of my 30s. It also helps with writing I suppose.
Your 30s aren’t that bad Seán, aside from everything about them.
Anything else in your imminent future you want to tell us about? Other books in the making besides the Sprikit series? A new superpower you gained in a car accident with a truck carrying nuclear radiation? Tax problems?
Well, the most notable part of my year will of course be—getting married! Yes, I am tying the knot with the love of life, Annie. She has been a total cheerleader of my work and always supports what I do. I am incredibly lucky to be marrying such a beautiful person.
Of course, what this means is I now have to add planning a wedding to my list of things to do while I am trying to market one book, write another, all the while plugging my original book, AND working full-time while trying to maintain both my physical and mental wellbeing. I hope I come out the other side alive.
Who knows, I may be inspired by the whole ordeal and write another novella set in the Wavering Plane called Pain, Suffering and Fleeting Joy in Nuptial Organisation.
And thus a great idea came out of a joke.
Thanks for chatting Seán!
Pre-order Checks, Balances and Proper Procedure in Monster Hunting, add Sean to your socials, check out his website and and order his previous book at his linktree here
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