Blurb
The first book in an immersive & addictive fantasy series from the million-copy selling phenomenon Torsten Weitze that follows the epic journey of a young protagonist with nothing left to lose.
When tragedy strikes her family, Niri finds herself penniless and alone in a city determined to turn their back on ‘her kind’.
Her only possession is also her only hope – a copper coin that grants her admission to the prestigious Stormfell Academy, renowned for its magical and combative training.
But the coin only offers her a place to sleep, and Niri must learn to adapt and fight if she is to survive the Academy – and its occupants.
The Tower of Beggars is the first enthralling instalment in the bestselling Stormfell Academy series that has captivated millions of readers in Europe, now available in the US and UK for the first time.
Welcome to the Academy . . .
Decades before I started writing my first novel, I fell in love with pen and paper games. Delving into worlds created by others, so that my friends and I could dream up our own adventures, was like stepping into the corners of my mind (and heart) I had never visited before. As my experience in building pen and paper campaigns grew, a thought in my mind flourished of writing a whole story, not just the “frame”, where my friends could sow chaos in my plotlines…
So many things have changed since my first novel, but some always stay the same. Whatever world I am building, whether it is for my pen & paper game, or developing the Stormfell Academy series, I find it easiest to start with developing the vision before moving to more granular details.
Firstly, I establish for myself what kind of story I want to tell. Will it be bright and hopeful? Dark, but enduring? Funny and weird? The world that is to be created has to complement the flair of the story, or serve as a contrast, as it happened with Deatril, the world of the Warring Gods, in which my protagonist Niri’s journey takes place. Deatril is a war-torn world with a grim undertone, while Niri and her friends tend to be quite altruistic.
Next would be the topic of magic. How powerful and costly magic is can also help reinforcing the theme of the story. In The Tower of Beggars, Niri and her friends face many challenges and costs (both physical and metaphorical) as they learn to harness their own magic. As with my pen & paper gaming, the power and strength of the magic must also be established in advance to keep the balance of the story.
Afterwards, I create the world’s scale. Do I need only one continent and some “unknown wilds” across the sea? Sometimes, my long term vision for a tale or a pen and paper campaign may need the creation of a complete world which I have to consider.
When the stage is set, I begin thinking about the people inhabiting my world. The different cultures, beliefs, values – each one becomes a defining feature of the character and helps me build out the story through their eyes. How would they interact with the neighbors? Would they go to war, or would they stay behind to protect the family? How would they manage adversity, heartache or grief? My goal is to create realms where these people and cultures thrive. Each character has an important role to play in my worlds. One would not exist successfully without the other.
When that is done, the playground is set for the actual story. I choose an interesting main character and then all side characters, all with their own distinct identities. At the end, I formulate the main conflict of the story, and all the side conflicts that it will inflict as a consequence.
From then, it is quite easy to write the actual story as all you have to do is connect the dots, that the history of this particular world and its inhabitants provides. You will know how the protagonist will behave because of their background and their values, and you can imagine how the people around them influence their decisions. The same goes for every other character in the story, so in the end, when you build a world, you already have created your story.
About the Author
I was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1976 and still live there under the caring eyes of my wife and two Norwegian Forest cats. Originally a publishing salesman, I couldn’t resist the lure of writing, and after over a dozen years of playing the gamemaster in pen-and-paper groups, not to mention reading hundreds of fantasy novels, I decided to finally try to write a story myself that I thought might be worth telling. And so my novel Ahren was published in Germany, the first in the best-selling series The 13th Paladin.
When I am not creating new worlds and stories, I like to relax by playing pen-and-paper and story rich video games, reading or binging on TV series. I also practise Jiu Jitsu and the art of handling ancient Japanese weapons like the Katana or the Bo Staff.
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