About aUTHOR: A.C. Smith

From my early years, I loved books. But struggles with reading comprehension hindered my enthusiasm for learning, and I grew content with being average. Then my family moved to Kansas, and in grades 8 thru 12, I had two amazing, caring, wonderfully demanding English teachers who offered their students the kind of tough love that I responded well to. They made me want to learn and excel, and I wouldn't discover till many years later just what a gift they had bestowed.

I always enjoyed medieval history, and was artistic with an active imagination. So eventually, I started writing short stories in a private journal. The story that started the Companions of Fate series was conceived in the mid-90's, but it wasn't until 2005 that I began writing what would become Book I, A Perilous Road, and Book II, A Fighter's Destiny. I finished them in 2009, and while I was busy with my job, my family, and my life, they collected dust on a shelf for 13 years. Finally, after persistent encouragement from family and friends, I tried marketing the story. Now with Book I and Book II released, I've started penning Book III, A Relentless Enemy, the conclusion to this trilogy. 

photo by Sadie Sprinkle

"Fantasy Fiction World." What is it? A place created by a writer to accommodate their story. A place conceived in their imagination. By definition, fiction is, "imaginary," or, "untrue."

Everyone had their favorite subjects of learning while growing up. Mine were History and Geography. I loved to study maps and imagine what those faraway places looked like. I especially loved medieval history and ancient warfare. I guess that's why I was drawn to fantasy fiction based in medieval times. I've often wondered what life would've been like in Europe in the Middle Ages: harsh and diffucult, at times, brutal and unforgiving, yet, simple, peaceful, honorable. I sometimes feel like I was born 700 years too late. If you've ever seen the movie Timeline, Gerard Butler's character in that was me. I would've stayed in the past, too. 

When I set out to write the story that has become the Companions of Fate series, I wanted to accomplish two things, besides becoming rich and famous. Just kidding―I don't really care about the fame.

I wanted to create characters who would do more than just engage and entertain the readers. I wanted every aspect of their lives: their thoughts and actions, their hopes and dreams, their motives and desires, their fears and regrets, to embrace and profoundly impact the reader's imagination. In other words, I wanted them to be real. I wanted them have the same baggage that you and I carry around and deal with every day of our lives.

The other thing I wanted to do was to build a world of such stunning, breathtaking beauty that the reader would be carried away to join their favorite character in the story. They could walk beside them on the dusty road of a quaint little sleepy town, or on the cobblestone street among the mansions of the wealthiest residents in a sparkling, bustling city. They could ride with them through the forest and smell the coming rainstorm as it moved down from the high country or stand on a mountain and survey the snow-covered valley far below.

I've been truly blessed with a life of travel. Though I've not been overseas, I've traveled North America extensively, including 46 of our 50 states, and Canada. I've witnessed many splendors of the natural world and, ultimately, used those experiences to help me craft my fictional worlds.

I've stood alone on a mountain top where I could see for a hundred miles and walked through the arid deserts and canyonlands of the American Southwest. I've been to the Everglades, the Black Hills, and Crater Lake. I've stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon. I've swam in the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and been to all of the Great Lakes. I've sailed on a historic paddle-wheeler down the mighty Mississippi and looked upon the turbulent waters of the Columbia River Gorge. I've witnessed the geysers of Yellowstone and the waterfalls of Yosemite. I've stood quietly in the beautiful, serene meadows of Civil War battlefields and imagined the ferocity of the fighting as Americans faced each other for a cause they considered righteous.

I once spent a week in a snow cave in February at 10,000 ft. altitude in the Colorado Rockies. Alone, I sat down on a boulder at the treeline while snowflakes the size of silver dollars fell. It was so quiet and still that I could hear them settle on the snowpack around me. For me, it was truly a perfectly profound moment in time.

Amazing things I've witnessed in my lifetime. Yet, nothing in nature has moved me like my first walk through the Redwood Forest of northern California. Every time I've been there, it's been an indescribably surreal experience. Nothing else has ever made me feel so tiny and insignificant. That is why I created the Land of Dead Giants in my fictional world. I allude to them in A Perilous Road, and A Fighter's Destiny. And my readers will go there in the first book of my next trilogy, The Myndoran Chronicles. I can never seem to get enough of visiting the astonishing wonders of the nature, whether in real life, or in my fictional worlds.