I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Scott and Ashley from Tal & Ru Travels, a website which helps you to tell your best story. They have guides, tips, reviews, and everything in between to help you create engaging characters, deep worlds, and emotional conflict. Whether that is through a book, a D&D game, a comic, a video, or any other creative medium. You can check out their About page here.
Please tell us more about your exciting website and project?
Definitely! Tal & Ru Travels was built around helping people tell stories. Our specific focus is on TTRPG games like D&D and how you can better weave those stories and roleplay those characters. But we also focus on book writing, reviews, and some fantasy-based news.
Can you describe your wizard character and what inspired this?
Our Gnome wizard from Thread of Souls is named Tymus Altawayne. He is from the Citadel, which is the center for arcane education, research, and law enforcement in the land. The Citadel plays a huge role in the Thread of Souls series, and it means many things to many characters. So it was essential early on to have a character attached to the Citadel that isn’t what anyone expects. Tymus is quite bubbly, energetic, and eccentric!
Can you tell us more about your Thread of Souls books?
Thread of Souls is an eight-book fantasy epic based off a D&D campaign. We have brought all the magic of a large and diverse world, interesting characters, and larger-than-life battles you get during D&D into a book format. While the story is told from many POV’s, it is centered on the Dark Elf Taliesin. Taliesin has left his cult behind and started a new life. But his old goddess won’t let him go easily. He races not only to stop his old cult from releasing their malevolent deity upon the world, but also to save his own soul.
Apparently, there is a Gnome character in your books. Please can you tell us more?!
Yes! Tymus was trained at the Citadel, which is a very prestigious claim. But he is currently living on a coastal town. His specific interest is the study of nature and how it relates to magic. He has quite a tall tower overflowing with books and plants and all sorts of oddities. His bright pink hair makes him easily stand out in any crowd. Tymus is easily loved by people, though the more analytical characters can get annoyed by his cheery attitude.
What do you think of gnomes? Have you any owned any? If so, what did they look like?
We love gnomes! Our first real exposure was the characters of Pike and Scanlan in Critical Role. We have their Pop! figures on display in our home haha.
I see that there are some great storytelling tips on your Twitter feed. Do you have any specific gnome-related tips?
A main advice we give to people playing gnomes is that you don’t have to align with the stereotype. Make your gnome whatever you want! Even a barbarian! We have a big love of the Deep Gnomes from D&D and definitely feel like they could get more exposure and more lore. So if you are playing a Deep Gnome, or even writing a story about a similar gnome character, you have a lot of creative freedom to make them however you want.
What creative plans do you have for the future?
Our third book in the Thread of Souls series, Path of the Spiders, was just recently published. We have the fourth book planned for release next summer. We are going to be filming a documentary on the writing process of this book to help people learn to tell their own stories and build their own worlds!
