The Wars Between, #author Lee J Mavin

Two lands divided by sea have had over one thousand years of war. One, Asalandia, is a kingdom dominated by strong men, ruled by a long line of strong kings. Tall men with locks of gold and long, bushy beards. These strong men have been raised to hate the country of Kastanair, a democratic land, always changing leaders, always resourceful and innovative. The Wars Between

Lee J. Mavin is an author of Children’s fiction, fantasy and young-adult horror. He lives in Sydney with his wife and children and spends his free time, reading, watching movies and listening to hip hop. Lee can speak three languages and has lived in China and Japan.

To connect with Lee ....
https://leejmavin.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good evening, Lee J Mavin. Welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Your latest book, it's out now or it's available for pre-order. You tell me.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Uh it's a few weeks, it'll be out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's talk about it anyway. I'll put some links to the to the pre-order in anyway. Congratulations. Your latest book is called The Wars Between. Lee, tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yeah, so The Wars Between, it's a young adult fantasy novel. I think it adults will like it too. It's it's pretty long. It's about 300 pages. It's a fantasy world with three countries that are uh there's two countries that are at war with each other, and one country in the middle that sells them the weapons. And there's like a 1,000-year history of war between these two countries. And you uh the it centers around a character that kind of seems to be insignificant. Uh he's he's just a little poet. And um, but the uh one one country is a a kingdom with a monarchy, the other country is a democracy with a president, and these countries have been at war for thousands of years. So that's the setting. Sure. Uh and uh the king holds the the king suddenly falls in love with poetry and becomes obsessed with poetry uh when it's raining outside for too long. So he holds a poetry competition, and the main character, Altus Everett, he wins the poetry competition and goes to meet the king. The king's so impressed with his poem, it's a life-changing poem, it's the most important poem ever written in history, he thinks. So he wants to uh send him across the ocean to the other country, to Castanair, where they've been at war with with the other country, to read him the poem. And the poem is meant to bring peace between the two countries. So that's the the setup for the story.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

And Lee, do you want to tell us about? I mean, I was looking at your website. You have written an insane number of books, and um tell us a bit about uh you know, the process of writing, what you enjoy about it, and then dive in and tell us a bit about you.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Um well, I've written 12 books, uh, two collections of poetry, and the rest are fiction. Yeah. Um, process of writing. Um, just find some quiet time, a coffee, get on the laptop, start writing. Yeah. Um, I can if I'm interested, I'll just write maybe a couple of pages every day. Yeah. Yeah, slow process. And then, you know, I I out give a plot outline first so I know what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Generally, what's gonna happen at the end, and then I fill in everything before the ending, and then I just go through and edit, editing, editing, editing. It's a slow and painful process after that. But the first edit I go really fast, like in a month. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, wow. And uh Lee, tell us um the process to write the wars between. Um, what I mean, you've written similar, and well, not similar, but you know, you've written young adult books a lot. So tell us, yeah, the process. How did you come up with this story? Like was there any any great inspiration?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Uh it's an anti-war meaning. So all the war that's going on, and especially the Ukraine and the invasion of Ukraine that inspired uh that inspired the book Nobody Important, the picture book. And this character in Nobody Important is the he's developed into Outus Everett, the main character of the Wars of Between. Um, yeah, so it's an anti-war. Uh it's a fantasy, you know, you see in fantasy books where the maybe some innocent character has to fight and show some strength. Well, I'm kind of flipping that over and saying avoid the fight and and read them poetry, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah, yeah. And Lee, I'm quite surprised. I don't know if you uh find this as well, but you know, uh fantasy young adult books, thrillers, you know, this is so popular.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah, that well, I loved reading, I love reading, yeah. Fantasy young adult, yeah. Well, Harry Potter, it's all started there, yeah, yeah. Yeah, game of thrones.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah, yeah. It's sort of it actually blows my mind. And you know, I now have young adults in my house, so um, and they have friends, so yeah, I know how much, yeah, it just seems you know, I guess it's been going on for decades, but yeah, I think from reality, you've got to escape from reality and uh yeah, find some some uh some imagination, yeah, fantasy. Yeah, and Lee, like I mentioned, you've got this pretty amazing website, all your previous work. Um, if anyone's watching from around the world, anyone curious about this genre or has uh humans in their life who are curious about the genre, um, do you want to point us in the direction? I know you also have a Facebook page, so point us in the direction of where should we go if we want to get curious about you, you know, the current book and your previous work.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Um, my website, leejmaven.com, has all my books. So when you if you go there, you'll it click on it. You can find all the Amazon Booktopia, every link. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it has lots of other materials there too, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah. Well, look, I'll put that in the show notes uh to make it easy for anyone who's listening, watching, um, to get curious about your work. And what's the the plan? Are there is there more writing in the future, Lee? Are you you're not gonna stop this? You you plan to do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

No, no, I'm right. I'm writing a sequel to the book, The Wars Between now. It's it's called The Angelic Fallen, okay, but it's set like uh 200 years after.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Okay. Well, there you go. The audience needs to go out and read this first book, The Wars Between. There's gonna be plenty more. Uh Lee, please come back when when the next book you know is out. I'd love to support you again. But thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us. All the best.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Cheers.