Michael T. Hare

In this interview, bestselling fantasy author Michael R. Miller chats with me about his book series, Songs of Chaos. Since the very first book, this dragon rider epic has changed the way I write fantasy in the best way, and I was thrilled when Michael agreed to let me ask some questions about it!

I also reviewed his series in an earlier post.

Hello, Michael, and welcome to our interview! Your SoC books have been a wild ride for me these past two years, and I’d love for our audience to get to know them. Would you mind giving a summary of you and your Songs of Chaos series?

I’m glad to hear SoC has landed for you! So my slant seems to be writing high/epic fantasy which is more ageless and timeless in feel – it isn’t grimdark, but it isn’t for kids either. It lives in the space I think LOTR or a Sanderson epic does, but I lean into the strong character work you’d find in a George R.R. Martin or Joe Abercrombie book. Everyone can get something out of them, and so far I’ve been able to toe that line.

Songs of Chaos is my take on the dragon rider classic. I think of it as epic fantasy, but a ‘dragon rider’ epic fantasy where the bond and relationships of the rider characters with their dragons is of paramount importance (relating back to that character work I mentioned above). 

It’s about a servant boy who defies society to save a blind dragon from death and rises to become a dragon rider. Take Eragon, How to Train Your Dragon, and blend them up with Daredevil and a diet form of progression magic and you hopefully get an idea of what’s in store.

Was it difficult carrying one story across multiple books?

Oh yes haha especially as I’ve learned I’m much more of a Gardner than an Architect (to borrow GRRM’s phraseology). I wrote books 1 and 2 more or less without much eye to the future, but by book 3 I knew I had to plan it out more. I always have a vague sense of where I’m going but I can’t see or plan in detail too far into the future – as if there is a fog of war. This is why the editing period is so crucial for me so I can make it look like I knew what I was doing the whole time.

How do you prioritize writing from multiple POVs?

I tend to write one POV in full if I can, stopping only where I need another POV to inform what comes next and so I need to write theirs to catch up.

Holt & Ash are usually 50% of each sequel book in the series, with all the others crammed into the other half. So each book is like a Holt & Ash novel with several novellas and novelettes woven throughout.

You’ll never get it right. Plenty of readers outright hate multi-POV books, and trust me they let you know haha

Others say they don’t mind multi POV but it has to be done X or Y way. 

My personal balance now is to try and make the chapters as snappy as possible, and stick with one POV for multiple chapters if cutting away feels like it’s leaving too much hanging. However, if you stick to one storyline for too long, the reader will become so bedded in that switching will be more annoying – but giving the story in massive blocs will also feel off. I do my best and get things to where I’m satisfied and that’s really all I can do. 

I’ve heard that Reckoning is your favorite book in the series so far. Why might that be?

Linked to above, I personally feel I improved the pacing of Reckoning a lot over Unbound and Defiant by having shorter chapters, not being afraid to stick with one POV for a few if needed, and then switching more frequently when needed. Reckoning is also shorter than Defiant despite, I think, a lot more happening in the book.

Beyond pacing, I think the character work for each of the POVs came through well to my mind. I feel my prose levelled up again, which enabled me to fit more story into fewer words; and I managed to overcome a narrative issue I was having with Talia. Going into book 5 I think things are well placed for a pretty explosive finale.

Have you grown as a writer since publishing Ascendant? How?

I’d like to think so. I’d like to think I’m always improving.

Of all the SoC books, I think Ascendant can look/feel the most structured on the surface because it follows the heroes journey closely, and beginnings are often the easiest to write and most comforting to read. However, out of all the SoC books, I also think Ascendant has the most contrivances in it. I feel I took a hammer to elements in order to make them fit the structure, whereas in the sequels I don’t feel events/lore are as contrived or forced. Whether readers agree or think that’s ultimately better is up to them, but I think I’ve developed and I hope I keep doing so. 

Would you recommend self-publishing or traditional publishing? Why?

So neither option is perfect or a panacea. I’m not and have never been some ‘anti-trad’ guy, and I’m not ruling out giving that route a go in the future.

It comes down to your own personality and what will work best for each writer, and perhaps for each book. Certain genres and styles almost require to be traditionally published to stand a real chance e.g. cookbooks, children’s picture books and so forth.

In SFF, if you’re writing short cozy fantasy novels or romantasy, traditional might be the best way to go because they’re looking for shorter works and the economies of print will benefit from that. Whereas if you’ve got a doorstopper epic fantasy or LitRPG you’ll struggle right now running the gauntlet of traditional, whereas you can get more bang for buck out of a long ebook in Kindle Unlimited and (for now at least) you can squeeze more out of audiobooks too. 

Moreover, there is a question of how much work do you want to take on and feel comfortable with. If you self-publish you’re starting your own business and learning more things than you’ll ever be aware of going in – you will not simply be writing all day. The flipside is you call the shots, you can take the calculated risk, run the promo, change the cover, try things and always be there pushing your book. 

In traditional, you’ll get less say, you can’t pull levers, so if things fizzle out and go wrong you might feel stuck. On the plus side, a lot is handled for you, you’re far more likely to be in shops and get onto panels at events; you’ll have a community of authors more to hand from your imprint – and, arguably best of all, there is zero financial risk. 

Some people might hate the idea of handing everything off. Others will baulk at the thought of registering ISBNs.

The choice is always, what is the right path for YOU?

As an indie author, how do you go about marketing your book? (e.g., making plushies, composing music, and getting special book designs).

First and foremost, the books need to be well titled and packaged. If the title and cover don’t grab people and convey a sense of the emotional experience they will find in the book, you’ll lose too many people at the first hurdle. Then work on your pitch lines so you can easily convey the story – it’s X meets Y might seem trite but it’s really useful. Remember, the general public don’t know anything about your story and could not give a fig about it. You need to make it easy for them to begin to be interested. 

Once you’ve got a great book, well packaged you can start on everything else.

There’s a lot to be said for basic social media hygiene – i.e. making sure your profiles are setup, that you have a link to your mailing list sign up clear, that you pitch that with pinned posts, that your website is professional and up to date and all the links work. You can never quite set and forget these things. 

When you make social posts try to be yourself – don’t make overly elaborate content if it isn’t your power swing. I’d say focus on doing one platform well rather than many poorly. 

Connect with other writers roughly at your level in your genre and join forces to run joint promotions. 

Now for the stuff that takes time and/or money.

Reach out to as many creators as possible and offer your books without expectations. This will be a numbers game, but keep at it. In the end, the more eyeballs on your books the better. 

I keep background AMS ads running – they seem impossible to scale so I find a sweet spot and keep them on. I know they work because last year there was a glitch which turned them off for a couple of weeks and my ranks fell considerably. 

In the past I found Facebook great for audio but that too faded away. I no longer run them but your mileage may vary. 

I’ve delved into YouTube sponsorships to push audio. This can work really well but they are big gambles and defo not for those starting out. 

The music was something I felt would jazz up my audiobooks and add that subconscious wow factor for people going into them blind. It gives that sense of ‘oh hey cool music, wow this thing must be really good for such resources to be spent on it’. Getting it done was straightforward, just pricey!

Special editions are fantastic as they offer extra advertising for your book while hopefully earning money at the same time! 

Some people will run a Kickstarter for a special edition sooner and that’s up to you. I think you might be best served building an audience up more so your Kickstarter will scale better, but I don’t know everything! I opted to work closer with The Broken Binding. When I started with TBB, it was for signed bookplates on paperback copies. SoC proved itself and we’ve worked up through various tiers to end with special editions.

Overall, say yes to things and learn what does and doesn’t work for you. Experiment and take small risks from time to time. Know you’ll fail a lot, but you’ll learn and then double down on what works. 

I’m also a dragon writer/rider, so I’m curious about your creative process as you developed Songs of Chaos. Was it challenging to find an original angle in a genre that’s been done so many times before?

Yes and no. I knew I wanted to focus on the dragon bond and center the magic system around it to create a reason why dragons would bond to humans at all. Once I decided Ash should be blind, a lot spun out from there by asking questions about how this conflicts with the world. 

I don’t think you have to something wild and crazy to feel fresh. If you do something realllllllly well, people will like it. Pizza isn’t a novel food, but we all know the difference between terrible and ridiculously good pizza. 

One of my favorite parts of Defiant was Holt’s little birthday celebration. It gave me a glimpse of joy in an otherwise crumbling world. Is this something you enjoy doing in your books?

These moments come up naturally, I guess. I’m always searching for ways to make the characters feel real and connected to each other and to the reader. Small moments can often do the heavy lifting for that. 

Was it difficult writing the axe-forging scenes with Osric Agravain? The detail was incredible. How extensive was your research for these bits?

Ah!! I love you bringing up the forging scene in Unbound. To this day I think it’s the scene in the series I’m most proud of as an author. It felt like the perfect coming together of world building, character, plot and escalating tension. 

And yeh the research I did for blacksmithing is the most extensive I’ve ever done. I wanted to use real techniques and then nudge them sideways so that you could believe this might really work.

How riders forge dragon steel is a combination of two real world methods of forging normal steel – a crucible method and a folding method. Folding steel (what we think of as Damascus) doesn’t make the steel better per se. It’s what you’d do if your steel is of low quality because the folding helps remove impurities. If you fold good steel you’ll just knock out the carbon which will weaken it. So by beginning with the crucible method, you can get close to pure steel using medieval techniques, and then by folding it riders are deliberately trying to knock out the carbon binding to the iron and replacing it with their own magic to create dragon steel. 

With how hard and laborious this process is, it became fertile ground for scenes of character introspection and growth all while creating super cool magical weapons. The weapons feel earned because the characters undergo an ordeal to create them.

I wish more people noted the forging scenes as I’m super proud of them and the method haha… but you can’t predict what people are going to latch onto.

Well, that’s all the questions I have for you today. Thank you for joining me, Michael! Do you have any platforms we can find you on?

Thanks for having me on, Michael!

I’m most active on Instagram, my subreddit r/MichaelRMiller and my Discord server (link: https://discord.gg/C7zEJXgFSc)

I’ll also plug my mailing list which offers 2 free novellas in ebook AND audiobook format to everyone who signs up. One story for SoC and another for my first series, The Dragon’s Blade. Link here: https://www.michaelrmiller.co.uk/signup

Can we get a final comment from the author?

To anyone who checks out my books, I appreciate you taking a chance on them. 

And remember, sometimes the world needs a little chaos…