Ken Sevier

I live in Houston, Texas. The Last Lantern is my first novel, and it turned into a trilogy before I had finished arguing with myself about whether I was allowed to write one.

I wrote it because I wanted to read a fantasy where the hero's one useful skill was feeding people, and as far as I could tell nobody had written that book. Most portal fantasy hands you a sword. I wanted to know what happens if it hands you a pan and a building with a leaking roof, and whether you could make an argument about law and kindness out of that without it turning into a lecture.

The answer took 319,000 words and about a year. My wife edits everything I write, which is the single best thing that has happened to the prose.

How I work

I write every word myself. No AI drafted, outlined, rewrote, polished or generated any part of these books, and none ever will. I say this plainly because readers ask and publishers ask, and both deserve a straight answer rather than a careful one.

I serialize free on Royal Road and I post on a schedule and keep it. The whole trilogy was finished before the serial was halfway up, so there is no risk of the story stalling out at chapter sixty because I lost the thread. I know how it ends. I have known for a while.

What I am doing now

Finishing the serial, which runs into 2027, and looking for the right home for the books in print and audio. If that is you, the rights page has the numbers you need and I answer email the same day.

If you are a reader, the best thing you can do is tell one person who would like it. That is genuinely how this works at my size, and I notice every time it happens.