Author Spotlight: Maxime J. Durand

I set the stage for The Flower War very early in book 1 when Iztac engineered a crisis between his empire and the rival Sapa Empire in order to bleed out his vampiric masters and exploit the chaos for his own gain. This was very much the first time Iztac began to do horrible deeds for what he perceived as the ‘greater good’ and The Flower War is the book where he reaps what he has sown; for good or ill. This volume is very much the moment when Iztac is finally forced to confront the consequences of his actions and self-reflect. 

Well, through escalation! More seriously, Iztac might have godlike powers but so does the opposition; the entire series was about him gaining enough knowledge, sorcery and allies to confront Nightlords like Sugey in battle, and she’s not the strongest of her group. For all the challenges she provides, she’s only a stepping stone towards even worse foes.

Moreover, I was also careful to put another kind of pressure; namely that every Nightlord slain brings their father, the dreaded night deity of Yohuachanca (whom they betrayed and sealed) closer to freedom; so part of the challenge for Iztac is figuring out how to defeat his foes while delaying the inevitable apocalypse that will follow once all his mortal foes are slain.  

Sugey drew inspiration from two major sources: like all characters in Blood & Fur she’s based on real mesoamerican practices (flower wars being localized engagements to bleed out enemy states without risking a full scale engagement and a way for supernumerary sons to capture slave concubines for marriage). I feel the true horror of her actions is that people actually practiced what she preached once upon a time (the Aztec sacrificed over 40,000 prisoners of war to consecrate a grand temple once according to some texts; just imagine the kind of bloody military campaigns it took to gather that number). The second inspiration were a handful of military leaders involved in various ethnic cleansings, like Théoneste Bagosora and Pol Pot.

In general, I created Sugey as a criticism of the ‘proud noble warrior’ archetype. There’s regularly certain characters in fantasy works that preach that war is glorious, that it brings the best out of mankind, that it makes a show of respecting enemy warriors and condemning cowards… Well, Sugey has all the trappings of that archetype, but twists them. She ‘respects’ enemy warriors by letting them go after murdering their families so they’ll fight harder, she pretends to fight fairly when being a powerful vampire demigoddess rampaging through humans who can’t possibly match her, and uses war as a tool of ethnic cleansing. I mean, her transformation is a vulture; a literal animal war profiteer. 

In short, I feel she feels compelling because she embodies the ugliness of war distilled into one ugly bird of carrion; the shoulder devil that whispers in the ear of so many would-be warmongers even today.    

I always begin my novels with the end in mind and set in stone, so I know where to go; the ending I wrote for the fifth and final book (currently completed on Patreon) was the same I imagined when I started the series over a year and a hundred-twenty chapters back. It was more of a question of which milestones Iztac would encounter on his way to the end. I was careful to roughly time each volume or so to an Underworld layer where Iztac would confront a different problem (in the first, it was discovering the truth about the world he lived and magic; in the second, he had to undergo fear-themed trials and deal with his family; the third is themed about morality tests and so on) so each volume brought different challenges than the previous. 

I would say that Blood & Fur also benefitted from a first person narration in that I spent the entire series in Iztac’s head (to the point writing a third person interlude felt like a chore after 100+ first person chapters), so readers were trapped with his doubts, confusion, and biases. It really got people invested in his character development. 

I spent like 70% of preplanning on worldbuilding, 25% on characters, and the rest on a basic outline (if at all). Blood & Fur was special because the idea came to me while I was on an Aztec culture reading binge (history reading is a big hobby of mine) so a lot of the world and culture was heavily based on my research on mesoamerican and precolumbian empires, though with a fantasy twist like vampires and dinosaurs. I feel the story comes out organically once the world’s elements inevitably collide.

However, I also always keep the right to get a better idea down the line so some elements like the Underworld layers were heavily influenced by my experiences after I started the series (The Flower War’s third Underworld layer was heavily inspired by the works of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch after I discovered him). 

I would say it depends less on the medium, and more its consumer. 

As in, LitRPG is a genre where readers want to see stats going up, progress, power. They’re in it to see a main character (and I say one, because splitting the focus is a make or break in too many cases) ascend in power through the world. In those cases I focus on designing in-depth systems so that readers can always receive a sense of progression from like a new skill or item. These readers are in it to see the System more than the world, and hence the former must be at the core of the latter. 

By contrast, most non-LitRPG novel readers are usually looking for something beyond pure progression; The Perfect Run focused a lot more on the core cast and character dynamics because while readers were invested in the main character’s progress, they also wanted to hear more about the character than, say, classes. This opens more opportunities to focus on the world rather than the power system. 

Finally, games are fundamentally different because you have the benefit of interactivity. Players can see the world rather than imagine it, hear things, and choose to deviate from the script; so the worldbuilding has to focus more on the environment than the scenario itself. In short, the world has to tell its story the same way going through Pompei’s ruins will give you a pretty good idea of what happened there, rather than have the characters tell it to the player directly. 

Thanks, and it’s been thrilling! 

For the journey, it started roughly a year ago when I met Lanterns Studios’ CEO Jihed Jaouabi (who I had already befriended through a mutual acquaintance and kept in touch with) to expand my various brands into video game format. I always wished to branch out further from books and audiobooks, the same I pioneered webnovel to webtoon adaptation with Tapas on Vainqueur. I’m something of an avid gamer myself (I actually developed a RPG maker game back in high school), so it felt like a logical step. After some consideration we decided that The Perfect Run would probably be the best property to adapt and we set out to make a game out of it. 

I co-funded and supervised the demo’s development with the goal of then presenting it to a publisher, which we did at the Gamescom 2024. We met some of Sony’s people there, learned of the MENA initiative, and things snowballed from there. 

As for the gameplay, I’m heavily invested in it to ensure it’s both enjoyable and true to the books. I wasn’t willing to support a game I would not enjoy playing myself, so I’ll make sure it’ll be as good as it can be in our circumstances. 

I’m enthusiastic about people who never read the book discovering the novel in another format, the same way many people never knew about the Witcher until they played the trilogy. I suspect it will bring the book and universe closer to the spotlight for many people. 

Otherwise, I’m enthusiastic about people exploring new endings. Since The Perfect Run game is nonlinear due to its timeloop mechanic, the player will have the option of changing the fate of New Rome and its characters compared to the novel. 

Ah! Well, I’m addicted to coffee, though I’ve been slowly reducing my intake now that I’m following a dental treatment. I do feel sleep quality (and especially isolation) is ten times more important for productivity than coffee itself though; a good rest makes a world of difference. 

Honestly I feel the two worlds are simply too different for a meaningful crossover (one being a modern postapocalypse superhero comedy and the other an Aztec-themed dark fantasy), but if I had to do a crossover, I would have Iztac himself be a cameo boss of some kind (I dunno, like a multiversal tournament). Who knows, maybe you’ll get to see it happen if the game works well and we develop combat DLCs…

It’ll depend on the fan, I suppose 😉 Some of them have bounced off one series but loved the other. I do suspect they’ll lose more sleep over The Perfect Run since it’s a choice/route based game sure to drive any completionist crazy.  .

Truth be told, this year feels a bit mixed. 

On one hand, I feel my most recent books and series like Blood & Fur haven’t encountered the success of Apocalypse Tamer and The Perfect Run (largely because I took a pause off LitRPGs to try new stuff), but I’m proud of completing the Blood & Fur series and The Perfect Run being picked by Sony is an immense honor for me. I hope the latter in particular will open the path to future game adaptations in our field, the same way I was one of the first Royal Road writers to get a webtoon with Vainqueur the Dragon and now everyone has one. You just need a few test cases to open the floodgates.