#MondayGuest l Benjamin Mester, Author of The Banished Lands

Benjamin Mester is native of San Diego but can often be found wandering the woods of northern Minnesota.  He fell in love with language at an early age – the eloquence of poetry or the grandeur of an epic story.  Fantasy is his favorite genre, crafting new and magical places of heroism and adventure.  When he isn't writing, he's often taking long walks through nature or wondering about his place in the wide world.

Benjamin is the author of The Banished Lands series.

You can visit him on Goodreads.

About the Book:

A kingdom in danger. A prophecy that will change everything. But will they understand it in time? The old world is gone, and barely even histories remain. But something from that time is returning. The closing lines of a farewell poem, written centuries ago by the last great king of the age to his slain wife, might be more than just a poem:
The world and all its light shall fade,
I'll stay with her beneath the shade
And wait until the world's remade...

Join us in this epic fantasy adventure as three friends plunge into the great mystery of their age, twelve centuries in the making. A mysterious fog blankets the forest just outside the sleepy town of Suriya. A dark plot unfolds as Durian and his friends discover ties between a strange wanderer and the warlike barbarian kingdom far to the north. Are the mysterious things happening in the forest a prelude to invasion? What happens next will propel Durian and his curious friends into the middle of the oldest riddle in the history of their kingdom, a dozen centuries old.

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What’s inside the mind of a fantasy author?

The thrilling reality that anything is possible, that your world can be as expansive and alive as the time you're willing to invest.

What is so great about being an author?

People have been telling stories since the dawn of time.  Stories inspire us to be our best selves, to want more for our lives that the mediocrity of day to day living.  When we fall in love with characters wrapped up in epic circumstances, it inspires us to want to make our own lives equally great...to fight for things worth fighting for.  Crafting something that could potentially do that for people really inspires me.  What better thing could you do for someone than to inspire them to want to be better?

When do you hate it?

The middle third of a book is always rough.  It's so much fun starting out when you have a new idea.  But somewhere around the middle, it just becomes work.

What is a regular writing day like for you?

I love to write first thing, cup of coffee in hand.  There's something about the freshness of a new day that silences the discouraging voices saying you'll never finish your book.

How do you handle negative reviews?

I take a deep breath and read the review with as little bias as possible.  If there's anything in there I needed to hear, I try and apply it.  Otherwise, I just give it a thumbs down on Amazon and move on :)

How do you handle positive reviews?

With celebration.  At some point, you have to become really vulnerable to be an author.  Your deep passions and emotions come out all over the page.  When another person connects with that and lets you know it, it's an amazing thing.

What is the usual response when you tell a new acquaintance that you’re an author?

I actually don't usually tell people that unless I know them well.  Since I have a day job, being a gemologist, which is a really interesting field, I usually lead off with that.  It's not that I'm not proud of my work.  It's just, you always seem to get into those awkward conversations where a person you hardly know who probably has never touched your genre says they want to support you and read your book. 

What do you do on those days you don’t feel like writing? Do you force it or take a break?

Definitely I take a break.  And if I have the time, I'll go on a hike and bring my favorite book of poetry.  That often brings me right back into the flow.

Any writing quirks?

Hmm.  Don't think so.  When I first started writing, I always went to 7-11 and got a slurpee.  Which brings up an interesting point.  I think it's helpful to associate writing with something else you enjoy.  Psychologists call it classical conditioning.  Sorry to go off on a tangent, but there was an experiment done once with a dog, and before each meal they fed the dog, they would ring a bell.  After awhile, every time they rang the bell, the dog would start to salivate.  How in the world does that apply to writing?  Well if you associate something with your writing time – something you enjoy that you only do when you're about to write, like me with my slurpee – it can help kickstart your creative process and get the ideas flowing.  It sounds coo coo I know but it really works.  I remember in those early days, driving home with slurpee in hand, my mind would explode with ideas and I couldn't wait to get home to my keyboard.

What would you do if people around you didn’t take your writing seriously or see it as a hobby?

That's their choice.  Since I write a lot of fiction and primarily fantasy, people not taking me seriously is just a way of life. 

Some authors seem to have a love-hate relationship to writing. Can you relate?

Absolutely.  Writing can be an amazingly frustrating undertaking.  But when you create something you're proud of, there's nothing else like it.

Do you think success as an author must be linked to money?

Not at all.  My favorite genre is poetry, which is virtually impossible to make a living at.  There have been world famous poets, like John Keats, who had to stop writing poetry full time because there wasn't enough money in it.  I love that I have a day job because then I can write for the pure enjoyment of it. 

What has writing taught you?

That the written word is beautiful and inspiring.  That stories can inspire us in ways like nothing else can.

Leave us with some words of wisdom.

I started writing after reading Walden, by Henry David Throeau.  He inspired me to live differently, to march to the beat of a different drummer, as he would say.  I'll leave you with a quote of his that continuously inspires me:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.