Joyce Reynolds-Ward (she/her) has been called “the best writer I’ve never heard of” by one reviewer. She has published over 32 books that include themes of high-stakes family, corporate, and political conflict, digital sapience, personal agency, realistic strong women, and (whenever possible) horses, frequently in Pacific Northwest settings.
She is the author of six speculative fiction series: The Netwalk Sequence, Goddess’s Honor, The Martiniere Legacy Quartet, The People of the Martiniere Legacy, The Martiniere Multiverse, and The Cost of Power as well as standalones Vision of Alliance, Federation Cowboy, Beating the Apocalypse, Klone’s Stronghold: Reeni and Alien Savvy.
Joyce is a Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off Semifinalist, a Writers of the Future SemiFinalist, and an Anthology Builder Finalist. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, co-chair of SFWA’s Independent Author Committee, and a member of Soroptimists International.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: joycereynolds-ward.com/books
Bluesky: @joycereynoldsward.bsky.social
We’re here to chat about your high fantasy novel, Vision of Alliance. Where did the initial concept for the book come from? When did you decide this would be a series rather than a standalone?
Vision of Alliance is a continuation of my first fantasy series, Goddess’s Honor. While I tied up the loose ends of that series, one thread that could be a continuation still remained.
Witmara successfully became Empress of Daran, and Rekare transformed into a Goddess. The Divine Confederation was defeated in the lands of Varen, though it still lurks as a threat.
It took me six years and working on a whole different set of books before I finally figured out my way into what I call the Goddess’s Vision trilogy. I couldn’t get into Witmara’s point of view–which, honestly, was pretty typical for this world. I struggled a lot with the earlier books because certain powerful women just didn’t want to open up as characters. But what would be observing secondary characters who ended up getting thrust into those positions of power, like Betsona? Much easier to develop.
Additionally, I struggled with writing a male point of view until I’d written Gabriel Martiniere in my Martiniere Multiverse books. After Gabe, Heinmyets turned out to be much easier to write. Most of the time I don’t write standalones because I can always figure out side stories or extensions of the original work. That happened with my first series, The Netwalk Sequence, and it’s continued. Even my current standalone books have series potential.
Who/what are your main fantasy influences and how have they influenced your thoughts and writing?
As an older writer, I was strongly influenced by what is now considered to be older influences. Tolkien, of course, was a big influence early on. But also E. R. Eddison, especially his Fish Dinner in Memison book, which while full of purple prose also has some amazingly complex political schemes along with fantastical beings and Divine incarnations.
I did not read Ursula K. Le Guin until later in my adult years, and to be honest there were a lot of non-fantasy influences such as John Steinbeck, whose sense of place in all of his stories strongly influenced my own work.
Another element was centered around reading stories about the youth of Elizabeth I, and her careful management of the many dynastic schemes around her to avoid potential disaster. At that time she was the most powerful historical woman I could read about, and how she skillfully danced her way into becoming Queen without running afoul of oh-so-many dangers struck a strong chord within me.
I’ve found a delightful resonance with my writing when I read Sherwood Smith’s fantasy works, and, well, there are so many others. I’m a prolific reader both within genre and beyond it, and always have been, so sometimes it is difficult for me to stop and identify just who has influenced my work.
Recent influences include Kate Elliott, Alma Alexander, Charles de Lint, Glen Cook, N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, and so many others, including historical romance writers Beverly Jenkins and Courtney Milan.
What made you decide to create a high fantasy world based more on a North America/Pacific Northwest framework than a medieval European one, and how did you go about this worldbuilding process?
First of all, I got so tired of reading stories set in castles and a faux-medieval setting that didn’t really resonate with me. I live in the Pacific Northwest and did not have the resources to travel to Europe to see castles and such firsthand.
Additionally, my family on both sides were pretty much poor dirt farmers who came to North America early on, in the 1600s, so I have no tangible, recent connections to Europe, including any romantic tales about noble connections (if I read the family tree correctly from LDS sources, one has to go back to the 1400s to find any gentry tied to my ancestry, and they were minor titles that did not survive the title holder).
My family’s big story is about coming to Oregon with the Applegates and bouncing around trying to scratch a living on the land while trying to remain somewhat friendly with Native peoples (on my mother’s side–my father’s side is from Canada, mostly. Both sides are somewhat obscure for many generations. I know more about my mother’s side than my father’s).
Plus, I looked around at where I live and thought that this place was just as good as a source for epic fantasy as Europe. Tolkien set out to write a mythology for Britain. Well, I wasn’t going to do that–there are perfectly good Native cosmologies connected to the region–but I couldn’t see why I couldn’t create a good secondary world based on the geography of the Pacific Northwest, shaped somewhat by the different peoples who lived here before European invasion.
I spent a lot of time reading histories, which includes Native perspectives on those histories (and is shaping the current work in progress which is still in a worldbuilding stage).
While I lifted the concept of an overwhelming disease that wiped out many of the native peoples of the land of Varen from North American history, what happened after that is its own thing. I deliberately did my best to avoid appropriating concepts from Native American cosmology while being informed about aspects of Native daily life, such as moving around with the seasons based on food harvests.
Most of the Goddess’s Honor books are set in the different nations of the land of Varen. Vision of Alliance is set overseas from the Goddess’s Honor books, in Daran, the empire that sought–and failed–to conquer Varen. But it is still a roughly Pacific Northwest, North American model rather than anything else.
Can you talk more about Bitsona, your disabled FMC, and Witmara, the character who defeats the emperor at the start of the story. How did you construct and develop them as characters, and why was it so important to you to depict female leadership in this novel?
Betsona emerged late in the Goddess’s Honor series as a secretive ally to Witmara’s mother Katerin, who is the Leader of the land of Medvara, in Varen. She identified both Witmara and Witmara and Katerin’s cousin Rekare, the former Leader of Medvara, as potential allies in her campaign to get rid of her brother Chatain, the despotic and downright nasty emperor who Witmara helps overthrow at the beginning of Vision of Alliance.
Betsona doesn’t believe that, despite her strong magic, she has the strength to rule Daran due to her disability, which was caused by a magical accident orchestrated by Chatain. She reaches out to Katerin, Rekare, and Witmara because they are distant cousins from a competing royal house who had been exiled to Varen, therefore they are legitimate contenders for the throne of Daran.
She aspires to be the stereotypical power behind the throne, because that is the role that she sees as being within her grasp. Because of her injury, she also feels that any significant hetrosexual relationship is closed off to her, and while she has a relationship with her friend and servant Seijina, she’s well aware that power dynamics do not make it a true partnership. And other powerful women who might serve as appropriate partners are not trustworthy. A pregnancy has the potential to kill her. And yet…she is drawn to Heinmyets, the aging former Leader of the Two Nations of Keldara and Clenda, in Varen, for reasons she can’t explain, except that due to age he suffers from similar limitations as she does. Obviously, she’s bisexual.
One of the big factors in both Betsona and Witmara’s characters is the role that the land itself plays in leadership. The land possesses magic in both Varen and Daran, and how it responds to its leaders shapes how well they rule.
Chatain mocked and disregarded the land of Daran, which has caused the land’s magic to twist and warp, especially how it is shaped under a long-standing curse that Betsona, as a scholar (Chatain was not), worries about.
Witmara is somewhat the fated Chosen One. Her father Metkyi, a highly-regarded priest of the God Staul, visualized her potential in a letter he wrote to her mother Katerin before his death and Witmara’s birth. However, her challenge as the Chosen One is not achieving the throne of Daran. It is winning the support of Daran’s magic and repairing the damage that has been done to it by that curse that goes back to the nation’s founding. But she is young–barely eighteen–and while she has been raised to rule, she struggles with leadership. Additionally, the Gods ride her hard, especially the dual-natured Staul, and her cousin Rekare, who has recently ascended to Goddesshood.
The Gods have the potential to be hard on those they love. I chose featuring female leadership because I read so many generic male fantasy characters while growing up that I wanted to write something different. As a second wave feminist who nonetheless chooses to grow and evolve, I wanted to create a world where power can be shared equally between the sexes.
Varen is much more egalitarian in that respect, while one of Daran’s problems is its sexism in comparison. And I also wanted to depict different types of relationships besides standard cis-het, even though I am cis-het myself. Most of my female characters are bisexual by nature. And the men…well, they aren’t talking to me about THAT, though I suspect they are. Haran and Orlanden are examples of men in a long-term, stable relationship that has survived over many years despite official objection to their status. There are other male-male relationships implied in the work.
What are the main themes of this novel, and can you talk about why these are important to you? Did they develop organically over the course of the writing process, or did you consciously choose to include them?
While I often start with a major theme, I often find that others sneak in over the course of the writing process. I knew when I finished the last book of Goddess’s Honor (Judgment of Honor) that Witmara would be struggling to centralize her control of the land of Daran, and that this was not just political but magical. I wanted to move past the notion of “happily ever after” because when a reforming leader takes power, there will be objections. I wanted to depict those struggles, and their resolution.
I also wanted to somewhat subvert the Chosen One’s trope to show that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns afterward. Betsona is also a Chosen One, albeit in a different form from Witmara, with a different goal. She has had to learn to live with her limitations, especially since she knows that Chatain deliberately set her up to be killed or disabled, since she would have been an effective competitor for the throne. But she is also of mixed heritage, with her mother being a concubine from a different land. Witmara also is of mixed heritage and that shapes how she is received in Daran.
Note: I do NOT use “race” as a descriptor for either different sapient species or for different ethnicities/cultures. I abhor that usage and avoid it as much as possible. I also chose to illustrate the issues of slavery because that is a significant factor. Witmara openly abhors it because slavery is not common in the lands of Varen, while it is embedded in the nature of Daran. Abolishing it is not easy, however, and leads to unrest.
How do you envision this series developing – how many books will it be, and what can readers look out for?
I pretty much know where the series is going. I stepped back from my original intent to draft it all in 2026 because the first book has had a slow reception, and it’s difficult enough that I needed a break from it.
There will be three books–Vision of Alliance, Vision of Chaos, Vision of Order. Alliance is out now; Chaos probably in the spring of 2027. We’ll see about Order.
Meanwhile, I’m working on a neoWestern multiverse time travel novel with horror elements, loosely called Vortex Worlds. That one is going to be somewhat subversive toward Pacific Northwest history, based on recent revisionist approaches.
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