Awakened is the epic story of the gods of old reborn within our modern era; and what epic would be complete without diving into a story about the god of the seas? Well, that was not how things really started out.

Atlantica had been dancing around in the back of my mind since about the time Prism and Travada were being written in 2018. Then I wrote Oblivion which was a story that took me completely by surprise. Another novel, Primal, then jumped in front of Oblivion as a kind of sequel to Travada. So with these three novels mostly complete, the novel entitled Atlantica emerged as a story that needed to be told to bridge the stories together.

Atlantica was a fun story to write. It gave me some really creative license to not just expand the Awakened epic, but touch on some more serious elements and themes that are all near and dear to my heart as a writer.

There are some interesting little tidbits of detail within Atlantica that a casual reader might miss: veiled puns, descriptions of people that might remind you of characters from similarly themed movies, that kind of thing. They were fun to write and include.

But there are also more serious themes playing out within the novel that I had not planned from the outset of even putting in the book. Fiction often mirrors the themes and events playing out in real life. Atlantica picked up on these themes quite by accident—I did not begin writing the book with the intention of taking the story in the direction it went. In fact, I never do this. I always allow the story to just tell itself. All I do is follow where the people in the story are leading.

Atlantica rather surprised me, both in the depth of the story (no pun intended) and how it settled neatly into the milieu of the Awakened universe. In the end, Atlantica will stand out as one of my favorite stories for many reasons. It borrows heavily from people, places and events we are all familiar with, places people into situations we all would probably like to have seen, and spins up a fairytale romance that anyone would love to read. I absolutely love how this novel came together. I know you’ll love it as well.

All the best.

~ Harley