Fantasy Authors Interview

Meet Ace

We've got another awesome Fantasy author for you today. Please welcome, Ace_Guard and let's hear what they've got to say.

What is your country of origin?

I'm from the Philippines.

What other languages aside from English can you speak fluently?

I speak Filipino/Tagalog.

Are you writing under a pseudonym? Is there a story as to how and why you came up with it? Please tell us about it!

I go by a pseudonym online, which is Ace O. Spades. I had a phase where I was obsessed with cards aesthetic. Ace can be the highest or lowest card in the deck, and it was one of my favorite cards. Spades isn't the highest SUIT in the deck. If anything, it's the second lowest. But "Ace of Spades" sounded nicer than the other three SUITS.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Why do you want to be a writer?

I started writing when I was young, but didn't take it seriously until I was around fourteen or fifteen. My mother would always give me books to read, and reading them made me want to write my own stories. The earliest story I can remember when I was around eight, maybe? We just finished buying notebooks for school, and I had a spare notebook that I really liked. So, I decided to do what every eight year old would probably do with a spare notebook--write a story in it. Unfortunately, there's nothing much I can remember about it except for the fact that it's about three siblings. It's been ten years since I wrote that story v.v

After that, I've been writing a lot of stories. I used to do them for fun or when I'm bored, and they weren't always serious stories. It took a long time to actually want to write a story that I want to share with other people.

Please tell us about your story/ies on Wattpad so that readers could find them.

As of now, I have two stories that I'm currently invested in, and a third story that even though it's not that expanded, I'm still proud of how I managed to pull it off.

My first story, which is going to get a rewrite soon since it's in a dumpster fire first draft phase, is called Untitled. I'm very creative, I know. It's my magnum opus. It's about a boy named Theodore who lives in an orphanage with his biological sister and adoptive siblings. However, upon eavesdropping on a conversation with the orphanage's caretakers, he and his sister escape the orphanage. Once they do, he realizes that the world outside their orphanage isn't just the only secret that was hidden from them. It's a high fantasy that has pre-colonial and colonial Philippines elements because it's a culture.

Another story is my (as of the moment current) ONC entry, Codename: DEMON. This time, it's about a boy named Greyson working in the investigation branch of his company. After a death of a journalist that was close to their group, another organization called the Underworld gives them a task: find something in their company called Demon, and give it to them. The problem is that no one in their company knows what Demon could be. The setting is on the soft sci-fantasy side. The city is a modern city, and the fantasy elements aren't that "hard". Even though I'm planning to expand this, the worldbuilding is on the softer scale.

My third story is my 2021 ONC entry, Three Lies, All True. The story is much simpler compared to the other two. A super soldier named Petra and her twin brother discover the dead body of a general in their castle's gardens. In order to clear their name, the crowned prince of their kingdom sends them to their opposing nation to find evidence that they did not kill the general.

Wow that was a word dump I did not expect to go off that much whoops haha--

What makes for an appealing character in Fantasy stories? Why?