Epic fantasy thrives on unforgettable characters, immersive worlds, and stories that linger long after the final page and this series delivers exactly that. What began as a college-era idea evolved over years into a fully realized saga shaped by life experience, persistence, and a deep understanding of human nature. In this exclusive interview, the author of The Faceless Chronicles series, Grant Pierce shares the emotional journey behind completing the series, the creative process that brought complex characters to life, and the philosophy that guided every twist, battle, and choice.
You’ve mentioned that you first began writing this story during your college years, but only returned to complete it later with encouragement from your daughter. What emotions did you experience when you finally sat down to finish the series?
There was excitement, but there was also a strange kind of grief.
These characters had been with me since college. Kalen, Logan, Valko, and the rest of the world had lived in my head for so long that returning to them felt less like inventing something new and more like coming home to people I had left behind.
I felt nostalgia because I could see the younger version of myself in those early pages. I felt gratitude because I finally had the chance to finish what I started. And I felt the weight of knowing that these characters’ fates had been waiting for me all along.
It was daunting at first, but my wife told me that some stories wait for us until we’re ready to tell them properly.
How long did it take you to complete the entire series from start to finish?
Technically, it took most of my adult life, because I wrote the first book years ago and then set it aside for decades.
In terms of active writing time, the first book took about three years to complete. The second took about a year. The third took around eight months. By the time I reached the later books, I had found my rhythm, and the process became much faster, organized, and streamlined.
A big part of that came from learning how I work best. At this point, I often dictate early work into my iPhone, then use software to transcribe my drafts, and shape that into workable chapters. That allows me to get the raw story down quickly. For me, the first draft is where I discover the bones of the story. The editing phase is where the book becomes what it is supposed to be.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while writing this series?
My biggest challenge was doubt.
Writing one epic fantasy novel is hard. Finishing six novels before publishing the first one was terrifying, because there was always that quiet fear in the back of my mind: What if no one reads this?
For a long time, I worried there might not be an audience for the story I wanted to tell. Eventually, I had to accept that I could not write the series only for some imagined reader. I had to write the story because it mattered to me.
Once I understood that, the process changed. I still wanted readers to find it, of course, but the fear no longer controlled the work. I wrote the series because these characters and their fates would not leave me alone.
Seeing readers connect with the first book has been incredibly rewarding.
Writer’s block is something many authors struggle with and how do you personally deal with it?
I know many writers struggle with writer’s block, but I’ve been fortunate that it has not been a major issue for me.
My challenge is usually the opposite. I tend to have too many ideas competing for space, so the difficult part is deciding what belongs in the story and what needs to be left on the cutting room floor.
I think part of what helps is that I don’t wait until I sit down to write before thinking about the next scene. I usually spend time the day before considering what needs to happen, what needs to change, and where the characters are emotionally. That way, when I sit down to work, I am not staring at a blank page. I already have a direction for the session.
Did you outline the story with a clear blueprint from the beginning, or did the narrative evolve more organically as you wrote?
I use a hybrid approach.
Before I write a book, I usually know what the climax will look like. I also think about what would make a strong midpoint twist, where the story should begin, and the book’s cast of characters. Once I have those pieces, my job is to connect the dots from beginning to end.
That gives me a roadmap without chaining me to a rigid outline. I know where the story is headed, but I still leave myself room to discover things along the way.
That flexibility is important to me because some of my favorite moments are the quieter, more personal scenes between characters. Those “slice of life” moments may not always be part of the original plan, but they make the world feel lived-in and give the larger battles more emotional weight.
The world-building and character development are particularly strong, especially with complex figures like Gwynden. Could you walk us through your creative process in developing the world and its characters?
When I was in college, I took an Acting 101 course. I was a terrible actor, but the professor gave me advice that stayed with me. She said that to build believable characters, you have to pay attention to people. Look at their mannerisms, contradictions, fears, habits, and the way they reveal themselves under pressure. Her advice shaped how I write.
Most of my characters are not based on one specific person, but they are influenced by pieces of people I have met, observed, worked with, or read about over the years. My background and training in clinical and forensic psychology has also given me a close look at how people respond to guilt, fear, trauma, loyalty, violence, grief, and survival. Those experiences helped me understand that people are rarely simple. They can be brave and selfish, loving and destructive, broken and dangerous, sometimes all at once.
That is what I try to bring into the world-building and character work. I want the kingdoms, factions, monsters, and magic to feel epic, but I want the people inside that world to feel human. Even the darker characters need motives, wounds, and contradictions that make them feel real. In real life, bad people are rarely mustache-twirling evil men who want to “rule the world.” They are more complex than that. In my experience, even the most vile, evil people consider themselves the heroes of their own story.
The plot twists are a major highlight of the series. How did you approach crafting and pacing those twists?
I approach plot twists as consequences, not tricks or gimmicks.
For me, a good twist should surprise the reader, but it should also feel inevitable once they look back. I don’t want a twist to come out of nowhere just for shock value. I want the clues to be there, even if the reader doesn’t recognize them at first.
Pacing is a big part of that. You cannot hit readers with revelation after revelation without giving them time to absorb what just happened. I try to let each twist change the story in a meaningful way. It should alter a relationship, deepen a conflict, reveal a hidden truth, or force a character to make a harder choice than the one before.
The goal is not just to make readers say, “I didn’t see that coming.” The goal is to make them say, “I should have seen that coming, and now everything feels different.”
Were there any specific scenes that required significant rewriting or reworking? If so, what made them particularly difficult?
The climax of each book is something I write, rewrite, and write again.
To me, the climax is the payoff for the reader who has spent the last several hundred pages investing in the characters, the conflicts, and the world. It is where all the promises of the story have to come due. If the ending doesn’t feel earned, then the rest of the book suffers.
I want the climax to be the part that stays with the reader after the last page is turned. The battles matter, but so do the choices, the losses, the revelations, and the consequences. A strong climax should not just be loud. It should feel inevitable, emotional, and worth the journey.
If I don’t think I have written a climax worth talking about, I go back to the drawing board until I feel it.
Is there a character you feel especially connected to? What makes that character stand out to you personally? Did any character evolve in an unexpected way as you were writing?
Kalen is probably the character I feel most connected to.
He is not perfect. He is driven by loyalty, mercy, and guilt, and those things often put him at odds with the world around him. I like that he is heroic not because he always knows the right answer, but because he keeps trying to do the right thing even when the world punishes him for it.
In the face of impossible odds, when everyone else has accepted their fate and the world is literally crumbling around them, Kalen refuses to give up.
The character who surprised me most was Valko. He started as a dangerous shapeshifter pawn, but as I wrote the series, he evolved into something much bigger. He became more complex, more unsettling, and much more central to the larger conflict than I originally expected.
That was one of the most exciting parts of writing the series: realizing that a character I thought I understood still had far more to reveal.
The main characters’ names: Jadica, Kalen, Logan, and Irisa appear to follow an alphabetical pattern. Was this an intentional choice, and does it hold any deeper significance?
Wow, I did not notice that until you pointed it out. My subconscious must have been working overtime.
The pattern was not intentional, and there is no hidden alphabetical code behind it. The names were actually different when I first started writing the series. Over the years, I changed them across all the books several times until they finally felt right.
For me, character names have to fit the person, the world, and the tone of the story. A name can look fine on paper and still feel wrong once the character starts speaking. Jadica, Kalen, Logan, and Irisa eventually became the names that felt natural to them.
Some readers find Jadica to be a frustrating or polarizing character. Was this intentional, and how do you respond to that reaction?
I have heard that reaction to Jadica, and I understand it.
What has been interesting is that different readers had similar reactions to Irisa, Kalen, Gwynden, and Sasha. To me, that usually means the characters are landing as people rather than as perfectly polished actors.
Not every character is meant to be safe or universally likable. Some characters make decisions that frustrate us. Some carry wounds that affect how they treat others. Some are stubborn, guarded, selfish, loyal, brave, or reckless in ways that feel very human.
As a writer, I am less interested in making every character easy to like than in making them difficult to forget. If a character stays in a reader’s head after the book is closed, then I’ve succeeded as a writer.
Are there any thematic influences from the Bible or Christian tradition in your story, or is that interpretation coincidental? Or were there any specific myths, cultures, or historical influences that inspired your world?
I did not set out to write the series as a Biblical or Christian allegory.
That said, I do think the story draws on older mythic patterns that show up across many cultures and traditions. I have always been interested in psychology, sociology, and the way people use stories to make sense of good and evil, fate and choice, power and corruption, sacrifice and mercy.
A lot of fantasy is built from themes that feel ancient because they appear in so many forms: the chosen one, the wise mentor, the trickster, the dark lord, the hero’s journey, the impossible prophecy, the war between creation and destruction. Those ideas are not tied to any one tradition. They belong to the universal human experience across time and civilizations.
So if readers notice echoes of religious or mythological themes, I understand why. Those patterns are part of the soil fantasy grows from. But the series was not written as a direct retelling or allegory. I was much more interested in taking those familiar mythic ingredients and twisting them through my characters’ unique choices, flaws, loyalties, and consequences.
How do you balance character development with plot progression in a long series?
I see character development and plot progression as feeding each other.
A long series gives you room to let characters grow, break, heal, fail, and become something different from what they were at the beginning. But that growth has to come through the story itself. It cannot feel separate from the action.
I want readers to see characters changed by what they endure. A character who survives betrayal should not trust the same way afterward. A character who makes a terrible choice should carry that guilt. A character who wins should still have to ask what that victory cost.
That is the balance I care about most. The plot keeps pushing forward, but the emotional weight travels with the characters. The battles, betrayals, victories, and losses should matter not only because they move the story ahead, but because they leave marks on the people who survive them.
What do you hope readers take away from this series?
I hope readers take away the idea that even in difficult or impossible circumstances, the choices we make still matter.
This series has prophecy, war, demons, reapers, shapeshifters, and all the things I love about epic fantasy. But at its heart, it is about people trying to hold on to loyalty, love, and mercy in a world that keeps trying to strip them away.
I want readers to feel the victories and the losses. I want them to understand why the characters make the choices they make, even when those choices hurt. And when readers finish the series, I hope they feel like they did not just visit a world. I hope they feel like they survived it alongside the characters.
If there is one idea at the center of the series, it is this: even in our darkest hour, when everything is falling apart, we should never give up.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors starting a long-term project?
I am actually planning to focus more of my TikTok and, eventually, my YouTube channel on helping aspiring authors with common problems writers face, from craft to marketing.
For now, the most important advice I can give is simple: write consistently.
There is a romantic idea that authors sit around waiting for inspiration to strike, then spend hours lost in beautiful prose as words pour onto the page from our fingertips. Sometimes writing does feel that way, and when it does, it is wonderful. But most of the time, authorship is about discipline.
You have to show up even when you are tired, distracted, discouraged, or not in the mood. Especially on a long-term project, consistency matters more than inspiration. Inspiration may help you start a book, but discipline is what helps you finish one.
Anyone can be a writer. Authors are the ones who finish, revise, and publish.
Conclusion: Why This Series Deserves a Place on Your Shelf
This interview offers just a glimpse into the depth, care, and passion behind the Shapeshifter Gambit series. With its layered characters, emotionally driven storytelling, and carefully crafted twists, the series stands as a testament to what happens when a story is given the time it needs to fully mature.
If you’re drawn to epic fantasy that balances large-scale conflict with deeply human struggles—stories where choices matter and consequences linger—this is a journey worth taking. Dive into the series and experience a world where survival is not guaranteed, but meaning is always earned.
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