Jason Behnke, The Book of Urm

About the Author

Jason is a graphic designer and illustration, and recently - Indie writer of the fabulous Fantasy Series, The Book of Urm, Tales from Piecora.

Since the mid-90, he's been developing a fantasy world while working 2-63 jobs to pay the bills and student loans and on nights/weekends developing his illustrations portfolio to chase his passion and ambition of being a commercially viable illustration in the SFF art market.

Jason shared with us that for decades, he averaged around 10 hours of sleep a week to follow his dreams. After fives and half years of college, He struggled with college debts all the way through hos late 40. He confessed that he wasn't born from money and had to work hard to somehow make it all worth it.

Jason is known mostly for his early work on Magic : The Gathering in the late 90's as well as Legend of Five Rings. He's also the lead artist and layout designer for the independently published Liminal RPG written by his friend in the UK, Paul Mitchener.

Jason runs a small graphic design business for a handful of clients and specializing in presentation design.

In June 2024, Jason decided to try his hand at writing and publishing stories from this fantasy world called Urm, and a month later he launched the Book Of Urm project that features weekly episodic chapters written in real time as a chance for reader to "look over his shoulders" as these stories evolve and come to life. He also offer extra rewards to supporting members on Patreon like access to advance chapters, downloadable original art, monthly stories and lore articles.

The first book, Tales of Piecora 01 - The Emerald Cave, launched on July 4th 2024, and ended on Halloween October 31 and is now fully available on Bookshop.org and other distributors. Book 2, the Haunted Fortress, began a month later as he started researching publishing option initially for book 1.

I had the immense privilege to be offered a reading of the book 1 - The Emerald Cave and let me tell you that I really enjoy the ride. I also had the pleasure to communicate with Jason about his universe and his fabulous artworks and I am now sharing this with you, readers an art aficionados.

• I know it's like asking a parent who their favorite child is, but could you tell us which book of yours keeps a special place for you and why ?

Book 1, Tales of Piecora - The Emerald Cave will always be the favorite, I'm willing to predict. All of the magic of discovery happened while writing Book 1. It's when everything fell together and created the blueprint that I would follow moving forward. It proved to me that I could actually string sentences together, and then paragraphs, and then chapters, and after four months an actual completed book. It's still hard for me to believe to this day, and I don't think I'll ever fully comprehend it. It's also when I discovered the joy of writing that i never experienced before.

• What was your inspiration for the Book of Urm's Universe and all the stories within it ?

I grew up dead center of the "satanic panic" of the late seventies and eighties. I was bullied at school and had a hard time growing up in an abusive low-income white, conservative family who preached "christian values" while never adhering to those principles themselves. The hypocrisy I encountered as a kid helped me understand fundamental human nature at a very early age that I would build on for the rest of my life. I found escape in discovering Dungeons and Dragons in my early teenage years, and through roleplaying games I was able to learn about myself and explore my own values and ethics. I learned so many nuances of life and people through role-playing as a kid, and this developed into my own observational experiences of life and people as I grew older as an artist, and eventually this all culminated into creating the world of Urm in the mid-90's.

• What comes first for you - the plot, the world building or the characters - and why ?

The characters. They are the beating heart of whatever you're writing. You could write a shopping list on a napkin for the grocery store and if it involved interesting characters, people will read it. I've learned that nobody cares plot or world-building if they can't care about the characters who live there.

• How are you building your wold and developing your characters ? Are you using people you know, things you see and work around it or are you more the kind to build the world first with tons of research to create everything from scratch ?

I base everything on what I've experienced in my own life, but then apply it to this fictional, fantastical world comprising of things I might find interesting to explore. I also try to keep it all intimate and hyper-focus. Instead of describing everything from some floating non-character or detached narrator, I try to describe everything from someone's perspective. And as "high Fantasy" as I tend to find myself writing sometimes, it all needs to feel viscerally real. Don't just describe it ...put the reader through it. Make them experience it themselves. My main technique for this is to always return to the five senses...no matter what the situation is, what does it feel, smell, taste, look, and sound like. If you can nail these things down, you can convince someone that pigs can actually fly.

• What part of the book did you have the hardest time writing ?

There's a point in a book when the rent comes due, and you need to start figuring out how to wrap it all together and make it all make sense at the end. It's challenging but also probably the most fun for me. Also, another critically important thing to me is getting character nuance right especially if it involves prickly subjects like romance, or abuse. I have to shut the door, eliminate all distractions, and really fold myself into my own consciousness to navigate through these passages correctly. It's extremely important to me that sensitive topics be treated reverently and respectfully, while not being overdone or gratuitous. I firmly believe in respecting the reader - their time, their intelligence, and their patience. You are serving them with your words. Make them meaningful. Make it worth their time to read them.

• What part of the book was the most fun to write ?

I think my favorite stuff to write is dialog, and this is heavily inspired by Heinlein. If you've read any Heinlein, it's like 90% dialog no matter what the setting is or who the characters are. it was Heinlein who showed me that you can hang an entire book on the strength of the dialog. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is my favorite novel of his. Absolutely recommend reading that and is a fine example of what I'm talking about, but most of his other works are worthy as well. Another influence is Nancy Kress and her book Beggars and Choosers. Amazing dialog. I need to pick up the others in that series.

• Would you and Piecora (main character) get along ?

I absolutely love Piecora as she is so many things that I admire and envy in people, but I doubt she would even give me the time of the day.

• What is your writing process like ? Are you more of a plotter or a pantser ? Did you ever plan everything and start writing to just say "bollocks, the characters are speaking to me, let's try that instead." ? Or do you prefer to follow the intitial blueprint your prepared from A to Z ?

I always start with a powerpoint slide that looks like a crime board from some noir detective show, with boxes and connecting lines all over the place. This was the only way i could bring The Emerald Cave home and make any sense once I got near the final chapters.

Then I move onto a very rough, very broad outline for each chapter. This is intentionally left wide open as I've learned that no matter how detailed I try to be here, things will always change when i'm in the thick of writing a chapter. Characters will suddenly just go off script and do their own things, and I just follow along and go with it. Then it's up to me to make it all make sense as we plow forward.

This will probably sound weird, but I write like I run a D&D campaign. I "prep" for each week, and when a chapter releases into the wild, that's like game time for me. Everything goes live, warts'n all, and then i go back to writing the next chapter based on what has already transpired.

Doing this is like drawing with a pen or marker. You cannot go back to previous chapters and make changes. You can only move forward, and as scary as this sounds, I actually LOVE it. it makes writing exciting for me and really challenges me both creatively and cerebrally. it forces me to commit. Whatever i wrote last week becomes cannon whether I like it or not. i love it because this is exactly like life. What's done is done. i can only move forward. I'm forced to adapt to a future being laid by the past and present. So when I'm writing it feels like I'm spectating and chronicling events that are unfolding before me. I cannot tell you how often each chapter I say to myself, "Well, shit, that's a thing now..." or "Welp, we're going there."

• What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focus ? What are the tools you are using in your writing habits ?

My studio is my sensory deprivation tank. i shut the (airlock) door, turn the fan on for a white noise, and occasionally play ambient, unobtrusive music. My tools are Word and Powerpoint for crafting the stories, as well as my online dictionary/thesaurus tool at powerthesaurus.org. Other browser tabs that are open include the many pages of my online wiki for Urm where I keep everything together, and Google Translate for proper names. I do not use AI. If I need to find a term for an area I'm unfamiliar with, I'll search the web and do research.

• Which famous author would you like to see writing a fanfiction based on your work and what would be the twist ?

Oh wow...wow...my initial thought was Ursula K. LeGuin, rest her precious and beautiful soul. Octavia Butler also comes to mind...that thought becomes more awesome the more i think about it

• If you were to write a spin-off about a side character, which would you pick ?

My initial thought is Vinexi and Allis and their story, but then I think Karui might also be a fun exploration.

• If you could spend a day with another popular author, whom would you choose ? Dead or Alive.

Off the top of my head : Tolkien, Lewis, McCaffrey, Herbert, LeGuin, Moorcock, Howard, Heinlein, Lovecraft, Kress, Whitman, Gibson, Dick, Blake, Milton.

• I tend to have Skittles, separated by colors and a massive cup of home made brew tea near my workstation when I am writing ot blogging (Who said weirdo ?!) What's your favorite writing snack and/or drink ?

My wife makes me tea and I make two smoothies each day :

Green - Water, spinash, chia seeds, sesame seeds, flax meal, hemp hearts, dates, and frozen mango slices

Red - Water, cacao powder, cacao nibs, maca powder, almond butter, Himalayan salt and frozen mixed berries.

I basically don't eat solid food until 4pm.

• What's your kryptonite as a writer ?

Incessant, repeated sounds like a dog barking, leaf blowers, etc. I completely shut down and want to ram my head through the monitor.

• When was the last time you Googled yourself and what did you find ?

LOL, last night...seriously...but there's always a reason why, and I forget what prompted it last night. I usually find my artwork from Artstation, Cara, or my website. But then I find another guy with my name who was incarcerated in Florida and for some reason it always cracks me up because a) it's Florida and b) it happened like decades ago but still comes up.

• Do you play music while you write ?

Rarely as it's too disruptive, but when i do it's ambient either downloaded from Low Light Mixes or purchased on Bandcamp (my handle is Wind and Rain if you are interested in my library).

• If your books were made into a movie, which actors would play your characters ? And who is the the movie director (both could be dead or alive) ?

GOD... what a salivating head exercise. Ok...here we go.

Piecora : Kiersey Clemons, Zoey Seldana, Zoe Kravitz, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lupita Nyong'o...

Serpendis : Willem Dafoe, Michael Caine, Max Von Sydow

The Hermit : Ian McDiarmid, Ralph Richardson, Alec Guinness

Karut : Karen Gillian, Gal Gadot, Zooey Deschanel

Vinexi : Timothee Chalamet, Cole Sprouse, Mike Wheeler

• Where are you self publishing and what criteria did you take in consideration for this choice ?

After much research I bit the bullet and went for Amazon's KDP platform as I found it to be the easiest solution for me since I'm doing everything myself. I am extremely open to alternatives.

• Did you ever try publishing traditionally before you self published ?

Yes. I use querytracker.net which is where all the agents live, and I've gotten only rejections out of almost a hundred submissions. At some point I decided to just do things myself.

• What is making your blood boiled in the writing/book world ?

The gatekeepers of the archaic agency publishing/distribution model that's been around for generations. My entire life I hit nothing but walls because I'm not related to anyone with any connections, and was born into poverty so I never had money or support to completely focus on my work. For most of my adult life while chasing these dreams, i sucked at what I did...full admission there. Only over the last few years have I started producing anything that I might consider marketable. But what can you expect ? Again, from an answer to previous question - 10 hours of sleep a week to try to do what came easily for so many other people who either lived at home and didn't have to worry about paying bills, or married rich so they didn't have to worry about bills, or got an agent because they knew someone with connection. I never had any of the three, so it's been a very hard, very surreal, very crazy journey.

I'm extremely picky with what i like and don't like in SFF, and my brutally honest opinion is 98% of this stuff is written by sheltered, white privileged, clueless mid-teenage males (physical age doesn't matter) who thrive on trope and cliche, polling and focus groups, because they have no clue about the real world themselves or what people (male and female) are really like. So much stuff that gets greenlit for book publication, tv film, and video games is just so outright awful that it makes me mourn for the failing standards of our society. i don't think people know or even care what good writing is anymore, and if the writing is poor, no amount of effects or art or direction or aesthetic/sex appeal can save it. Writing is the bedrock beneath it all. And now we have AI, don't get me started on that.

• Well, I am about to get your start on this actually. What is your stance on AI ? And By AI I mean, tool or assistant to help you write or correct or research and Ai generated content in general.

Well, I warned you ! I hate it more than you can possibly imagine. I will try to keep this short by saying this : I believe with every fiber of my being that machine learning is the end of human innovation. if you think that is overstated or silly, just follow what's currently happening to its logical conclusion. Imagine a year from now...imagine 5 years from now. This stuff all came online only a couple of years ago and it's like night and day. Feels like thirty years ago we didn't have Ai, doesn't it ? Everything's changed, And i force myself to keep up with it and stay familiar with it. I constantly use Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Copilot and the generative features in Photoshop and Shutterstock to name a few, to just see where this stuff is and how much it can replace the creative process. I avoid it like the plague in my actual work. I am constantly conflicted with this as artist, writer and graphic designer working under tight deadlines that are becoming stipulated by AI. If you can't do your work within an ever-shrinking window of allotted time, you will be replaced by an intern prompt monkey.

• You are an amazing writer and storyteller but you are also a wonderful illustrator. You created all the arts, illustration and artwork linked to the Book Of Urm's universe. A few words about the book's cover ?

I knew I wanted to paint this particular scene from chapter 1 when I wrote it, It's Piecora staring at Serpendis through the campfire. I wanted to capture a lot of things with this simple scene, but I think most importantly I wanted to convey how the book starts out with our unintended protagonist (we see everything through Serpendis's eyes) hating Piecora because of his own bigotry and ignorance, even though his very life is in her hands. So despite the book being called Tales of Piecora, the stories are never from her perspective - they're always from the observations of her clients. So she's looking sternly at him, and he's threatened by her, and yet there's also something alluring about her, and he needs her. It's complicated and i admit a weird way to start a book let alone tell a story, but I'm fascinated with the premise.

• How do you come up with name for your stories ?

I use Google Translate after establishing what real-world languages inspire the fictional languages and proper names, and I then construct the names and languages out of that. For instance, Tamil - the oldest spoken language in the world, is used as a basis for many names from the ancient past, as it is the language of the Immortal Deva who have been in the world since its creation.

Nalupizausu means Country of Humans and Devils and it's an ancient pre-Cataclysm society that no longer exists. They had their own language, but much of it died along with them during the Cataclysm, so we're left with many names and terms from the immortals, the Deva, who have chronicling the events of Urm since the very beginning.

Sinthia, another ancient society that's been around since the beginning of recorded time, their language and naming is derived from combined and altered Welsh and Irish words.

The Kannonian language is basically mutated latin, if that wasn't obvious already.

Muth is based on the Germanic languages, again with letters spliced and moved around to create whole new fictional names.

• When you're writing an emotional or difficult scene, how do you set the mood?

I put the reader into the moment by thinking of the 5 senses and taking the time to describe everything according to how we might experience it if we were there. This is why I've heard some people call my writing " purple prose" and slow-going. I'm fine with that, I think the effort to transport the reader as effectively and completely as possible is worth it.

• Whom do you trust for objective and constructive criticism of your work ?

I trust my wife above all else because she's the actual writer in this relationship, and she indulges me by editing every chapter. I trust her feedback implicitly, and I'm lucky to have her in my life when compared to what she produces.

• How are you dealing with negative reviews ?

I am 100% fine with negative reviews of my writing and my art, but only nowadays. I used to be brittle about criticism because I never liked my own work anyway and I always agreed with the criticism, so I was always insecure about being exposed for the fraud that i knew I was. But over the last few years I can emphatically, truthfully state that I love my own work more than anything in this world. Truly, i look at my own stuff and I'm amazed it comes out of me. It's surreal.

• What books do you enjoy reading ?

I enjoy fantasy and Science Fiction written classically and intelligently, with memorable characters.

• Are there books or authors that inspired you to become a writer ?

Conan the Barbarian (The Scarlet Citadel), Lord of The Rings, The Silmarillion, Leaves of Grass, Pattern Recognition, The Moon is a harsh Mistress, The Dunwich Horror, Perelandria, Beggars and Choosers, Paradise Lost.

• What was the first book you remember liking as a kid ? Did you reread it as adult ?

As a kid, certain books left a mark : Dune, Fahrenheit 451, The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings, The Silmarillion, the Elric Saga, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Xanth novels by Piers Anthony, Alas Babylon, The Dungeonmaster's Guide.

• What's on your TBR this month ?

I have a stack of about 14 books waiting to be read... on the top is You sex Thing by Cat Rambo.

• As an author and reader, what's your stance about library ?

The world needs libraries like it needs gravity. if they ever go away, just tale me out back and get it over with.

• Where are your buying your books ?

We have am amazing local bookstore here in town that we purchase from. Sometimes I'll just grab something from Amazon but I die inside each time.

• If you got to pick a song that would play every time you entered a room, what song would you pick ?

Oh man...well...hmmm...it's gotta be something by State Radio my favorite band, and I think it would be Camillo. Yeah. Camillo by State Radio.

Or Elius by Dispatch. Or Space Oddity by Bowie. Or i can't see New York by Tori Amos. Or Saturn by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and James McAlister, featured on the collaborative album Planetarium. Or Jah Work by Ben harper. Or the entire Skyrim soundtrack.

Or the entire Passion of the Christ soundtrack by Peter Gabriel, from beginning to end. I would walk very slow.

• What would be your Halloween costume if you are invited to a writer convention or party ?

  
  

I'd wear a bathrobe with my favorite towel with my thumb up as if I'm hitchhiking.

• Explain being an author as if you were speaking to a 5 years old kiddo ?

I write dumb, silly, idealistic shit from my head that could never ever possibly happen in our lifetimes on a fake world of my own making, compelled by the laxative that is my art.

• How do you approach inclusivity (women, queer, disability, diversity in general...) and acts and bigots beliefs (sexism, mysoginy, racism, transphobia...) ?

I am a champion of diversity, inclusivity, compassion, tolerance, love, grace, taste, science, common sense, obsessive learning, childlike wonder of nature, empathy, kindness, caring, selflessness, and I stand opposed to bigotry, misogyny, and racism, fanaticism, narcissism, greed, self-absorption, gluttony, cruelty, masochism, cowardice, deception, spite, vengeance, ignorance and apathy.

• More stories coming from The Book of Urm's Universe in the future ?

Hell to the yes, as long as I can keep it going.

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird do you think you are ? And How it is reflecting in your writing ?

I'd put me at least a 7.5 or maybe a 8 in that my brain produces some pretty wild shit, but I keep myself strongly tethered to reality...not "my reality"...but accepted reality that we all share. I love Lord of The Rings but I don't worship Gandalf. I feel the same way about the bible, and religion as a whole.

• Anything you want to add ?

I think we're done here... I'm starving lol.

Yeah, me too ! That's how we're wrapping this up then. Thanks for the transparent, raw and super honest interview, Jason. That's how I like them.

Jude.