EXCLUSIVE Interview: Isaac Young Discusses 'The Domes Of Calrathia'

Isaac Young is an up and coming author who already has a number of novels under his belt including The Domes of Calrathia, The Matrioshka Divide, and Gigaheroes. He is also working on The Last Human.

Not only is Young an author and novelist, but he is also an outspoken critic on modern culture and has made a name critiquing leftist interpretations of popular films such as Starship Troopers.

Young spoke with Fandom Pulse about The Domes of Calrathia, which he recently successfully crowdfunded and delivered on, his views on the current state of publishing, and advice he has for his fellow writers and those wanting to be writers.

Fandom Pulse (FP): You recently delivered on your first crowdfund for The Domes of Calrathia can you tell me about it?

Isaac Young: Sure! I announced an Indiegogo Campaign for The Domes of Calrathia back in December. The goal was to raise $500 for an audiobook edition (something I had never done before). We smashed right through that in the first week I believe, and when the campaign finally wrapped up, we had around $2,700.

I think I owe a lot of that to presentation and transparency. There are a lot of common sense practices that you don’t see with a lot of creators. I had a completed manuscript on hand before I announced the campaign. You could read the rough draft on Royal Road for free to get an idea of what you were purchasing. I had the cover art commissioned too. Illustrations are the most important part of sales.

And a decent book trailer goes a long way as well. A lot of people don’t think about that, but nowadays you can put together a really nice book trailer on the cheap. AI has made so much of this stuff very easy.

FP: C.S. Lewis said The Chronicles of Narnia series first came to him through an image of a lion, how did this story come to you?

Young: The title originally came to me back in high school, but it was a very different story concept. Back then, it was a contemporary story about a submarine crew exploring eldritch Lovecraftian ruins underneath the ocean.

That got put on the shelf for around a decade while I worked on other projects. Then one Summer I was reading through Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, and I was suddenly struck with an image of a holy pilgrim wandering through a post-apocalyptic frozen landscape. That was the kernel that led to it all.

All my stories usually start out that way, an image, a small scene, an emotional beat. And then I gradually build the rest of the narrative around that.

FP: What was your biggest inspiration for the book?

Young: Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. There’s also a great deal of Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dan Simmons. Those names I can remember off the top of my head. There’s a whole lot more that I can’t think of right now.

FP: One of the things that I really enjoyed about the book is how you wove in various references to Biblical stories, but also made them your own. Do you know how many you referenced and why did you choose to do so?