Meet Andrew Fantasia!
Jun 24, 2023
Come meet Andrew Fantasia and browse their books at our Summer 2023 Book Bazaar June 19th-30th 2022! Click here to check it out!
Tell us about your books! What do you love to write about?
My books are the first two installments in a fantasy saga called We Were Wizards. It's told slightly out of chronological order because I find that's the most fascinating way to acquire information on interesting events. We as people tend to learn about powerful moments in history from the bottom-up, with further research uncovering previously-unknown details that fill in the blanks in uniquely satisfying ways. Plus, the method seemed to work pretty well for George Lucas, so why not?!
What inspired you to get started as an author?
In high school, my world revolved around two things: Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. I may have graduated and gotten older and lost all of my hair and matured, but very little has changed otherwise. Those two stories seemed to reach through the eons, pulling me down their wonderful rabbit holes. I obsessed over every detail of Middle-Earth and Coruscant, and it didn't take long for me to crave the feeling of being on the other side of the pen. I wanted to make something that other people could obsess over. I wanted to tell a story filled with fun, colourful minutiae that sweaty nerds like myself could fall in love with. We Were Wizards is that kind of story, and I couldn't be prouder of how it's turning out so far.
What are your favorite books to read?
I dip into all kinds of books. Fantasy and science fiction are my go-to genres (for obvious reasons), but the books I've fallen the hardest for tend to fall within other categories. I adored The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Classical horror from the likes of Irving and Shelley grip and fascinate me in ways no other stories have. I also devour non-fiction books about history, and non-fiction ABOUT fiction (Star Wars visual dictionaries are a pleasure I hold on par with ice cream sundaes).
For shoppers shopping for their loved ones, tell us who are your book(s) for?
If you're a Lord of the Rings or Star Wars fan -or if you have one in your life -then We Were Wizards is going to tickle every pleasurable bone in your body. And if you or that aforementioned person in your life loves diving into the pools of deep lore that Tolkien and Lucas made famous? Then, my friend, welcome to flavour country.
What’s the message you want to get out to people this Summer?
Keep supporting independent authors! The publishing industry (like just about every industry these days) is a vast, inaccessible hellscape. Art should never be denied to the world simply because an agent "isn't feeling it" on a particular day, or because a cold merciless algorithm is holding all the cards. Events like the Summer Book Bazaar are algorithm-free, agent-free, red-tape-free places where art is allowed to just BE, and artists can finally share their gifts with the world.
Where can we find you online?
Since I'm not famous, you can find me lurking in a corner on Twitter, talking to myself while nobody's listening @AndrewFantasia. On Instagram and TikTok I can be found accumulating slightly more than zero likes at andrew_fantasia.
I also moonlight as a YouTube personality where I talk about (you guessed it) Star Wars, cinema, television, and other topics at the Rebel Scum Podcast Network, the Digital Charcuterie channel, and the Andrew Fantasia channel.
