About

Jo de-Lancey is a fantasy writer from the UK. She wanted to be an author from a very young age and used to while away the hours writing stories about enchanted scarecrows – which she’d then read to her older brother and his friends. Yes, she now cringes about this, but everyone has to start somewhere.

She’s since left the scarecrows behind in favour of thieves, pirates and magic. A love of the classic Final Fantasy and Zelda games drew her towards the fantasy genre, as well as the desire to create her own world.

The main character of The Tempered Soul Series, Killian O’Shea, came to her in a writing workshop way back in 2002 – by some miracle she still has the scrap of paper that she first wrote about him on. He lived in her head for many years, getting up to his own adventures, swigging rum and evolving as a person. Around 2006, she started planning his first real adventure, The Crystal Shore. He was soon joined by Captain Lily Rothbone, Ren Thorncliffe and Raven.

Sometime during 2008 the planning of The Crystal Shore was completed, and she began to write it. She wrote the first 30,000 words by hand – as she thought it was more romantic to write that way. After painstakingly typing those words into her laptop, she decided to leave the romantic notion of paper and ink in the planning stage. The first draft was completed in 2010.

She spent the next twelve years (yes, twelve) rewriting it, editing it, rewriting it, editing it, leaving it alone, thinking of giving up, going back to it and… rewriting it, editing it, actually giving up, rewriting it, editing it – you get the idea. She even started the first draft of its sequel, The Blue Mage, during this time.

In 2020 she reached a point where she didn’t know where to go, so she searched for help in the form of two incredible professional editors. After two more years of rewrites and edits, with the guidance of these two wonderful ladies, The Crystal Shore was finally complete. It was released to the world in July 2022.

Jo hopes that by sharing how long it took her to get her debut novel together other writers will feel encouraged to keep going with their projects. There’s no shame in being the tortoise and not the hare. If any writers or readers want to reach out and ask her more about her process, then please fill out the contact form. She’s more than happy to discuss it with anyone.

Writing is her one true passion, but when she’s not at her laptop she can be found navigating the wilds of the English countryside with her fiancée, playing video games, plotting with her cat, feeding her dragon, getting lost in a book, or watching b-movies while sipping the finest red wines available to humanity – as long as those wines are on offer.