Hello there!
My name is Gavin Collins. I’m a nerd who loves fantastical stories and settings. I’m also a neurodivergent gay man of transgender experience.
I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, where I still live. I’m grateful for being from such a wonderfully beautiful and progressive area of the United States, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
I grew up reading books. As a kid, I would raid my mother’s books (harlequin romances) and my older sister’s books (think The Babysitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High) because I was hungry for stories. When I was a preteen I got my own library card, and would fill a backpack every week or two, first from the YA section, and not too long after, from the Fantasy and Sci-Fi section. I would lug several large hardback books with hundreds of pages home, and consume them ravenously. Then, I’d take them all back to the library and get more.
It was my escape from dealing with the confusion of being a neurodivergent queer kid, who didn’t understand what the heck was up with me, living in a sleepy rural town. Dreaming and imagining were my means of coping and surviving, and providing myself with comfort and entertainment.
I love the fact that in the modern era, we can have books about queer people, neurodivergent people, nonconforming people and people of color. People of all walks of life, and all voices and perspectives can be heard. And those people can be heroes, can do epic things.
Unfortunately, most Epic Fantasy stories still focus heavily on cishet neuronormative perspectives. There is a growing movement in Cozy Fantasy to provide diverse voices, and that is wonderful! But while Cozy Fantasy is warm, and comfy, and lovely, it’s not where my heart lies.
I’ve always wanted a more classic epic saga, akin to Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time with queer lead.
I know the Wheel of Time show has many queer characters, but Robert Jordan started writing the books in the 1980s (the first book, The Eye of the World, was published in 1990), and most of the series’ queerness was hidden in subtext, with the only truly open representation being “pillow friends,” that is, young girls who had romance with each other in their youth, but later went on to marry men (problematic, much?). Yes, polyamory was a major part of the series, but Jordan was very careful to keep even that focused on a heteronormative lens. It was a man who was with three women, and though the women loved each other dearly, it was given a vaneer of friendship, not romance. Anyone with half a brain can see that it likelywas romantic, and not just friendship, but it wasn’t overt. It’s from a time when it couldn’t be.
But now is not the 90s or even the Aughts, and I am not beholden to societal pressures or the demands of a publisher.
So it is my hope to spin a grand tale of danger and intrigue, magic and swordfights, love and politicking, and shining a lens the complexity of the human psyche and experience that Epic Fantasy is so known for. It won’t be as long as the Wheel of Time, or likely as well written as it or the Lord of the Rings, but I have a story to tell, and it’s a long one. And tell it I will.
If you’re curious as to exactly how I’ll go about this gigantic task, I invite you to follow along with my journey! I have a newsletter where you can get monthly updates on my progress, first with worldbuilding and outlining, and later with writing and editing, and finally, the path to publication and releasing my books to the world.
I only send one post a month, it’s completely free, and if you ever decide you’re no longer interested, you can easily unsubscribe.