Jed Del Rosario is a new writer from the Philippines who’s bringing a new angle to heroic fantasy. His “Age of Crows” series is inspired by classical literature and legends from India. Read on to learn more.

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
I'm Jed Del Rosario. I'm a freelance writer and journalist. I am the author of - what I hope will be - the Age of Crows series, and a few other stories waiting to be published. Most my writing career has up to this point been focused mainly on business articles, essays and editor related work, and now I'm hoping to go into fiction.

Your story "Age of Crows--Return of the Swarm" is based on the Narayani Sena of ancient Indian legend. For those unfamiliar, could you tell us a bit about them? What drew you to this topic?
The Narani Sena are borrowed from the Mahabharatha. Krishna's - who is an avatar of god - armies were called the Narayani Sena. In the Age of Crows series, the Sena are the armies of 'Atman' - which is God. Atman in Hinduism is the essential self (I'd recommend your audience Google it) and more or less equivalent with God.

Another critical aspect of the story is that the setting takes place in the Age of Crows, the grim dark age where is everything is falling apart . In real life this would the age of Kali Yuga (and according Hindus were living in that period).

So when I created Sena, I was imagined characters who were fighting a losing war, while their numbers dwindled and they were engaged in infighting. It was meant to have that grim-dark feeling of hopelessness all around, but at the same time, you have a higher power in the background who sees beyond it and sees some unforeseen culmination.

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
I'm really influenced by classic literature. The Age of Crows series was influenced by the Mahabharatha and the Ramayana but I plan to incorporate ancient Chinese, Greek and Celtic elements in future stories.

I also believe in creating metapolitics, metaphysics in my stories. For example, in the Age of Crows, there are four ages, each one worse than the last. The Age of Crows is the worst of all and there's nothing humans can do to change it.

That right there, puts limits and context to what the characters can do in their stories. They can fight and win but there's a limit to what they can do. There's no happy ending at the end of it all. Only the consequences (or lack thereof) of the character's actions in the larger scheme of things. I think when you create that sort of context that story really becomes special.

How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
This is my first published work, so I can't really tell you about audience expectations. As for experimenting, yes, I experiment a lot. You reread it after a week, and if its looks fine, you keep it or expand on it. If not, you scrap it.

Have you had any new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
I'm currently working on new Age of Crows stories as well as sci-fi shorts. Eventually, I plan to put together composite novels but that's a long way off.

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
Fiction? The Horus Heresy novels are fun. So for a new story I'd have to say any one of HH books. They're basically different parts of one long epic. And for older stories, I would say Aldous Huxley's Island.

Any final words?
Sure, buy Death Dealers and Diabolists by DMR Books, and I hope you'll read my future stories. Take care.