Julia Makin’s ‘Stormheart’, which was released earlier this month, is a dark, feminist romantasy that combines an ancient prophecy, pirates, and a high-stakes survival game with a steamy forbidden romance. Pirates, you say? Yes, Pirates. Not exactly standard romantasy fare, but we can’t say we weren’t intrigued by the concept.
What made Makin choose pirates over the standard romantasy book witches, sorcerers, faes, and dragons? Makin is here to answer just that question. And if the answer makes you even more excited to read her book, all the better.
People tend to be intrigued about my decision to introduce pirates to romantasy, a genre usually dominated by fae and dragons. At the risk of being too honest, it wasn’t a conscious decision. When I first started writing Stormheart, not only had I never read any romantasy – I was completely unaware that the genre even existed.
In the beginning, Stormheart was inspired by everything I loved to read about – piracy in the Caribbean in the early 1700s, Celtic, Norse and Japanese mythology, among other things. When the pandemic hit in 2019, I suddenly had endless hours to daydream, and the world of Maelstrom emerged. But it would be years of writing, rewriting, and shelving the novel before I discovered the thrilling and steamy world of romantasy, and the final story began to take shape.
Those years would be some of the wildest and most eventful of my life, as I moved from Japan to Italy, to Greece, before finding a permanent home in Ireland. I poured all of my experiences into my writing – the people I met, the highs and lows, the cultures and landscapes. Looking back now, I honestly can’t remember how many times I rewrote the book! It was probably around my third or fourth draft (written barefoot on a beach on Crete) when I submitted it to the fantastic editors at the Novelry. When I chose fantasy as my genre, they told me that I had in fact written a romantasy.
Romantasy? I’d never heard of it. It had, of course, been blowing up all over social media for several years. But I didn’t have an Instagram or TikTok account, and I admit I tend to live in my own world. Now, a quick rummage around on Google had a whole new world of fiction open up before my eyes.
Until then, my worldbuilding had been greatly inspired by fantasy novels like the Wheel of Time, the Inheritance Cycle, and Dawn of Wonder. All of these novels contained an element of romance. But the difference, my editors explained, was that in Stormheart, the romance was a key element of the plot. That is, if I were to remove the love-arc of Tan and Kier, the story would collapse.
Discovering my genre, as one can imagine, was a real turning point for me. Now I better understood what I was writing, who I was writing for, what the book needed in order to sparkle – the final draft practically flew onto the page. In between writing, I dived headfirst into romantasy for inspiration – Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca Yarros, Freya Marske. One particularly fun addition I made to Stormheart during that time was introducing spicy scenes. Sex can be really hit and miss in a novel – done badly, it can be crude, cringey, and add nothing to the plot. But done well, a steamy scene can help craft real, vulnerable characters and build emotionally intimate relationships.
After years of writing and moving countries several times along the way, I had a finished book that I never initially intended to write – a pirate romantasy. Stormheart was a wonderfully unexpected journey, and I can’t wait to share it with my readers.
More on Stormheart:
A fugitive princess. A ruthless pirate. A deadly bargain.
Once an enslaved princess, now a fugitive, Tan finds herself on the run after a fatal mistake brands her the Empire’s most wanted criminal. But when she crosses paths with Kier, a cold and ruthless pirate from the rebel stronghold of Stormhart, he offers her a chance at freedom on the open sea on board the Revenge, under the command of the sadistic Captain Blackthorn.
The price? Her soul, bound to Blackthorn forever in an unbreakable blood-oath.
That is, unless she can free herself and countless others enslaved by his rule, by winning a deadly game. To do so she’ll need to abandon her pride and accept training from Kier, a man who’s made it clear he’s not to be trusted. But when a dangerous desire causes an ancient power to stir within Tan’s blood, she unwittingly awakens a legend that even the mighty Empire fears.
But when a dangerous desire causes an ancient power to stir within Tan’s blood, she unwittingly awakens a legend that even the mighty Empire fears.
As the tides of war rise, Tan must make a choice: surrender to the darkness within her, or carve her own destiny before it’s too late.
The book is available now wherever books are sold.
