Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mikel Melwasul. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Mikel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

There are three names associated with my writing.
My Author Name: Mikel Melwasul.
My book title: Paragon Exordium.
My Publishing Company: May You Walk Under Blue Skies Publishing.

Names are very important to me and I’ve always believed in their power and symbolism. So, when I decided to start writing I chose to use a pen name for a variety of reasons. I wanted something with good alliteration, that would stick in people’s head’s as unique and that sounded fantastical. But, I also wanted to use my first name so I would already be programed to respond to it.
I went to Tolkien’s work for inspiration, and based the name “Melwasul” on a loose translation of his elvish language for the meaning “Friend of the Wind” because I wanted my stories to feel like the gift of a fresh breeze from the wind, and I liked the alliteration of Mikel Melwasul,
Our book title went through several iterations, the location of the story was pretty quintessential to the title, so we quickly came up with Paragon as the first part, since the city is supposed to represent an ideal of mankind which is one of the definitions of Paragon. For the first book we considered several options before settling on Exordium, which is the beginning of a legal document. Unlike most names we go with, beyond the definition, we mostly just went with Exordium because it was a super cool looking word that might expand the vocabulary of readers, and thus Paragon Exordium was decided.

Finally, May You Walk Under Blue Skies is the literal translation for the word Luemeni, which the elves in the book use as a greeting and a farewell. The idea behind it’s meaning was to with safe, calm travels on any you encounter in a lyrically unique way. I explained this at the end of a video talking about my book once, and it became such a habit that now every video I make uses the phrase and we decided to base our publishing company on the name.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Mikel Melwasul is a pen name meant to represent two co-authors, Mik and David, who started working on a book together back in 2017. The book was originally inspired by the film Red Dawn, and the Lord of the Rings books. Mik had the idea for the book in high school, and initially brought David on as an alpha reader/editor since David had an english degree and was serving in the military. The second part being an important aspect of several characters in the story that Mik wanted to make sure were grounded and realistic. Together, they worked on the book for 6 years and as many drafts before finally publishing the first in the series in 2023.
The series is easy to read, genre-bending fantasy about a magical apocalypse that brings humanity to the brink of extinction. Mik and Dave have been avid readers from a young age and both love Fantasy and Sci-fi. The book toes the line of grimdark, with an intended audience of teenagers to adults of all ages. A difficult task that they firmly believe they stuck the landing on. The story has a little something for everyone, being very strongly character driven with unique spins of classic fantasy elements that both avid readers and those new to the genre can all enjoy.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When we finished Paragon Exordium we decided that despite it’s length, not being the market target and it’s intended broad audience that we’d try querying publisher’s to get the book traditionally published. We did this for a year, and submitted to over 100 publishers/agents. During that time our rejections all cited the books length, or the market or our being not only first time authors, but co-authors as the reason’s for not wanted to take a risk on the story. We both love long books and prefer them so we were unwilling to compromise on the story itself due to every who read it enjoying it. Furthermore, not a single rejection cited the quality of the writing or the story idea as being bad. So we pivoted to self-publishing and we haven’t regretted it.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Getting messages from readers who I’ve elicited an emotional reaction from. There are some pretty emotional scenes in the story, and I like to connect with readers as they work through the story. So I have on more occasions than I can count at this point, gotten messages about how heartbroken or angry scenes have made readers. Since that was the intention, those messages are exhilarating. The fact that our work is good enough to garner such strong emotional responses is a truly remarkable accomplishment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/mikelmelwasul
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikel_melwasul/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MikelMelwasul/
• Twitter: https://x.com/mikelmelwasul
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxTYA2g6fGXvr-wCSOajt7Q
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikel.melwasul

Image Credits

1-3 Yorsy Hernandez
4. Itsmem8
5. dxbni
6. Obrotowy
7. thecapricia
8. Serena Malyon