How Aldermere Came to Be
Every story has a beginning, and for Demons of Aldermere, that beginning was surprisingly small.
At first, I did not have a city, a world, or even a plot. I had an image: two incubus friends running a teahouse in the human world. It was the perfect cover. A place where people came and went freely, where conversation flowed easily—and where it would be all too simple to charm, entice, and disappear again without consequence.
That idea stayed with me, but it quickly raised a larger question. What kind of world would this story belong to?
I have always loved pseudo-medieval fantasy, but this concept did not quite fit there. I'm not one to set my stories in the modern world either, so this would need to be somthing different. I needed a setting that allowed for both intimacy and secrecy, elegance and hidden transgression.
That is when the idea of a gothic aesthetic began to take shape.
From there, the answer came almost immediately: a pseudo-Victorian fantasy world.
The more I thought about it, the more it fit. Victorian-inspired settings carry a strong sense of propriety on the surface, but beneath that surface there is tension, desire, and everything that is carefully left unspoken. That contrast was exactly what I needed for a story about incubi—creatures who exist in the space between temptation and secrecy.
It also allowed me to shift focus away from nobility and royal courts. While many fantasy stories revolve around kings and queens, and I do write about them in other stories, I wanted to explore something different this time. In Aldermere, most of the characters are ordinary people. Shopkeepers, workers, visitors—people whose lives are smaller in scale, but no less meaningful or complicated. We will meet some minor nobility later in the series, but will not get any visits from kings.
The setting itself began to evolve alongside these ideas. Gothic imagery brought with it a sense of atmosphere, but also something else: a hint of performance, of spectacle. That was when Aldermere transformed from a simple city into something more specific—a kind of tourist destination.
Aldermere became a place people travel to for its aesthetic, its history, and perhaps for something they cannot quite name. A city that invites curiosity, even as it hides its true nature.
And for my two incubi, it turned out to be the perfect environment. Tourists come and go. They stay for a few days, perhaps a week, and then they leave. There is no need for long-term entanglements, no risk of familiarity growing too deep. Everything can remain fleeting, contained, and easily forgotten.
At least, that is how it is meant to work.
As with most stories, however, things rarely remain that simple.