A Conversation with Cooke Alum Joaquín Baldwin, Author of the Noss Saga, a Six-Book High Fantasy Series

Joaquín Baldwin, a 2006 Graduate Scholar, received his MFA at the UCLA Animation Workshop. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his husband and two cats, and works at the Walt Disney Animation Studios as a CG layout artist for feature animation. A few weeks ago, Alumni Engagement Manager Gabby Nicholas sat down with Joaquín to talk about his most recent personal project: a series of high fantasy novels with the working title of the Noss Saga. Having already written all six books in the saga, Joaquín is in the final stage of making edits from his beta readers to book one before publishing later this year. The saga can be described as an “Epic tale dealing with themes of transformation, sexuality, the nature of consciousness, and the consciousness of nature.” In the interview below, Joaquín shares insight into his creative process, the incorporation of his passions and skills into his work, and what it was like to write 1.2 million words in the span of three years.

G: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today to discuss the Noss Saga. I’d love to start with the beginning, where did the inspiration come from and what was starting the writing process like?

J: There are a lot of different ideas in this series. I wanted to make something with this core concept of some philosophical or plot idea. I thought maybe one day I would write a short story or a short film around the core concept, but it was too complicated, so I left it to the side. The morning of October 3rd, 2020, I literally woke up at 4AM and thought, “Wait, what if this is how I was able to tie the entire magic of the world in this way?” When that happened, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep anymore, and I sat there thinking about it. You know sometimes you have those ideas, but when you wake up it ends up being total trash? This was different. The next morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I knew I could make a whole novel out of it. As I started plotting it, I thought, okay maybe this could be a trilogy. And as I was writing the trilogy, I thought, this is more like five books. And later it turned into six books.

G: It’s amazing to hear how the idea for one novel transformed and grew into a fully fleshed out, six-book saga. I am blown away by how much you produced in such a short amount of time. From 2020 to 2023, you have written 1.2 million words. You must be so proud! Can you share a bit about your experience writing all six books in such a short amount of time?

J: I’m pretty obsessive when it comes to projects. I want to start and finish; I don’t want to drop things in the middle. When I started working on the novels, I was already thinking, “This is going to be big. It might take a few months, but I have a few months with COVID-19.” I decided to start the process alongside the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) writing challenge, which is a month of writing meant to help authors achieve creative goals. But then when I saw it was big, I knew it was going to take longer than a month, and I wasn’t going to let it drop. Now that it’s done, it’s amazing seeing how big it is. For self-published authors who publish a book and then move on to the next one, they have time to unload, and they don’t have to think about the book anymore. But I was writing all six at the same time, so I couldn’t unload my brain. I’m still processing the story every night, and I wake up with thoughts on the books. It's crazy because it is a whole world, and to me it's so much more than what people will ever see. It’s all my notes and all my planning behind it. After writing book six, I have some things that show up that I’m able to go back and incorporate into book one. I’m so lucky I have that choice; most authors don’t get that.

G: In line with what you just mentioned about reincorporating details into earlier novels in the series, another great perk of writing the full saga before publishing, is that fact that you’re able to go back and think critically about representation in your books. You’ve written about how you addressed gender bias in your books. The fact that you’re able to recognize the biases and go back and make edits to make it as inclusive as possible is amazing.

J: Honestly, I didn’t recognize it early; I was done with book six when the topic of gender bias came up. I was creating a list of characters to compile into a companion guide to the saga. In that list I had character descriptions, and labeled them as either male, female, or allgender, which is my world’s version of non binary. I then noticed, “Hmm, I have too many males in here.” I sorted the google sheets table by gender, and noticed how completely off it was. I wasn’t expecting that at all because I was writing with representation in mind. I remember thinking, “I’m not going to be biased, I’m going to do this right.” But we’re all biased even when we’re trying not to be. At that point, it was a matter of how can I address this? It was weeks of work to change characters’ genders. I couldn’t only change a character’s name, but I had to look for their pronouns when they were referred to. As a perfectionist, whenever I find little mistakes, I get upset. I want to do this and I want to do this right, so I’m going to take my time with it.

An illustrated map of the world of Noss created by Joaquín Baldwin

G: Could you share a bit more about your editing process? From what I remember, you have folks who are currently reading and providing edits and thoughts on book two? What is that process like for you?

J: Right now, the only people that have read my stuff are my 50 beta readers. The group is made up of all sorts of people, some folks that work in VR, some that do origami, some that are biologists, some that study literature, etc. Lots of different fields are represented, and most of the readers are not writers. And that's great because I need a few writers to help me with what they know, and then I need to hear from the people who I would not expect to read the book. Every single one of the readers will give me a lot of notes and I invest a lot of time with the edits. It’s not easy, my heart races when I read the edits sometimes. After all, these are people I respect, and I want to impress them. I also want to make sure that they are enjoying the books and they know that I'm doing my best.

G: It seems like you've really been able to find that beautiful balance of staying true to you and your story and your characters in your world, but also being open to feedback and edits. What is like to revisit your work and make those edits or find corrections when you’re rereading for the 8th or 9th time?

J: For me, it's that perfectionist nature again. It's a weird feeling. If I know there's something factually incorrect in the book, I cannot deal with that, because to me, it means this world is not real anymore, it's fiction. And I want it to be real in my mind, so if I know that I'm lying to you in the writing, I can't go on. A lot of fantasy authors will say, "Well, it's fantasy, just forget about it. It's fine. It's a suspension of disbelief. You can just go on with it." But I want it to feel real for me, otherwise, I feel like I'm telling a whole narrative that I hate. I check everything for accuracy, even the most specific things, like the moon phases, weather patterns, days of the week, stuff like that. If I know that something is not exactly the way I describe it, if I look at my calendar and it doesn't match, if I'm breaking one of my rules about magic or whatever it is, I have to stop and figure out a way to fix it, even if it will affect all six books. For example, I’ve had to say, "Okay, I'm going to have to move the entire next few books a few weeks forward because of this one correction." And then I have to go to my calendar, change everything, change the moon phases and all the stories up to that point because it needs to be consistent. I'm actually using a calendar app that specifically helps keep track of things in fantasy worlds.

*Joaquín created the language of Miscamish, which is the shared language of the Miscam tribes in the Noss Saga.*

G: I'm just blown away at the level of detail and thought that goes into every single word, every single page. I wanted to bring up the fact that you created a whole language for this world, phonetics and writing included!

J: : Yeah. I actually learned so much about languages in general just from doing research for the saga. I had no idea; I learned that IPA was the International Phonetics Alphabet. And it’s what I'm using to figure out the sounds of the world. So, I had to learn how to read and write IPA, and I'm like, "Okay, that's awesome. Now I know how to write sounds.”

G: On that topic of skills, you also started this writing process with so much background knowledge and experience in the creative world, especially as an animation artist. How have your skills around animation, nature photography, graphic design, helped you in your world building?

J: It's incredible. The synergy there is amazing. With animating, making 3D models, making references for my illustrations, it’s been incredible. I get a lot of my terminology and descriptions from nature photography. A lot of times I’ll get notes from my beta reader saying, "This sounds like the layout artist at Disney describing the scene. Be careful." And they're spot on, because I'm thinking about how wide the field of view is and how the colors and the light reflect. Sometimes it's okay to get poetic and detailed in certain ways, but I've got to be wary of that. There's a lot of skillsets, including illustration and modeling, that all play a role. I also designed my own website, since I have a background in web design. There's a lot of different things that helped me with this process.

G: Similarly, I wanted to ask how you were able to incorporate your passions into the work. I know you spoke about biology and your passion for learning about IPA and getting familiar with languages and geology. And I know in your teaser summary, you talk about themes of transformation, consciousness, sexuality, wonders of nature. How were you able to incorporate your passions into your work? Did it happen seamlessly and organically?

J: Well, the reason why I started writing is because I wanted to incorporate that. If it wasn't a possibility, I wouldn't have started. And from the beginning I was like, "I want to throw everything that I love into this." The thing now is that I have to find the nerds that like the same stuff. A few friends gave me some tips on that, basically saying, "You make the audience. You don't go after an audience." So just put the work out there, make sure it's what you love, and the audience will materialize. And that's true, a lot of these super successful published authors just wrote the nerdiest and weirdest stuff, and then suddenly they have tons of fans. We also have so much reach nowadays. It's a matter of finding the right people. I think epic fantasy books with sexuality, geology, and everything else I’ve included is definitely an untapped fan base, if there is one. I think there's a lot of people that will be like, "You’ve got to read this. It's like Lord of the Rings but it has this thing we're passionate about, and I've never seen that before." That's what I want to see.

G: My last question is specifically for Cooke Scholars; do you have any advice for aspiring sci-fi or fantasy authors in our community?

J: The most important thing, and Neil Gaiman has said this: is to just start writing. And I think it's true, but it's really hard. Some of the best writers say, “Oh, I can just start writing and then continue writing.” But I found it difficult. I couldn't just sit down and start writing. To me, what helped was just setting a starting deadline, and the only thing I was allowed to do before that was prep work. I used a starting deadline through NaNoWriMo. I told myself, "I'm going to start writing on November 1st, and I'm purposely not going to write anything until then." And in the meantime, I was going to plan, I would make outlines and jot down ideas, but I wasn’t going to start the actual writing. Once the date arrived, I started writing and I couldn't stop. Having that one little deadline is important, otherwise you'll say, "I'm going to start it when I'm ready." But you're never going to be ready. The first stuff that I wrote back then was total trash, and I rewrote it many times. But by writing and rewriting and reanalyzing, I learned what I needed to learn, which I wouldn't have been able to do by reading books about writing or by reading more novels. You've got to actually get down and dirty.

To join the mailing list for book one’s release, you can visit Joaquín’s website here.