For my very first middle grade fantasy author interview, I have the honor to spotlight Emily Golus and her book Escape to Vindor! Today Emily will share about her determination to face her fears, her inspiration for her books, and her aspiration to be a dolphin trainer.
I met Emily at the Realm Makers conference in 2023, where we fangirled together over The Neverending Story. Now I can do the same for her spectacular book! But first, let me introduce her to you.
About Emily Golus
Emily Golus is an award-winning fantasy author with nearly 20 years of professional writing experience. Golus aims to engage, inspire, and show how small acts of courage and love can create meaningful change. Her books feature diverse cultures, authentic characters, and cinematic fantasy settings.
Golus lives in Greenville, SC, with her husband, Mike, who is her greatest supporter. They have two active little boys and enjoy exploring the trails and small towns of the Carolinas. Discover more at WorldofVindor.com and EmilyGolusBooks.com, and keep up with book news at Instagram.com/WorldOfVindor.
Escape to Vindor
She ran away to her imaginary world. Now she can’t get out.
Since childhood, Megan Bradshaw has dreamed of Vindor, her own secret world of mermaids, centaurs, samurai, and more. When real-world pressures make life unbearable, Megan wishes she could escape to Vindor for real.
And then she does. Megan finds herself trapped in Vindor, with flesh-and-blood versions of her imaginary characters. But Vindor isn’t safe. The Shadow—a terrifying creature she didn’t invent—is tearing Vindor apart, and now it’s coming for Megan.
She embarks on a desperate journey, accompanied by a know-it-all centaur and a goblin she’s not sure she can trust. Will the Shadow destroy Megan before she can find a way to save her world?
Review
I loved this book! It’s a portal fantasy with the otherworldly vibes of some of my favorite tales like The Lord of the Rings, The Neverending Story, and The Chronicles of Narnia. Throughout this adventure, we get a glimpse of a vast, intricate world peopled with fantastical races like centaurs and mermaids and contoured with jagged mountains filled with massive caves. The heroine, Megan, is incredibly relatable as she dreams of doing heroic things—but when people actually depend on her as their heroine, she doubts herself. As a person who also struggles greatly with fear and insecurity while dreaming of achieving my destiny, I was invested in her journey. But even more than Megan, I loved the side characters on her adventure. The adorable goblin endeared himself to me with his charming misuse of the English language. And I couldn’t help but get excited about the centaur friend since my current book is about one! The characters’ internal journeys and desires—from proving themselves to accepting love or doubting themselves to trusting for help—were very relatable. All in all, a compelling, well-paced adventure with a world worth revisiting!
Find it on Amazon (affiliate link)
Interview with Emily Golus
And now, the background on this beautiful story!
1.) What do you love about Escape to Vindor that made you want to share this book with the world?
I started thinking about this story in 2002, when I was a college sophomore. I didn’t intend for it to be a published book—it was just a daydream that helped me explore my experience with anxiety. The Shadow was literally a picture of my many fears.
I thought the answer was just to buck up and face stuff, or risk God being disappointed in me. The ending of the story was going to be Megan realizing she’d been silly to be anxious, and working up the courage to face her fears on her own.
The problem was, I tried this in my actual life and repeatedly failed. The Shadow kept pushing me back under.
Then Jesus Christ intervened in my life in a very transformative way. For the first time, I realized life wasn’t about trying to impress God with obedience, but leaning into the mercy and grace that Christ has already secured for me. That’s when I realized the antidote to fear isn’t courage—it’s Love, with a capital L.
My heart for Escape to Vindor is to get this book out to teens (or anyone else wrestling with insecurity) because it’s exactly the book *I* needed when I was younger.
2.) What inspired the story as a whole or elements within it?
So I’ve been thinking about the world of Vindor for 22 years now. Anytime I read about some interesting location or historical figure or cultural quirk somewhere in the real world, I roll it into Vindor. I have actually lost track of my inspiration—I can’t always remember where character names come from or why people groups do certain things. Vindor has taken on its own momentum and sometimes I feel like I’m just along for the ride, haha.
But I can speak to what inspired my main characters:
- Megan Bradshaw is an exaggerated version of myself as a young teen, combined with other shy and creative people I’ve known.
- Nikterra—the sassy, overconfident centaur—is the kind of person I used to fantasize about being. Boy, to have the kind of brash confidence that lets you dominate a room, always have a smart comment to make, and just be effortlessly cool … Of course, as I’ve gotten older I’ve seen how this sort of arrogance leaves you with a lot of blind spots and eventually gets you into a mess, which is what happens to Nikterra.
- Bat the Goblin was directly inspired by the Lord of the Rings—which for all its wonderful aspects does short-change the idea of one’s enemies. Goblins and orcs in Middle Earth are just sword-fodder, totally bad from birth with no chance of redemption. This got me thinking—what if these people had free will, and could choose the light against all odds? How would they convince a skeptical world that this wasn’t some trick, that they really were good?
3.) What was your path to publication like? (Did you pursue an agent, go direct to a publisher, or decide to indie publish? Why?)
I pitched Escape to Vindor to several agents and publishers at writers’ conferences over the years. In 2016, my book was accepted by Taberah Press (a division of Sonfire Media), and they offered me a two-book publishing contract that included the sequel, Mists of Paracosmia, which came out in 2019.
In 2021 I was invited to participate in a multi-author project, A Classic Retold, in which nine of us authors coordinated to release books with similar themes—hope-filled fantasy retellings of classical literature. My contribution was Crack the Stone, a reworking of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables set in the world of Vindor. So this book was independently published—but independently published as a group project. It was a fantastic experience, and I really love the ladies I published alongside.
Moving forward I will probably do a combination of traditional and indie publishing. I have a mermaid book in the works that I will want to seek traditional publication for, but I have an idea for an illustrated companion book to Vindor that I will likely produce on my own.
4.) How do your personal beliefs/faith system shape your writing?
So many of the direct commands in the New Testament are about how to treat the people around us, both fellow believers as well as society at large.
Through the medium of story, I want to explore what this practical obedience looks like—whether it’s through characters showing mercy to an enemy, having compassion for the “least of these” in society, overcoming cultural prejudices (as the mixed-race early Church was urged to do), or giving ourselves up for sacrificial love. I don’t necessarily quote Scripture in my books, but I want to illustrate what true Christlikeness looks like.
5.) What is a fun fact about you?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an author, a puppet performer for television, and a dolphin trainer. Obviously I’ve accomplished that first one. And during college, I actually worked at a video production agency and got to puppeteer a character or two for the camera. I guess all I have to do now is get that marine biology degree …
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Many thanks to Emily for sharing her struggles with anxiety and insecurity, the hope and healing she found, and the deep passions of her heart that poured into her book! My heart was touched through this author interview, and I hope it inspired you, too! Make sure to check out her book website to get a deeper dive into her rich story world at WorldofVindor.com.
Has a story helped you work through a personal struggle like anxiety or insecurity? Share in the comments below!
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I count the Vindor books among my favorites. So great to get to read a little more about them and Emily.