pirateaba: Writing Should Be an Adventure
In this interview, author pirateaba discusses the surprising ways staying anonymous impacts the publishing process, and much more.
pirateaba is the anonymous author of The Wandering Inn web serial and webcomic, as well as the Singer of Terandria series and the graphic novel The Last Tide. When pirateaba began writing the series, they were stocking shelves at Costco while working toward their dream of writing. Within two years, the series' success allowed them to dedicate themselves to The Wandering Inn full-time.
"Full-time" is an understatement: writing over 1.6 million words a year on average from the last decade, pirateaba produces the equivalent of 9-10 novels annually—more than the entire Harry Potter series every year. Learn more at wanderinginn.com.
In this interview, pirateaba discusses the origins of their debut novel, the surprising ways staying anonymous impacts the publishing process, and more.
Name: pirateaba
Book title: The Wandering Inn
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Release date: August 11, 2026
Genre/category: Fantasy
Elevator pitch: The Wandering Inn series follows Erin Solstice, a young woman from Earth who finds herself transported to another world. Rather than slaying monsters or attempting to conquer the land, our hero opens an inn. Subverting genre expectations, the story follows Erin as she learns to survive by serving drinks and welcoming everyone, regardless of whether the world deems them monsters or heroes.
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What prompted you to write this book?
The Wandering Inn is a mix of stories I’ve always had in my heart and wanted to tell—but never been able to. I had a lot of doubts about being able to tell a story that anyone wanted to read after failed attempts to write other books, and this began, well, just as a way to have fun while working my part-time job.
But the story is one I was passionate about, an inn next to a fantasy city. My favorite kind of story is where the characters grab you and you find unexpected twists and turns. Where people do what they believe is important, regardless of the consequences.
Like, in a fantasy world, meeting a bunch of Goblins, and realizing they’re not mindless ‘monsters.’ And choosing to put a sign up that says ‘No Killing Goblins’ in defiance of what everyone knows—that’s a story I hope that I’d have loved as a reader. Mostly because I hadn’t read it before.
I feel like these stories are a bit more common, where you meet people supposed to be the villains or monsters of the story and they reveal they’re not, but I wanted a story like that. Where you can get a Goblin, a [Necromancer], and a weird bug-person all eating pasta in an inn. And surely, such meetings wouldn’t come without consequence. So what happens next? That’s how the story began in my head.
I think sometimes you come up with stories that want to claw their way out of your chest, much like xenomorph chestbursters. That’s my analogy, and I’m sticking to it.
For better or worse, if you come across such a story, you’ll tell it no matter the cost. That’s what being a writer is to me.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I think I took about a week, or two weeks, to come up with the idea for The Wandering Inn, before getting together the first chapter. It wasn’t so much the chapter as setting up the website. I copied Worm’s website format and had to figure out how to post on Wordpress—and then I had a few days to just keep thinking of the story.
But as I said, it’s been an amalgamation of other stories, so I sat down one day, and wrote chapter 1.00 in a single sitting, before going to work. Then I made it my resolution to post two chapters a week, no matter what. I didn’t break with that schedule for years, and I believe I’ve never missed a chapter due to sickness, just delaying one to rewrite it so it’s up to standard.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Yes, I’d say that I was surprised to get any traditional publisher to take The Wandering Inn! For context, until recently the only group that ever wanted to publish a story from a web serial was the now-defunct Yonder platform.
There just was zero interest in works published online when I was starting out. It’s only been 10 years, but now there’s so much more interest and attention around the genre. I do credit all of my peers for forcing traditional industries to pay attention.
Even contractually, it was a bit of a process because I needed to keep my anonymity—no book signings, no book tours, things that Harper Voyager was used to. It’s a lot of changes to legal contracts, so I hope they saved a copy in case anyone else wants to do the same kind of thing. As for the book publishing itself, that’s just a lot of proper formatting and seeing how things have to be set perfectly for print, a nerve-wracking process!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Volume 1 has been rewritten twice now, and the process of doing the same for Volume 2 nearly killed me. I had to edit the entire volume (now split into two books due to length), over the course of two weeks.
That’s as much free time as I could take in secret without my readers knowing I was doing it, and that much editing nearly drove me crazy. I could have taken longer, of course, but I try not to take time from publishing new chapters to the story. Mostly it was a bunch of work updating old bits of lore and keeping things plot-consistent, but I did rewrite a number of chapters to address a plot hole with a certain City Runner, Persua, in Volume 2.
It’s been a longtime reader complaint I never got around to since I’m so busy, so I hope they like the new revisions and enjoy the way Persua avoids comeuppance again and again.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope The Wandering Inn’s physical books find a place on their bookshelves and means something to all current readers of the story. Having something in our real world matters, and I’d like to hold the book myself.
As for new readers, I hope the fact the book is in print means we reach audiences far beyond the online spaces we occupy. Plenty of people have never tried to read anything online or want to read in print; understandable! I hope this drags them into the story, like someone in a whirlpool who never gets back out.
Another analogy I stand by.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I’d say that writing styles are just that; styles. I used to hear the advice of ‘write X number of words each day,’ and I thought that was the way to write. It didn’t make me happy. It made me a worse writer I’d argue, because I was always taxing a creative muscle that needs rest. Now I write a huge day, take breaks, vary up how I write—
Writing is like running. You can do it how you want. You can walk, skip, hop backwards. Anything to keep it fun. Writing should be something that sucks at times, that you can force yourself to do. But it should also be something you want to do, and you push yourself at.
It shouldn’t be a safe thing all the time, but an adventure, one where you’re uncertain and take risks, because you need to grow, just like your characters.
