Our second character from Gods of the Deep is Professor Everyn Crowe.

He was created after I learned that Issac Newton, the famous physicist, had dabbled for a time in alchemy. I have always been fascinated by stories of real world occult lore and the relationship it has with science. The concept of alchemy laying the foundations for what eventually became chemistry, Clarke’s law of sufficiently advanced technology looking like magic and other links. Much of what the intellectual descendants of Newton talk about now – string theory, quantum mechanics, cosmology, so much esoteric mathematics – make as much sense to the average person as mystical spells make in the average fantasy world.

So, I asked the question ‘What if magic were real and Issac Newton studied it at university?’.

That is Everyn. He studies what he calls Ethereal Science but much of that discipline up until him was more like anthropology than physics. It involved studying the rituals, spells and religious practises of different cultures and trying to understand them. Everyn did all this and then started to apply a sort of scientific method to it. He works out equations for the interactions of different ethereal realms with his own, he notes the impact of different materials of the creatures who live in those realms. He makes a device, the Silver Compass, that allows him to detect not only the presence of the ethereal but also its location and intensity.

In Gods of the Sea, the first story of Gods of the Deep, he visualises the world as an enormous machine, a clockwork engine that can be understood and manipulated.

And he doesn’t treat gods like things that should be worshipped. Instead he treats them like, well, people.

He’s very knowledgeable and competent in his own area of expertise but, like any true expert, he knows how much he doesn’t know. This leads to a certain degree of imposter syndrome which also bleeds into other aspects of his life. In his mind, he is still the poor boy from the farming village of Creatha who got a scholarship to university. He is apparenly oblivious to the fact that his current employer, Rachel Drake, has been paying him generously for his work. He still dresses and acts like a man concerned about where his next food might be coming from.

Gods of the Deep (10th Anniversary edition) is released on 28th Feb. You can pre-order it on Draft2Digital from your favorite ebook provider or get a paperback.