Meet Helena, Author & Content Creator
Who Is Helena Thompson?
What am I drinking?
Definitely Coffee! Sober for 4+ years & Scandinavian Roots... shall I say more?
What am I am I listening to?
If not an audiobook then likely it is 90's Rave (EDM) or New Wave from the 80's. But really, I am an eclectic listener so I can listen to anything really.... except country!
Let's Play A Game
~ Q & A ~
What Are You Proud Of?
For sure both of my Sons/Military Family (1 of 2 Sons & Husband are in the Military). Both sons are in university and have met incredible women. They are all 3 incredible men!
Tabletop (TTRPG) or Video Games?
What's on your desk right now?
Star Wars or Star Trek?
I would say as a writer, for sure TTRPG's but when I want mindless down time, I like a good Village Pillaging on Video Games. BG3 is my fav right now1!
Probably markers, too many notebooks, my phone, a mug full of cold coffee (with cream), water I will forget to drink & some cute aesthetic trinkets to give me a "vibe".
Star Wars was my first movie with my first love... my Dad. But he also showed me Star Trek, so it is a close second (depending on the series). Star Wars is our Family "thing" though... My Anniversary is on "May the Fourth"... Be With You!
My Guilty Pleasure (Watch)
Oh I LOVE a good fantasy that has some girth that will keep me occupied for a while. I enjoy any GOT or LoTR series or movie on TV or in the Theatre.
Any Phobias or Fears?
As an mother I suddenly developed a fear of snakes. I was never afraid of them but we vacation where rattlesnakes are, so I think I was afraid of my kids getting bit when they were small. Now, it is an irrational fear... ugh!
Where do you get your ideas from?
My brain starts writing scenes out when it slows down (I have ADHD). So I now know to go on a drive when I need to figure something out as that is when my best ideas come to me.
and....
I have been writing stories my entire life... really!
Not always for other people. Not always finished. But always, since childhood, there has been a story running somewhere in the background of whatever else I was supposed to be doing.
Growing up in Toronto, and cottaging in Huntsville Ontario (the Muskoka’s), I used to beg for a new pad of paper and pencils when I was off for the summer and spending time up north (Bargain Harold’s was the best… I miss that store). I filled notebooks with characters who didn't fit anywhere, worlds that operated by rules I was making up as I went, and creatures that felt more real to me than a lot of actual people did.
Then life happened — the way it does — and I spent thirty two years building a career in finance to take care of others. Which sounds like the opposite of fantasy writing. And in some ways it was. But here is what three decades in finance actually teaches you; how systems work, how power operates, who gets to make the rules and who has to live inside them, and what happens to the people at the bottom of a structure that was never designed with them in mind. It turns out that is exactly the kind of knowledge that makes for interesting fiction.
It had been living in my head for years before that. The Awakening: Guardians Book 1 — a YA dystopian thriller set in a world called Terratopia, where a breeding and training program has engineered away everything society considered sinful and violent — and in doing so created something far more dangerous than what it replaced. A young woman named Amora is about to find out that the perfect world she was raised to inherit is built on a foundation that is very much prepared to fight back.
I self-published it in 2020. It is the book that proved to me I could actually do this — start something, finish it, put it into the world, and survive the vulnerability of other people reading it. That is not a small thing. That is everything, actually.
In 2019 I finally wrote the book.
Then I discovered Dungeons & Dragons.
I came to it later than most. I had no childhood campaigns, no basement full of miniatures, no encyclopedic knowledge of the Monster Manual. I sat down at my first table as a complete beginner, held a twenty sided dice I didn't know how to use, and within two hours understood why people dedicate entire decades of their lives to this game.
D&D does something that very little else does. It puts you inside a story where the rules are real and the consequences matter but the only limit is what you are willing to imagine. For someone who has been building worlds in her head since childhood, it felt like coming home to a place I had never actually been before.
Currently I am now learning the insights to be a Game Master (Dungeon Master). Which I can say is simultaneously the most terrifying and yet creatively liberating thing I have undertaken since writing my first book. Every session teaches me something about storytelling, character motivation, moral complexity, and what makes a monster genuinely frightening versus merely dangerous. All of it is going directly into The Hallow Chronicles and has made me a better writer!
The Awakening
By Helena Leppanen (Thompson)
Deeply Scandinavian on both sides — mythology, darkness, and the idea that the world is full of things that don't announce themselves before they arrive
Norse mythology doesn't comfort you. It prepares you.
The word hallow has roots in the sacred spaces of Northern Europe — between the human world and everything else
That inheritance is in my bones. It's in this series whether I intended it to be or not.
Married a Scot… that is where I became a Thompson
32 years in finance — not the obvious background for a dark fantasy author, but arguably one of the most useful ones.
Finance teaches you that every system has a shadow economy beneath it — unofficial rules that matter more than the official ones.
The Hallow is Toronto's shadow economy. I understand those structures deeply.
The day job funds the dream and the family needs for now. The dream makes the day job worth having. It's a reasonable arrangement.
There are multiple cats (there are now 2, but recently was 3 — we miss our baby a lot). All adopted. All tuxedo’s.
Not helpful to the writing process in any practical sense.
Absolutely essential to it in every other sense.
They will probably appear in The Hallow Chronicles — the creatures of The Hallow have always had a complicated relationship with cats. If you know anything about cats, you already understand why.
I am sure they think we worship them. They may be right.
All hail the mighty furry Tuxedo Gods!
The Scandinavian in the Room
The Cats
The Finance "Thing"
