What Am I Writing?
I guess that if you’re here, you’re probably wondering what, precisely, I write about.
More often than not, the answer is fantasy fiction. I love building ridiculously detailed magical worlds in my head. Sometimes I think the migraines I suffer from are due to the strain of trying to contain multiple fully fledged universes in my brain at the same time.
I don’t just write fantasy. I’ve dabbled in literary fiction, romance, thriller, crime and other things, but fantasy always lures me back in. I love it. I can’t help it. It’s me.
For specific projects, I have three on the go. Alright, probably more than that. The tabletop roleplaying games I run take up huge swathes of my creativity and form a lot of my writing output. Expect to see some of that shared here from time to time. However in terms of more “serious” novel writing, there are three key projects I’m working on.
Project One: The Sunless Citadel
My first project is the novelisation of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign I played about four years ago. It was the first game of Dungeons and Dragons I had ever played, after years of circling the game from a distance like a wary but starving creative vulture.
Our adventure was based on the ‘The Sunless Citadel’ by Bruce Cordell, published in 2000. We loosely followed the adventure guide, going off-piste more than once in the effort to survive the machinations of our particularly bloodthirsty dungeon master.
I started keeping an “in character” diary of how our short campaign played out and when it was over, decided I wanted to novelise it. It’s an absolute personal passion project that has gone on far too long. It’s been a blast to revisit and write, adding my spin on things. It will never be published or shared widely, mainly because of the endless copyright issues that would evoke, but it’s a joy for me to do and it’s a gift (or curse) for the friends and family I shared that adventure with and who will eventually get lumped with a copy of the book.
It also has two characters in it which have become far more precious and vivid to me than I ever imagined characters could. Which brings me to project two…
Project Two: The Radiance of Shadows
(Working Title)
My second project is a fantasy fiction novel. It’s taken some original characters, created, in part, from the above Dungeons and Dragons campaign, placed them into an entirely new world, and then thrown them into all merry hell and asked them how they’re going to fix it. The best part is that I’m not writing it alone.
I’m co-writing this project with perhaps one of the most talented, kind, clever and brilliant people I’ve ever had the fortune to meet. Period.
This is the type of person who, when asked to think of an insectoid species for the world we are building together, will email you out of the blue about a month later with a fully fleshed out ‘naturalist’s journal; ’ a glorious concoction of detail, creation and magic, written from the point of view of a character in the world we have created.
Will any of it be used in the novel? Probably not.
Is it beyond brilliant and did it blow my mind with its creativity, wit, and imagination? Absolutely.
Do I love writing with this person? Yes - beyond description.
Do they drive me insane to the point of wanting to beat them with a blunt object (probably a book) from time to time? Yes. Yes, they do, but they are brilliant, I love them to bits and writing with them is a joy.
This utterly brilliant person’s crucial flaw is that they don’t read very often. Either because they don’t have time (busy doesn’t even cover it), or they just prefer doing other things. It can be infuriating on this side of the reading wall, especially when it comes to drafting and edit time, but on the plus side, it means I get to say all the things about how exceptional they are, safe in the knowledge they will never read this and get embarrassed or grumpy with me! Silver linings…
As for the project, it has a working title of The Radiance of Shadows. Some early drafts have been shared with some supportive friends who have told us to get our asses in gear and ‘finish the damn book.’ To those people if you’re reading this - we’re trying! I promise!
We’ll finish this book (and the sequels - yes, there are sequels) at some point and if it kills us - or potentially, we kill each other.
Watch this space…
Project Three: The Singing Stones
(Working Title)
This, I guess, is my extensive project that I don’t know what to do with. I’ve been working on this fantasy fiction novel, in various forms and terrible drafts, since I was 13 years old. It’s been a joy, a bane, a curse, a delight and absolutely everything in between over those 20+ years.
I really need to follow Neil Gaiman’s writing rules:
Write
Finish it!
I especially need to focus on rule two!
I’ve recently rekindled my focus on this project after taking an online course on Fantasy Fiction with Cambridge University. The wonderful tutor and brilliant author, Natasha Pulley (She wrote The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - try it, it’s glorious), read my draft of the first chapter of this work and strongly encouraged me to get back to it and finish it.
I think that perhaps sharing my early draft of this first chapter may be something I eventually do.
For now, however, I’ve taken up plenty of your time for the day.
Get a cup of tea, daydream about some imaginary fantasy scenario with a magical iguana and a coconut and go live a bit more. I’ll be back soon with more - including some ‘actual writing.’ I hope…