A messy writing week, this week.
Bad form.
The redeeming point is that I’ve been researching the new 12th century hist.fict – tongue-in-cheek titled The Book With No Name. To date, I’ve been chasing relics and worthy illuminations in French nunneries of the 12th century. And filled with theft and jealousies they are, I tell you! Religion was nothing if not a business, often a dishonest one. Just like trade. Blend the two and one might just have a novel!
For quite a long while readers have asked about the fantasy world of Eirie, and finally, after prompting from my digital publisher MWiDP, I am creating a page and sub-pages to illustrate the world as I know it. I hope it will help any reader who may want to get to know the world more.
*Title of post based on an iconic Australian tourism ad.*
Have you noticed I haven’t been round for a few days? You’re supposed to chorus with relieved tones: ‘Yes, where the b****y hell’ve you been?’
The difference between my world and our world is that Eirie is overlaid, underlaid and woven through with the Other world. At all times and in each of the provinces, Others; enchanted beings like the Færan or Siofra, hobs and merrows (and a thousand others from legends of our own world); merge and mingle, causing malicious mayhem before retreating to their secret places within Eirie. Till now the story of Eirie has shown little of the Other worlds, as though Others dragged at my pen for fear of what I might say. But in the fifth novel, I am fairly sure we shall be meeting a cartographer who shall cross through the cloak that veils those Other worlds and we shall see him taking his chances.
Till now my world-building has shown little geo-politics, something critics have found wanting. My comment is this: this is a story about characters, about what happens to those characters. The arc that the characters follow is never driven by some nebulous Venichese Doge’s political ambition or the Baron of Pymm’s mild mannered management of his archipelago, but by interaction with Others who help and hinder them in their journey. To be frank, life goes on for my characters in one way or another, whether the Doge, the Baron, His Bright Light in the Raj or the Emperor of Han sneezes, scratches himself or passes a law. Such detail which works for many, doesn’t work for me and I prefer not to drag my own characters through it.
What I love about world-building is the freedom to create rivers, forests, mountain ranges, villages, oceans, even celestial byways and to name them the way I wish. I use names that exist, some that might resonate and be familiar. But I never make up names. Again it’s something that works for others but ill-fits me. Tolkein is an icon and he managed it par excellence. Why would I even try? My names are now synonomous with my world, with a toe in the world of fantasy and reality. The most recent editorial report describes the path I’ve taken as magical realism and I’m immensely happy with that. Never have two words meant such a lot.
I admire the many fantasy worlds created by the most highly regarded of our fantasy writers but the ones I love the best come from my childhood, from legend told by heavens knows how many mouths. Tales from the riverbank or from the willows. From the wild oceans. From soaring minarets and ochre deserts. They have names I know, that are familiar, that may even exist . We all write differently, we all have different imaginations. This is just one writer’s view of a world . . .
Once upon a time, in an unfamiliar land called Eirie, a young man decided he must find out how far the land and sea stretched from his very feet. Thus began the life of Gervais the Explorer, later in the annals of Eirish history known as Gervais the Cartographer.
I’ve been injured and out of action for four weeks now. And in that time I should have almost finished The Shifu Cloth. In fact I have 30,000 words to go and another six weeks of rehab. Finishing is a possibility if I dedicate myself. But the silence from London over Glass Flowers/Paperweights is hardly conducive to me finishing a further novel. I believe there is a summer holiday-break in the UK and London business has almost shut up shop, and it is a soothing thought.
When I began the journey to hold a Masked Ball on Mesmered’s blog, I never dreamed that a story would emerge from it, two stories in fact. One is a short-story called The Masked Ball which is entirely different than the blog-story and which Pat from Bo Press Miniature Books is using in one of her brilliant limited edition creations. But here on Mesmered, another story is developing and it’s exciting for me to see what my co-conspirators come up with each day. Till now, we haven’t communicated a story-line with each other, we have just run off with the last line of the previous submission to write our own submission and move the story forward. It’s become an exercise in fleet wordage and spare detail for me and I find I am learning quite a lot about the craft of writing and getting the message across in the shortest possible time. Please sit back now and enjoy Pat Sweet’s continuation of her part in The Masked Ball as Parthenope Neroli:
I’ve just begun to read The Shifu Cloth, hereafter referred to as the WIP, after not doing anything to it since Nov 20. I can hardly remember it and I’m quite excited by what I’m finding. Nicholas is on Maria Island in the Pymm Archilpelago in his stepfather’s house on the Merrick’s Estate. He’s trying to piece together the mystery surrounding the disappearance of his sister-cousin and I’m eager to find out what happens.
I’m a fantasy writer and it was perhaps inevitable that I chose that genre. Although perhaps more correctly, the genre chose me. If I look back to childhood, I can see that fantasy and fairytale always played a huge role in my reading and my thinking and play-acting. As a teenager I moved elsewhere, historical fiction mostly. But then in my twenties I went to Southeast Asia and as I was travelling on my own, I thought I needed a good book for the single seat in restaurants and on planes (you know, so that people would leave me alone). I took The Lord Of the Rings Trilogy. Which sort of took care of my excess baggage and companionship, after all I had Frodo et al to stave off lonliness.
