Guardians of the Sky Realms

Wow, am I excited and motivated!

Over the last few days (sick in bed, mind you), I have written over 7k words toward my small YA novel. I am guessing it will get to around 60k when finished – which is odd for me (as I tend to write them a lot longer). 11k in all has now been written. I am on a roll big time, and I don’t suspect it will sustain at this rate all the way to the end (yes, work is calling), but it will make a sizeable dent to the novel and, more importantly, I am in the groove – there will be no stumbling blocks now.

This is new for me, but it feels right. I call it a YA novel, but I am guessing the core readers will be girls aged from about 13 to 17 – I am guessing, as I am 48 and a male. That’s radically different! Does this constitute a YA novel? It wont be long before I start to find some of my nieces and get them to sanity check what I have written.

I have a short story posted on the Internet that is pretty close to what the prologue of my novel will be. Here it is to give you a bit of a taste what the story is about (but only a taste – there is a lot more to it!).

I call the short The Painting.

It was a balmy night but Maree shivered, buttoning up her coat. It was fear. Not for something specific, but the unknown – the back lanes of The Rocks were dark and menacing at midnight.

This was one of the oldest parts of Sydney and many of the narrow buildings she silently passed were nearly two hundred years old. In the old days the narrow byways were frequented by footpads and other villains. They killed for a few shillings. The history of the area was tangible: you could smell and taste it, and every shadow seemed to form into a knife-wielding psychopath.

She kept reminding herself that it was just her imagination as she continued down Kendell Lane, looking for No. 42. She still glanced over her shoulder every few seconds.

“There,” she whispered, when she spotted the rusty number in the dim light. She read the signage underneath it: ‘Azimuth Galleries – viewings by appointment only’. Not this night, she thought.

Maree looked around her, making sure that no one was in sight. When she was sure it was clear she pulled out a pair of wires and expertly picked the old lock.

She quickly entered the old building and shut the door. She then pulled out a pocket torch and switched it on, immediately flashing it around to get her bearings. It was, in some ways, scarier in the gallery, as the paintings in the shadows seemed to come to life, shifting as the torch flickered by, the eyes of abstract figures seemingly following her. She shivered again. She wandered into the next room, picking her pace up as if to avoid the gaze of the phantoms behind her.

Her torch light almost immediately found the painting she was after. Wings. The work she saw in the magazine, the magnificent work of art she had to have. This was not going to be theft for profit; this was for her.

She had been dreaming about the painting for weeks, the swirling reds, greys and oranges of barely discernible winged figures; angels perhaps, but the subject matter wasn’t angelic. There was grief and death in it. She needed to study it alone, to absorb the artist’s impression, to feel the paint under her fingertips, to grasp the complete meaning of the work.

Maree held her breath and approached the painting. It was larger than she thought, perhaps four feet square. The colours were richer, more penetrating, and the winged man and… yes, woman! were more easily discernible. She was in awe, frozen in wonder before it.

“A beautiful work, no?” a deep, masculine voice came from behind her.

She started in surprise, but she didn’t move an inch. She was now frozen in fear.

The voice came again, this time a little closer. “Do not worry. I am a stranger in this gallery as well. I too have an… affinity with the painting.”

A sweat bead ran down Maree’s neck. She found the courage to turn around. A tall man stood before her, no more than five feet away. He had short cropped hair, dark but the exact colour was unclear in the shadows. His eyes seemed light, perhaps grey; his face was thin but his body seemed full and fit. “I suppose you are wondering why I am here?”

Maree’s voice was weak, still with fear. “I… I suppose so…”

“I too wanted to view the painting. I have seen it before but I never tire of viewing the captured emotions on the canvas.” He slipped past Maree and came within a few feet of Wings. “Do you mind?” he asked, pointing to her torch.

She complied, standing next to the stranger, and illuminated the painting.

The mysterious visitor’s voice seemed to mellow, almost break with emotion. “This is the story of Alanar, the Guardian of the Northern Sky Realm, and his consort Mirriam. They were Protectors and fought the daemons of the Fire Lands valiantly, never allowing the enemy to taint the Homelands. Protectors always worked as pairs, as a team.” The stranger started to cry, not vocally, but allowing the tears to cascade down his cheeks. “Then one day a stray arrow dug deep into Mirriam’s breast, cleaving her heart. Alanar was devastated, and he caught her as she fell and carried her in his flight to the Homelands.

“This painting captures the moment when Mirriam’s body was caught. It faithfully portrays the agony of Alanar, his yellow-tipped wings rippling in the wind as he concludes his terrible descent. The swirling colours reflect the awful light of the Fire Lands but they also depict Alanar’s darkened heart. I look upon this work and I cannot but weep.”

Maree heard his words and they all rang true to her. How could this be? she asked herself, for this was but an artist’s fantasy; and yet she now realised why she was drawn to the painting. There was some inherent truth in the canvas. Something that needed to say something to her. She also began to weep.

His hand gently clasped her shoulder. “You feel this too?”

She could only nod. Words were too difficult to say.

“And why?”

She shrugged her shoulders. She still couldn’t speak.

“Come with me.”

Maree turned to the stranger, looking up at his face. She saw compassion in him, and yet she only met him a few minutes ago. She wanted to instantly reply ‘yes’, but all she could do was look at him quizzically.

He laughed while he cried. “Look at the painting again.”

She did. The swirling colours suddenly seemed to have a life of their own; they actually were swirling. The tall man’s hand was still on her shoulder, and it ever so gently urged her to move toward the canvas, but not forcibly.

She didn’t know why but she allowed herself to fall into the painting, and then, without warning, she unfurled her expansive, blue-tipped wings, and flew into the maelstrom of colours.

He never let her go.

“It has been a long time, Mirriam.”

The Chronicles of Evyntyde

When I decided to write novels set in the world where the Kingdom of Evyntyde existed, I had no greater difficulty than deciding what to call the series. I really hated to use "chronicles", "saga", or any other well-worn terms, as this very fact rankled me. So when I thought about other series titles, I found myself in a bad place indeed. Nothing worked. My thesaurus was worn thin. I returned to the tried and true, and realised that "chronicles" was in fact the best fit. So I called it The Chronicles of Evyntyde. There you go.

One reason why "chronicles" wasn’t too bad was because it did not imply a finite series, nor did it drill down to some macro-plot line that implied that it was a continuing series – which it isn’t. If there was any principle or concept that I developed right from the start, it was that I was not going to write a novel that left a reader hanging out for instalment two, and so forth. I wanted to write novels that were self contained, but where characters could make appearances again, or where events in earlier novels may get referred to or potentially influence the ‘here and now’. Not entirely original, but certainly not common. I liked that. Still do.

A slightly misleading dimension to the series title is that a story doesn’t strictly have to take place in Evyntyde, nor have anything related to it. But I rationalise this by suggesting, in a tenuous sort or way, that whatever story gets told, was collected by scholars in Evyntyde. At least that’s the story I will stick to, although there really isn’t a sense of that going on, particularly when the majority of my narrative is in third person past tense.

The world is large, rich and interesting, and it would be a shame not to exploit this in the series. That is one of the reasons why I wrote The Sceptre and the Orb first – a good third of the story takes place in the Kingdom of Waymoor, and five hundred and fifty years prior to the "usual" time line of the series. But that is another story…

Here is a high level map of the world:

Roleplaying in my life

This is an important topic for me because RPGs represent the most sustained creative process that I have taken part in, in my life. Geekish, heh? Sort of. (OK, OK – how many of your writers out there have been roleplayers – more than are willing to admit, I bet!)

Alright, I admit that as a young teenager I was a bit inadequate with girls, loved scifi and fantasy, immersed myself in creating worlds etc (refer to my first blog – #bio), and just basked in the friendships that grew from this hobby. (Got that one out of the way.) But it was (and I suppose is) still important to me. This seems the right place to rave about it a bit.

I started roleplaying at about the age of sixteen when D&D was out for a year or so, and AD&D had only one of its manuals published and distributed to Australia. The only other RPG game I knew of at the time was Traveller, for those scifi fans out there. It was new, exciting and awesome for a sixteen year old. The system sucked but because it was new and no benchmark existed, it was great. besides, if you didn’t like some rule, you changed it.

I played at High School and University, and eventually settled back in Canberra in 1982, where I formed a group, and they represented the kernel of my friends to this day – this was certainly one of the greatest by-products of gaming for me – as in my youth my family moved around a fair bit and I was never able to acquire a "home base", roots. My best friends to this day come from that group.

I got into other games as the hobby/art matured, ICE’s "Law" series, Call of Cthulhu, Champions, World of Darkness, etc etc etc. Now there are as many types of RPGs as there are pizza recipes. But also along the way serious RPGers emerged, and I was one of them. We were convention goers and we tried hard to add professionalism to the game, and incorporate new concepts (at the time) like Freeform, live action, more indepth plot, world building, characterisation, and so forth. The eighties in particular were "salad days" for RPGers in Australia, and in my view was ahead of the rest of the world.

Also in the eighties a group of us created our own special fantasy world and eventually an RPG system to suit it. It was called the World of Evyntyde and it was a bit of a success among the chosen who attended conventions. We even had a bit of a following. I was enamoured of it, and so were quite a few of my mates. As time went by, and so it goes with any group of people with strong artistic views and differing work ethics, when the group’s Evyntyde endeavours died away… but not before a huge legacy of material was produced. I still wanted to publish the system (still do, but we will see), and I certainly felt strong about the world building that had gone on there.

I’ve played adventures in Evyntyde in my own game nights off and on, but I am now of the view that the system needs to be properly documented before I can follow that trail again… we will see. See my next blog about Evyntyde (#Evyntyde) – but in a nutshell, I felt the work put into the world was such that it deserved more than do die in obscurity. I used it as the basis of my Chronicles of Evyntyde novels, one of which has been completed, and the next is about two-thirds done. I acknowledge the other designers who helped build the world, but the stories are mine and much of the fleshing out of world details are also mine. Of those who still had a "stake" in the Evyntyde RPG, I got their permission to follow my path and publish.

Until about December 2008 I roleplayed pretty much at least once a fortnight since 1990, excepting holidays and health issues. Up to about 1989 I roleplayed a lot more (I was single then). Aside from creative writing, this is the next best thing for me. Also, from a practical point of view, it provided me the following:

a sense of plot construction, adventure. Hardened roleplayers need quality storylines and action.
an ability to develop well structured mysteries. Good stories will have well planned plot lines so that surprises are for real, and mysteries can be solved in a "that makes sense" sort of way.
an ability to create realistic and interesting characters. Sort the stereotypes from the originals – use stereotypes imaginatively to add humour and satire.
an ability to evocatively build worlds, and be smart about creating the sense of something "big" by describing select "small things".

All in all, this was a thirty year apprenticeship for writing.

I am what I am because of roleplaying.