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Inspirations: Fighting Fantasy

I'm going to go ahead and make a bet with you. Go on, a simple one. If you are a UK fantasy or science-fiction fan, aged between 26 and 35, I'm going to bet that your first introduction to the genre was Fighting Fantasy. Did I win? I thought so. Looking back at my early inspirations, it's definite that those books were high on the list; I got into them at almost precisely the right time, I think I vaguely remember getting my first one at around ten. That meant that they were in bookshops – but also that they were in second-hand bookshops and charity shops, which put them nicely in reach of a ten-year-old's budget.

They were of their time perfectly; catching the post-OD&D era and giving a vibe which I'm going to bet ended up in pretty much all campaigns run by people of the period. (And anyone writing thieves in cities stories...I'm on to you. Port Blacksand, right?) They took all the traditional fantasy tropes – elves, orcs, dwarves, dragons, sorcerers and all, and put them into the 'you choose your fate' package. Those books got me into fantasy, and into roleplaying. Yes, its their fault. (Star Trek got me into science fiction a year or two earlier...so it's their fault as well!)

Now, these came back into print again not that long ago; I believe they are still just about in print, in fact. Periodically I pick up a few of them...but really, you can't go home again. (What I want is them in computer format – like the Lone Wolf books with Project Aon.) Still, at a very impressionable time they made a big difference, and I think they still strongly inform the sort of writing I do. It's something I always have at the back of my mind when I'm writing, because I very definitely believe that one has to know one's influences.

There were about sixty or so of them, as I recall, and I think at one point I had all of them up to about forty-something, when I began to peter out – and the books started to get a little hard to get, I think the publisher had lost interest, sales tailed off as computers reared their head – I got my first computer, an old 386/25, when I was eleven, and yes, computer games then became a big part of my life – but there are some I still remember very fondly...and mostly from the earlier period of the books, perhaps not surprisingly...

So...my top five...

5: Warlock of Firetop Mountain

The first in the series, and there are times it shows, but this is a dungeon crawl at its very best, and follows all the usual D&D tropes. I don't know this for a fact, but this smells very much to me as if it was actually run through by a group at some point. This is certainly not a bad thing, quite the reverse. I think this probably was one of the first ones I had, and I fear I don't remember ever actually completing it...

4: Forest of Doom

This one was wilderness – exploring the, well Forest of Doom, and I can remember this one seeming to have a really immense scope to it. Lots of replay value, and it seemed to mesh with later ones in the series as well. You could easily imagine that you were the same adventurer going from one quest to another at the time, something that was lost when the story element got heavier. This is really a sandbox – but again, a good one.

3: Citadel of Chaos

On the face of it, this really is just 'Firetop Mountain', take two, but...you had spells, and that really amazed me at the time. I'm pretty sure this was the first one I had, and I actually completed it, which is a bit of a milestone for me. Wandering through an immense mansion, and this one...it just worked really well for me, but I'm aware that I am really hit by nostalgia here rather than anything else. Another fun dungeon crawl.

2: City of Thieves

This one was a true classic. A city-based adventure, where you must venture into the peril-ridden streets of Port Blacksand to gather the ingredients for a weapon to kill an evil necromancer. The city just has so much character, so many interesting people and events, that it gets a life of its own; it still remains the city I want to emulate, all these years later. The author really did their homework here, there is just the right tone without it collapsing into farce. It became a key part of the setting, and it is very easy to understand why.

1: Caverns of the Snow Witch

This one might surprise...but it was the first one I played that was in two parts, and I was really surprised by that, the first time around. You fight and kill the Snow Witch, which is difficult enough, and then have to venture out in search of the secretive Healer to get a Death Spell lifted from you, by travelling to the top of Firetop Mountain and seeing the phoenix. This ties into Forest of Doom, as a sort of prequel...but having the adventure be in two parts was just amazing to me when I was a kid. I even finished it!

Any other candidates I'm not thinking of? Anyone want to share their favourites?

State of Play

The observant among you will note that the word counter for 'Tip of the Spear' has gone up, and 'Sword of the Serpent' has remained at zero...well, I've decided that the fantasy piece just isn't – quite – ready yet. I need to spend a little more time thinking about it, but I need to write something, so I'm pushing ahead with Alamo 4. This one directly follows on from Alamo 3 in a way the previous books didn't, so I think it only fair to get it out there next – also, there is something else in the works which is rather dependant on Alamo 4 being produced.

I've been rather remiss of late in, well, writing. The first three Alamo books have done well, well enough that I am falling victim to not a little bit of, well, self-doubt. I'm telling this as a cautionary tale; I have spent too long 'thinking' and not enough time 'writing'. I think I perhaps needed a short break after Alamo 3, but it's getting on to two and a half months now, and I'm tangling myself up in knots. I need to get back into the routine again; my original plan was to try and write a book every month, maintaining a steady release schedule, and this is something I must get back to again.

Going back to Alamo has been a lot easier than I'd feared, I must say; the characters are like a well-worn pair of shoes to me, and I'm not having any difficulties in switching back to them again – it's like I'd never been away. There are a couple of arcs I want to tie up in this one that I opened up in the last book, and I'm getting some progress on that; three chapters written, twenty-five or so to go. Fingers crossed I'll have it completed in a couple of weeks, release sometime next month.

Then, I can concentrate on fantasy. I still badly want to write that book, that trilogy, really, but I know I need a little more time to put everything in order, and more to the point – I want to be able to sit down and write the whole thing, one after another, just as I did with Alamo. It just makes things so much easier if I can do it that way, and there is the not insignificant aspect that the readers won't have to wait too long to find out what happens. Writing a contained piece as opposed to Alamo – which I have in mind still as an ongoing series, rather than anything with a set 'ending' (Well, I have a last novel in mind, but that's a long way off yet) – should be an interesting experience as well.

So, that's the state of play as it stands. 

Rest Day (2 of 11)

Well, all beginnings are hard. The re-beginnings are sometimes not so hard, however; though I didn't do any writing today, I did do something that is equally important – I drew a map. Something I had really been struggling with in the previous draft, but today I just sat down with a pad of squared paper and did it in two hours. It isn't publishable quality, obviously – that will come later, almost certainly involving me hiring someone for the job (any suggestions?) but it is sufficient for me to use when writing at least the first book, and probably for the whole series.

I knew what areas had to go on the map – that I needed some mountains, forests, castles, and so on – so the first step was simply listing everything I wanted. I already had a rough idea of what the land would look like, but then when I came to put it on the page...it didn't work. (Which has led to another little problem, in that I was planning to do the map so that it would be 'portrait', and it ended up as 'landscape'...something for me to ponder later on, maybe by adding more stuff to the south.) I was planning to do Greenland, but I ended up with, well...(at this point, I wish I had a working scanner...) Iceland connected to an ice cap at the north, with Crete underneath it. To give you an idea of the shapes.

Once I had the outline, I filled in the gaps – half a dozen towns, a city, tall mountains – the 'Giant's Teeth' – surrounding an inner forest, some hills, a smaller forest...and then I realized I still had some gaps. So...well, usually when I'm doing maps for fantasy settings, it is for D&D campaigns, and it is always best to fill in such gaps. So the 'Doommire' was born, filling a nice piece of the map, even though at the moment I haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to do with it. I'm sure I'll think of something eventually...or ultimately it will just be an interesting feature on the map I never use. And yes, the name is a placeholder at the moment. I like it enough that as a name to drop in, it's fine, but I'd probably want something better if I was actually going to use it seriously...any thoughts?

Rest Day 1 (of 11)

Well...it just wasn't working. I hit Chapter Seven, and pretty much bounced. The story was meandering too much, taking too long to get anywhere...but must important of all, the three plot arcs I was working on were just not dovetailing, and that's pretty fatal. This has already had a first draft...well, I am tonight declaring the 'second draft' completed, and will now start work on the third. Bluntly, this isn't one story, it's three, and while each of them individually is good, they do not improve as a whole. The solution is obvious – pick the one I am most interested in, and write it as a shorter book!

This has happened to me before. Though the second and third books in the 'Battlecruiser Alamo' series were two-draft, with the second being revisions and edits, nothing fundamental, the first book, 'Price of Admiralty', went through four complete drafts, the first three of which bore little resemblance – other than some names – to the finished work. That occupied most of a year, the last year I was at my old job. So...I was rather expecting this to happen...

So...the counter is reset to zero, and tomorrow or the next day – depending on how much more rethinking time I need – I will start work on the third draft, this one to be back down to 80k...which means, interesting, that despite the fact that I'm writing off five days, I expect to have the book finished a week or two earlier than I had originally planned! Essentially, what I did was write down the bits of the story that were working up in my head, and made sure they tangled together into a plot, and something I am a lot happier with.

Spoilers? One tag line. 'Crusader State on Celtic Greenland.'

Writing Day 3 (of 24)

An odd day, this. While it went much more according to plan, in that I started a lot earlier than normal, I only just passed five thousand for the day, though I did the two chapters I had in mind when I started. The first one was pretty difficult, I'm not sure why, looking back, but getting the flow to fit was not easy – though at least that did mean that all five of my point-of-view characters were now in play, and that the plots were all beginning to move forward. That wasn't really the problem – more that the second chapter ran short, just 2,300 words instead of the 3,000 I had planned as a minimum...and looking at it again, there wasn't really anything I could add, nothing that would not have seemed like padding, in any case. It's actually a good chapter, I'm happy with it – it is just that it went a lot faster than I'd expected.

Now, for my purposes, word counts and word limits are a somewhat artificial measure. I've targeted 140,000 words, but if it ends up running at 130,000 or 150,000, that isn't really going to be a problem. I'm not dealing with a publisher demanding a specific length, or anything like that, so I'm not going to worry about this overmuch. In fact, it might prove a little liberating; I've felt a bit that I might be setting myself a somewhat artificial stricture.

Total for today, 5,014 - 986 under target. Hopefully I'll be able to make this up tomorrow.

Writing Day 2 (of 24)

Yesterday didn't start well, and if anything, today was worse. With one thing and another, I didn't manage to get to my desk to start writing until after 1300, leaving me a hair under five hours to do what I had hoped to write in seven or eight. It was a bit of a struggle, but I had a slightly clearer idea of what I was doing this time, so I just about managed to get the two chapters I planned to do today. I really didn't want to fall behind on the second day of this; frankly, I've been hoping that I might manage a couple of longer days to build myself up some leeway if I need it later on. That hasn't happened yet, but...given that I managed to do the total in two-thirds the time I was calculating, I might be able to do more in later days, especially when I start to build momentum.

Two new POV characters today, and both of them had their own complications, but with the fourth chapter I was finally able to progress a story somewhat, which was a bit of a relief. The plots are all in motion now, and though I still have a POV character to introduce – which I shall do in the fifth chapter, tomorrow morning (with luck) – at least things feel like I'm moving forwards now. One thing I already have decided, and that is that I'm probably dropping down to five POVs rather than six, but with four plots rather than three. That's going to have some interesting implications with regards to balancing the story out and tying it all together at the end, but I just can't think of anything satisfactory for the sixth POV to do, at least, not in this book. Plenty for the next books once those characters are in motion. I can always add another POV later, if I feel one is needed – there are a few good candidates already.

So, the total for today is 6,158 words, 158 over my target...pretty consistent so far. Let's hope it stays that way.

Writing Day 1 (of 24)

Well, I'd by lying if I said that today had gone anything like to schedule. I got up an hour later than I had intended, but that wasn't a problem...given that I spent about three hours postponing the start, for one reason or another that now seems completely and totally trivial. That blank document is always pretty daunting, and this time was no exception. Finally, I managed to pull myself together and actually make a start on this thing. Two chapters a day is my rough plan; for the Alamo books I set myself a minimum chapter length of two thousand words, but this time I'm going to three – I think the genre I'm now working in will benefit, especially as the POV characters are going to be more spread out than usual.

The first chapter went pretty much according to plan, a nice character introduction and battle scene, setting the first of the three plots into motion. I only realized today that this is what I am doing – entangling a trio of plots for this book, and it's already had an impact. The battle scene initially went about as tortuously as usual – for someone making a living writing action/adventure, I surely struggle getting the action down on paper, especially at the start – but I was rather satisfied with the outcome, so that went well.

Chapter two, on the other hand, was a bit more of a struggle. During the first chapter I stopped twice, in the second I lost count of the number of times I paused for some inspiration, and that despite the second chapter being the one that was clearest in my head. Again, this was character introduction and plot kickoff – I have another one of these to do tomorrow, before I can start actually progressing the plots a little. Already this is going to feel strange – in that normally I've written at least one chapter for each POV character every day, and this time it's going to be impossible. I'm not even going to revisit these characters until the fourth day from a POV perspective...

Speaking of which, I've already changed perspective POVs! I still have six, but I'm now working on the idea of having two for each plot, and as I was starting, one of them had three...and while I liked the character, it was a struggle to see why he needed a POV in this book. I can promote him for Book 2, and probably will, but for this book, he's dropping down to 'major character' status – and fortunately, I have a character in the wings to step into his shoes, so that won't be a problem. And god, Scrivener's 'random name generator' is useful, I was working it overtime today, and expect I will be in the future!

So the score for today: 6,366 words, 366 over my target. A good start.

Tomorrow Beckons...

It's been almost three months since I last put finger to keyboard on a new project, but finally I'm ready for my next project, and this is going to be a big one. I can blame George R.R. Martin for this, but I'm launching into epic sword and sorcery for this one – I have the desire to write something with big scope, something with multiple swirling plot-lines, epic battles, and most of all on a large scale. I've been feeling towards this one for a while now, and almost started the Mercian series – which this is not, and which doesn't feel quite ready yet – twice while I was feeling towards it, but just a week ago I had the key breakthrough.

I read 'Four Thousand Years Ago', by Geoffrey Bibby. The Bronze Age has always fascinated me, and that truly brought it alive – and then with a little more reading, everything started to just fall into place, and the plots that had been swirling around my head settled down into a form that I wanted to get started on. I've sketched out a few maps, made a few notes, worked out my naming patterns, and watched a few documentaries – and I'm just about ready to launch into it. Bronze Age fantasy.

I have to admit that I'm a little nervous. This will be my fourth book intended for publication, but will be at least twice as long as anything I have previously written. My last book had three POV characters, this one will have six. My longest work to date has been 74,000 words, this one is at a minimum 140,000, and probably longer. No wonder I'm nervous, but I've got a lot of story to pack into this, and I've been doing my homework – so I hope that I'm going to be equal to the task.

What I am going to do is more with this blog; I tend to blog more when I'm writing in any case, but this time I'm going to do a day-by-day play-by-play of how things are going – my progress, the books I've been reading, how things are generally going. I'm targeting doing this in 24 writing days at an average of six thousand words a day, and working on the presumption of ten days a fortnight – so five weeks, with an extra 'day off' if I feel like I need it. With a little luck, this one will be out before Christmas. I'm pulling out all the stops with this one – I'll be commissioning a proper map of the setting, possibly more than one – as it would feel wrong to have a fantasy epic without a map – and may even explore a paperback. Again, I'll be going over this whole process on the blog, the process of writing 'Dagger of the Serpent' from first word to hitting 'publish'...

A Book That No-One Will See

Today I wrote five thousand words...words that almost no-one are ever likely to see. Well, I'm tempted to post them here, and may indeed do so, but these constitute a first draft that I didn't actually know I was writing. What I thought I was writing was the first part of a ten-thousand-word novella, the idea being to get to know a character and a world that I was putting together as part of a new series, but what I ended up doing instead was coming up with a new concept for a sword and sorcery series. (Once I add more sorcery, that is.) As I was writing it, well, the characters were speaking to me, the core concept of the story started getting interesting, and I decided that hell, this was the fantasy series I have been reaching for these last months.

Doing totally scrapped drafts is nothing particularly new. I did about three takes at Battlecruiser Alamo before the final version came through, none of which were finished. They got to the half-way stage before I decided to try again – it would be interesting to read the final versions in the alternate universe where I pressed ahead with that idea, I suppose. I've got them all saved somewhere, of course, and I might dredge them out someday – think there might be some traction in a 'books that never were' book? (Nope, I don't think so either.)

I'm giving myself a week or so to re-ponder the setting and flesh out the plot – taking it from a ten-thousand word novella to an eighty-thousand word book that is to be the first in a series is going to require a bit of work, obviously – but I do know that the 'Forgotten Frontier' series is going to be the one that runs parallel with Battlecruiser Alamo, with 'Mercia' being the historical epic that I am going to write afterward. That's getting to grow in scope beyond anything that I'm attempting at the moment...I've rather filed it as 'next year'.

So, serious progress being made, which is good. Frontier #1 to be written this month, Alamo #4 next month. I need to get some more books out there...though I need to write them first!

What, you want to see that five thousand words? Tell you what...if three people comment on this post that they want to see it, then I'll post it. There you are. Call that an incentive.

Conan's Conflict

For the past few weeks, I've been rereading the old Conan anthologies among other things; I still have a long way to go and am pressing ahead, but I've already learned a great deal. This is the first time that I've approached them with that attitude, not to be entertained but to be educated, with the goal of improving my own writing for the sword and sorcery series I have pending. (This is not the Mercian Saga; that one is increasingly heading in a different direction, and while it is definitely going to happen, it isn't going to happen yet.) So here I go with a little analysis; brace yourself.

The core of any story is conflict. With Howard – certainly with the Conan stories – what we have as the core 'conflict' is civilization versus barbarian. A conflict which – in Howard's mind, we know that much from his writings and letters – the barbarians were always going to win. There is considerable historical evidence to support this theory, but the truth of the maxim is not the point here; simply that at the heart of his stories was civilization meeting the barbarians and being found wanting. Conan ultimately falls victim to the same trap; by becoming King of Aquilonia he becomes more civilized, and we know that despite all of his efforts, ultimately that kingdom is crushed by the barbarian hordes. It outlives his time, but that is all.

There is the heart of Conan, and the 'riddle of steel', if you like. That civilizations can last for thousands of years, but ultimately will fall; and Conan – and his chronicler – are on the side of the barbarians. He isn't Belisarius, he is Theodoric. (Howard must have been familiar with the fall of the Roman Empire. There are too many Conan-esque characters in that time period for him not to be; any number of Goths and Vandals gathered armies, conquered kingdoms and reigned...) King Kull can be taken as an even starker depiction of this battle. By This Axe I Rule is laden with such symbolism; there the barbarian has conquered, and the ancient kingdom will never be the same again. Forever will the laws be changed, whether for better or for worse.

On a purely subjective basis, my favourite Conan tales are those set in exotic lands, and there we have the clash of cultures as well – but more in the orientalist style. He's using these settings for the flavour; he isn't writing about the clash of West against East, or anything like that. This is barbarian against civilization, and he doesn't care where the barbarians come from. They can be Picts from the frozen wastes or Afghulis from the desert steppes; they remain Conan's allies against the strange ways of ancient lands. (On that aside, expect me to do something a bit different for a few days...reviewing old issues of Oriental Stories. I managed to snag some reprints...)

So – we see the tale of the Barbarian. The question therefore is...what of the Civilized Man? The thought that immediately occurs to me is that the story is just as interesting the other way around, that of civilization attempting to keep back the darkness for one more day, one more week, one more battle, knowing that ultimately they will lose. I am well aware that this is not a new thing – I'm looking at you, Admiral Flandry – but in the sword and sorcery genre it strikes me as an interesting angle for me to explore.

For – I want to wrote sword and sorcery, but I don't want to write a Clonan. If the opportunity ever arose to write a Conan, or a Kull saga, that I would happily do, I'll say that here and now. (Someone listening to this? Kindle Worlds, please?) But I don't want to write a thinly-veiled clone, I want to strike interesting ground that has been less travelled, and this strikes me as a good avenue to attack!

Another lesson, well learned, is the exotic setting, and that's somewhere else I intend to explore. Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, the Black Sea, the desert tribes as far as the Tibetan Empire and Greco-Bactria, all of these have potential as interesting settings for stories, once I get a handle – a final and complete handle – on the character. In one way I want to follow Howard, a character that roams, that wanders the limits of his world. Conan had a story, an arc, but he was not tied down. Today I fear there would be the temptation to make his character the lead in a trilogy, maybe the 'Conquest of Aquilonia', or something of that sort, when that does not really suit the character. More than that, from a simply logistical point of view, as a writer it makes sense to have a world that can support multiple stories, a character that can persist for dozens of stories rather than simply a three-book series. To make that work, of course, the character has to be a strong and deep one, and Conan certainly was. He must have been – eighty years on, and we still talk about him.