World of Aona

I was asked a couple of times recently why I “bother” writing and particularly why I bother writing novels which are broadly within the fantasy genre.

People who like to ask “Why do you bother?” type questions always amuse me. Well okay, they actually annoy more often than they amuse me, but oddly enough they also stir me into a more determined mood- which is odd, because someone who forever questions the point of doing something they haven’t tried themselves (or indeed “can’t be bothered”) tends to be the sort of person who gets up in the morning wishing the rest of the world could be dragged down to his or her level.

One could suggest to them that they “get a life” but you just know they won’t.

Anyway, to answer the original question, I write because that gives more purpose than any other activity. All other things are pretty much a means to an end, but writing is itself a means and an end- by which I mean the journey and the destination are both (if you love doing it) self-fulfilling. It’s occasionally frustrating, but I can’t imagine not doing it.

And why bother writing fantasy?

Well that’s not so much a philosophy as much as a way of life, or a way of helping to rationalise and make sense of life through writing. It might sound odd that a genre as (apparently) far removed as possible from the grim grind of everyday life helps rationalise and make sense- but somehow it does. There are events and scenarios I write about which are in one way or another lifted from real happenings (although I have to say I’ve never gone on in detail about the worst things I hear about in the real world or used them- at least not graphically- in my books). Fantasy is a genre that allows an incredible amount of freedom- using as much as you want of the real world and transplanting it into an exotic, alien environment.

I’d be hard pushed to create a world with more greed, disillusionment, despair, hate, fear, paranoia and extremism than Earth 2012 (nor would I want to), and although the Aona books are pretty dark, I think (certainly I hope) that their character-driven nature  is a source of some inspiration. Whether or not it’s fantasy, tales of ordinary (and some extraordinary) people grimly determined to survive tend to have a resonance with readers.

Progress with the final draft of Secret Roads, the sequel to Oblivion’s Forge, continued over the holidays, to the point that it now stands at 64,000 words and so is well on track for publication in March. The rough first draft for much of the third book, The Endless Shore, is also in place, and there’s every possibility of that also being read near the end of 2012.

Winter is a good time for writing; the grim, cold, short days somehow lend themselves well to the pursuit. There are distractions as always, but particularly during the Christmas holidays one tends to at least know when these will be.

Writing and travel pretty much form the basis of my goals for this year. Publication of two more books, especially when the first one took so long to complete, would be a good achievement, but travelling to a few more interesting parts of the world (those that haven’t yet succumbed to chaos) during the year, and for as long as possible after that, would be a good bonus. I don’t think I’ll ever be a travel writer, but I do like to write whilst outside my usual environment- different surroundings often lend a certain freedom and liberation from the usual mindset (at least that’s what I’ve found). I can even do it whilst flying, although if I have a window seat then I sometimes just stare at the clouds for ages.

Easily motivated but easily distracted. ; )

Just a quick summary on the status of the Aona series and the current choices for book titles for those works in progress or yet to be conceived:

Book I – Oblivion’s Forge

Published and available from completelynovel.com – http://www.completelynovel.com/books/oblivions-forge–2/buys/new

Book II – Secret Roads

Final draft in progress. I expect it to be available around March.

Book III – The Endless Shore

First draft being written. Should be completed and possibly even published by the end of 2012.

Book IV – The Spiral Heart

To be written

Book V – Salvation’s Door

To be written

So I’ve decided to compile and publish a collection of some of my short stories that I wrote back in the ’90s and early ’00s. The only issue is that there are only nine which I feel are strong enough to be included, so I’m debating whether or not to go ahead and make a smaller compilation with the nine I have, or do something I haven’t done for years and actually attempt to write a couple of new stories.

I suspect some of the stories I’ve included may need a bit of reworking, but that’s an altogether easier task than coming up with something entirely new.

Most of them were published previously, in various fairly small-circulation magazines.

Stories chosen for inclusion so far:

Inward Bound

Opening Night

Season of Alteration

Morning Assembly

Aphrodite Takes a Fall

Perfection

Remembrance

Forgotten Sounds

Death in Bloom

Unmade

Some unfinished works that I may complete (one way or another) and also add:

The Switch

Safe Harvest

The Attractions

Another little problem… I have absolutely no idea what to call this anthology…

Jaana willed the babbling in her head to cease, but when it did, an altogether different sound came drifting across the night air, a simultaneous choking and chanting that filled her with dread.

Yet still she drew closer, down the gentle slope towards the lake shore, her feet squelching in the muddy ground under the thin layer of snow. The wind chased itself across the lake, rippling the surface. She had walked to within fifty yards of the thin, almost skeletal figures- and still these creatures seemed to know nothing of her presence, for they had not turned or even moved- when she felt a sudden mad pulsing and movement, as if her blood itself was swirling in strange directions. Jaana felt her heart thump painfully. What are they? she thought desperately.

The taller of the two figures looked down at its companion- though in truth Jaana could see no eyes, only the hood under which they must be hidden- and pointed across the water to the distant far shore. Then it spoke, and the voice, carried across the wind, was one of bestial cunning, the crunch of rotting bones.

“From the beginning, to the end, from the first blood to the last, hear us, our masters.” The words were uttered almost as a chant, in symphony with the lapping of the wavelets against the shore. And I hear you too, Jaana thought, almost delirious with the sudden heat behind her eyes and in her limbs. She felt certain that she would melt through the snow, even through the muddy earth beneath. I hear you, and I feel every beat of your rotten hearts.

The smaller figure turned as if to peer up at its companion. Although Jaana could see little detail, she became aware with a feeling of sudden horror that something misshapen existed under the cloak of the smaller figure, something that was changing the very form of the body, rending bone and tissue slowly apart. And as she closed her eyes, she could even hear it.

The tall figure laughed again, and with terrifying ease, reached under the hood of its companion’s robe and tugged a handful of hair from the head of its companion, scattering it in the breeze with a laconic gesture. “Time below and time above…”

Then the other being spoke up. “I sleep. I wake. I sleep…” It was not any kind of voice Jaana could recognise. Entrenched with filth, mud or slime, it was a hoarse, choking gurgle, spoken through a broken throat, a vile sound hiding in a broken body. Worse still, it changed in pitch the whole while, as if the sound was nothing more than a reflection of something chaotic happening to this wretched form.

I will send you back under the earth, came that mad, hot voice from within her again, and both of them turned in the same instant, as if they had heard those unspoken words. Jaana could feel the taller figure smile as if in welcome, although it had no face, let alone a mouth. She raised a hand as if to defend herself, and the wave of rage inside overwhelmed her completely. In utter agony, she clapped her hands over her ears and fell to the ground, but even through what blood-rimmed sight remained she saw the smaller figure burst into flames and also fall to the ground. The other one howled as if in anguish. Then it turned, the cloak billowing, to face the waters of the lake again. The creature raised both thin, bony arms to the sky as it exalting some unseen god.

The cloak simply fell to the floor in a heap; of its wearer, there was now no sign, though ripples of darkness, like a scattering of deep shadows cast over the lake, mingled with the water for a moment. All that remained was the body lying motionless, flames licking at the still form, at the shore of the lake. Within only a few of Jaana’s short, frightened breaths, the body became ash. As she sat up in the mud and snow, the breeze carried it out across the waters of the lake in an angry swirl.

This is really the first proper introduction to the man known as Ilumor, who readers of Oblivion’s Forge had a the dubious pleasure of meeting briefly.

Ilumor, who dimly remembered being a mere human man once, rode near the head of the vast army. His horse, uneasy of his presence, often shivered and tossed her head, but Ilumor did not notice such things. His thoughts, oddly disturbed fragments for the most part, formed two distinct threads along which he idly wandered. The lesser of these concerned Serina; he was confident that the fresh diafagh would find her and tear her apart, but he would have preferred to see some part of her brought back; a bone for him to look at, a dead-eyed head for him to toss aside, anything tangible. I should have commanded that too, he thought, but it was difficult to give more than one instruction at a time to diafagh. The smearing of her blood across their dead lips was almost a command to find and ruin in itself, but anything more than that was asking too much. Theirs is a simple spark, he reminded himself, dim in radiance and dimmer still in intellect. Not all tools need to be sharp.

The other strand of thought, which occupied him more and more as they drew nearer to Nisstar, was of the Great Enemy, the marandaal to those who remembered the name at all. They would, he knew, emerge in Nisstar as the Earth-Lords had foretold, and they would burst forth like white light. Ilumor’s lips tightened in a grim smile. The test, he thought. This is the greatest test any of us can face.

As before, so again. The smile that adorned his lips now, wider and blissful, had the appearance of a dark crack. His eyes, like hard black jewels, gleamed in Ildar’s light. For a moment he recalled an occasion that mirrored this one, another long march over open ground under the same moon, over three thousand years ago. It seemed to him more recent than that, but Ilumor had spent much of the time since then dead to the world, in curious limbo, wandering the places that witches and their like sought to explore. His name had been Charn, a word that roughly meant That which seeps from the depths. And so he had, eventually, coaxed forth from the bitter darkness of the earth and from the sterile eternity of the Silver Road, by Serina of all people.

I knelt by her that night, he recalled, and I kissed her even as she recoiled at what she had done. The sense of sudden freedom addled my very being. How else could I have felt something almost akin to love?

Ilumor shook his head. She should have known that he answered only to his own lords, to the world itself, and not her shallow attempts to capture and contain powers for herself. Like all your kind, you think yourself a shaper, he had told her. But you are simply a shape. By now Serina had surely been snapped apart and was missing even the marrow from her bones, so that was another chapter to close away.

Ilumor had lived for a very long time, one way or another, but he was not in the habit of reminiscing.

Secret Roads has now reached that stage where several storylines are near to completion and are coming together- not quite seamlessly, but that will happen soon enough.

I was also mulling over suitable titles for Book III (and possibly Book IV) – The Endless Shore is looking like the favourite for the third book at the moment, although The Destroying Light may be chosen instead. It’s hard to say. The “endless shore” is another way for those who know about the “inner world” or “inner life” of Aona to describe those places that are part of the world, but also not part of the world in a strictly physical sense- you could say they’re the same place but a different dimension, which I realise isn’t the easiest concept to deal with. The “Endless Shore” is (to my mind, and at this point) a little bit like the Silver Road, or (you won’t have about this yet) the Green Road. You could think of these environments as ways in which those with the required power or talent can tap into the deepest secrets of the world.

Anyway, it’s Sunday and that means there are lots of words to write. I expect to be posting a new sample chapter shortly.

I don’t think about my written works from fifteen or twenty years ago that often, but on the occasions that I do, it isn’t in glowing terms.

I’ve spoken with other writers on the matter and by and large they seem to feel the same way- admittedly even those who were published that long ago didn’t exactly become superstars from their works, so their feelings on the matter are to be expected. Whilst it’s encouraging to note from experience (and the experience of others) that talent can be honed and sharpened simply by application, dedication and hard work, I also can’t help but wonder why so many of us (writers, I mean) feel that we were so “bad” when we started out.

When I read through old manuscripts of mine from those distant times, trying to be objective, I generally feel that they either consisted of decent enough ideas poorly executed, or that the whole work was let down by being mired in genre stereotypes (and the fasnty genre has many of those… too many). Perhaps the short stories (and one short experimental novel) I wrote in the mid and late nineties, none of which were fantasy in any traditional sense, were the result of an effort to break out of that literary cul-de-sac. Some of the time, I feel that the approach even worked, which was encouraging.

Some people believe that writers generally get better, or feel more comfortable with their creations, in middle and late age because they can draw on greater experience. I think there’s a good deal of truth in that as far as writers within contemporary settings are concerned, although I don’t necessarily feel it’s true for fantasy writers, who by definition must imagine and craft into being a fasntical yet plausible setting / world / universe / all of these.

But then, I suppose this is really an idle question. If you’re that much better now than when you were ytoung, then great. Personally, I would have liked to have been better than I was, when I had the boundless energy of youth, but history is non-negotiable.

I wonder though, how some of us will feel in twenty years’ time about the works we’re creating today….

Enjoyed writing up one of the chapters for Secret Roads today. The chapter is provisionally called Winter’s Blood- it feels kind of appropriate, but I may change it if I think of anything better.

Here’s just a little taster… (may be edited later as it’s not 100%)

A blizzard had started up by the time he arrived at the outer gates of the fortress, his legs aching all over and his face utterly numb with the cold. The gates themselves had been shut, but neither were they locked nor barred; a long, partly rusted chain hung loosely on one of them, trailing down as far as the snow. Rocan pushed one of the gates open with some effort, mentally adding their unlocked and unguarded state to his list of points to discuss.

Smooth snow many feet thick covered the courtyard, and no boot prints or even impressions made by birds or other creatures could be seen; the fall was utterly smooth, undisturbed. No light issued from any of the windows that dotted each floor and tower. Rocan stared in wonderment at the scene of desolation. The drab grey walls rose out of the snowdrifts as if in bewilderment at the season, like half-erased sketches against the thick, swirling snow that had now become relentless. This does not even feel real, he thought suddenly, recalling a long-ago dream in which he had taken this exact journey to this spot, and gazed upon the abandoned fortress. Now I’m staring into my dream, and my dream is staring back at me…

No, I won’t be directing and producing a film of Oblivion’s Forge. For a start, I wouldn’t have a clue how to, and even if I did it would cost silly, silly money. Of course, if that nice Mr Jackson or someone else appropriate decided to express an interest…

But I did find (and do find) thinking visually about the storyline and characters very helpful- as in “How should this work if it was a film? What would they say? How would they say it?” I even started thinking in terms of the right actors to portray the various characters, which is really going down the planning route a little too far.

Vornen was originally going to be played by Johnny Depp… although maybe Mr Depp’s a bit old now? Don’t know.

Amethyst – Kate Beckinsale… but I mean “Underworld” Kate (with the gothness toned down a bit), rather than posh period drama Kate

Suli – *has* to be Fairuza Balk, but Eliza Dushku at a push

Rocan was going to be Clive Owen, but it turns out there’s a perfect character for him to play who we’re introduced to in Secret Roads.

And I thought Phyqor could be played by Robert Carlyle… if no other reason than R.C is supreme. See Trainspotting, and 51st State. (28 Weeks Later? never heard of it )

Right, so add up actors’ fees *alone*, then a budget for convincing CGI…