I wanted to take a moment to talk about some objectives for my writing, and given that my first novel, Kingshold, is set during an election I thought it only made sense to make this My Fantasy Manifesto (and by the way, I’ll give a free copy of the book to the first person to identify the song reference in the title above). So here it is:
Life is difficult – My characters, like most of us, have baggage and whether that is their family, choices they’ve made in the past or the prejudices of others about what they can or can’t do, it can impede them being their best self. I want to see my characters try even though they’ll fail at times. I want to see them stand up and fight against what they perceive to be wrong even if life will try to chop them off at the knees. I will write stories about adults, full of potential, but always liable to fall flat on their face.
Great and little evils – There is a great evil looming over the city of Kingshold, but it hardly appears in this first story (though they will be an increasing menace in the future). Instead, there are a lot of petty evils that the characters have to face, the type of evils where the perpetrator is confident they are in the right, the ones that happen everyday but become ignored as just being the way the world works. Which is worse? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
Condensed Time Frame – Epic fantasy novels and series often span many years, with characters traveling thousands of miles. I have loved many of those books so I’m not knocking them but I want to try something different. Kingshold is set almost exclusively in the titular city and it all happens in just twenty eight days. I hope this immersion into a single place and time will bring the struggle to life.
Stand Alone Stories – Kingshold is a story with a satisfying ending. I recently picked up a book I was excited to read but found out on Goodreads that it didn’t have an ending – the last page was effectively “to be continued”. And so I put that book to one side to wait until the second is published. So each of my novels set in this world will be self standing, but with many threads into future and past stories that will encourage wider reading.
Widening the Lens – I have a different plan for my publishing schedule than most would follow. I will publish at least one novel a year in this planned storyline of four books. But I will also publish a book of shorter stories that will accompany each novel, starring characters from that book as well as some happenings that will occur between each novel. The first book is Kingshold, and the short story collection will be called Tales of Kingshold. I’ll also be releasing some of these stories on this website (and here is the plug to sign up for the newsletter to receive the first novelette in January).
Fun, but serious too – Most importantly my stories have to be fun, in a “wow, that’s cool” way. So expect adventures, fights, magic (with rules for those of you, like me, who like magic to ‘make sense’), monsters, chase scenes and comedic moments. But I also like to consider real world issues, so if you’re inclined, you’ll find them in my writing. Don’t be put off about that though, you’ll be able to get out of it what you want.
As usual for a manifesto, I have probably rambled on for too long, so well done if you made it this far. This is a living document and I’ll reserve the right to change it if I think of something better but I’ll also grade myself against these objectives each year. As always, if anyone has any feedback or observations I’d love to hear them in the comments below.
