Thoughts on change
A friend dropped a comment yesterday that got me thinking: "Yeah, what's happened to your fantasy aspirations? Why all the rush of paranoiac cold war stuff?" Sometimes it takes an outside comment to get you looking at yourself in a certain way. It's something I've taken a lot of time figuring out.
My dream was always to become a fantasy author. I wrote two parts of the Life of a Falcon trilogy and started the third; epic fantasy, certainly, but largely TLOTR with different races and names. Hell, when you're thirteen it's difficult to write truly original fiction (if such a thing exists), and it's easy to copy whatever you happen to be reading at the time. But ... the truth is, I was obsessed with LOAF.
I have an odd theory to explain why we do things we like doing; everything has its own emotion tagged with it, totally unique, that we can re-experience if we go back to that place or do that thing again. That's always been the way with me. And that was how LOAF started; one February in 1997 on the battlements of Framlingham Castle, looking out over the mist-shrouded woods and fields. And I was assaulted by this emotion. It prowled up behind me and posessed my mind for the next five years, so powerful that it invaded my dreams, saturated my thoughts, and found its way into every corner of my existence.
Looking back, I think it was something that comes with childhood. The magic of toys or games had long since gone for me, but one last thing remained. Children have the remarkable ability to find wonder and story in everything. And so, in 1997, I grasped the last thing of this kind I could reach, and spun it into creation the only way I knew how: through writing.
Things have changed since then. After LOAF, I no longer wrote because I was posessed by some magical emotion--I wrote because it was what I did. I changed and evolved as I gradually grew up. After Darkness in the Forest, I started work on another fantasy novel because that was really all I knew; never did I consider that something else might hold the future for me.
I'm captivated by the mystery of Orfordness. So many big questions are left unanswered, so many secrets that will never come to light. This twenty-mile stretch of coastline has played such a huge part in the wars of the 20th Century, and many of its ghosts are still with us. Bawdsey Manor; Bentwaters AFB; AWRE; Cobra Mist; Cold Witness. I feel at home in the 1970's and '80's, even if I wasn't born until 1986. It is a world that can be thoroughly explored. I have found something more real than fantasy, a realm that I can literally walk out and find, photograph, and study.
And yet ... sometimes I still hear the whisper of that elusive feeling. In my heart, I know that fantasy isn't over for me. I still read a great deal of it, and respect and admire all fantasy authors; in fact, I still consider myself among that class. I don't call myself 'science fiction author' ... I know that, once I find a truly good idea, I'll be writing fantasy once again. The Cold Witness books won't last forever.
So maybe the change wasn't so complete, after all.
A friend dropped a comment yesterday that got me thinking: "Yeah, what's happened to your fantasy aspirations? Why all the rush of paranoiac cold war stuff?" Sometimes it takes an outside comment to get you looking at yourself in a certain way. It's something I've taken a lot of time figuring out.
My dream was always to become a fantasy author. I wrote two parts of the Life of a Falcon trilogy and started the third; epic fantasy, certainly, but largely TLOTR with different races and names. Hell, when you're thirteen it's difficult to write truly original fiction (if such a thing exists), and it's easy to copy whatever you happen to be reading at the time. But ... the truth is, I was obsessed with LOAF.
I have an odd theory to explain why we do things we like doing; everything has its own emotion tagged with it, totally unique, that we can re-experience if we go back to that place or do that thing again. That's always been the way with me. And that was how LOAF started; one February in 1997 on the battlements of Framlingham Castle, looking out over the mist-shrouded woods and fields. And I was assaulted by this emotion. It prowled up behind me and posessed my mind for the next five years, so powerful that it invaded my dreams, saturated my thoughts, and found its way into every corner of my existence.
Looking back, I think it was something that comes with childhood. The magic of toys or games had long since gone for me, but one last thing remained. Children have the remarkable ability to find wonder and story in everything. And so, in 1997, I grasped the last thing of this kind I could reach, and spun it into creation the only way I knew how: through writing.
Things have changed since then. After LOAF, I no longer wrote because I was posessed by some magical emotion--I wrote because it was what I did. I changed and evolved as I gradually grew up. After Darkness in the Forest, I started work on another fantasy novel because that was really all I knew; never did I consider that something else might hold the future for me.
I'm captivated by the mystery of Orfordness. So many big questions are left unanswered, so many secrets that will never come to light. This twenty-mile stretch of coastline has played such a huge part in the wars of the 20th Century, and many of its ghosts are still with us. Bawdsey Manor; Bentwaters AFB; AWRE; Cobra Mist; Cold Witness. I feel at home in the 1970's and '80's, even if I wasn't born until 1986. It is a world that can be thoroughly explored. I have found something more real than fantasy, a realm that I can literally walk out and find, photograph, and study.
And yet ... sometimes I still hear the whisper of that elusive feeling. In my heart, I know that fantasy isn't over for me. I still read a great deal of it, and respect and admire all fantasy authors; in fact, I still consider myself among that class. I don't call myself 'science fiction author' ... I know that, once I find a truly good idea, I'll be writing fantasy once again. The Cold Witness books won't last forever.
So maybe the change wasn't so complete, after all.
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