World Building: An Update

 Hi, 

Welcome if you're new or welcome back if you've stumbled onto my blog in the past. It's been a few weeks since I posted anything — sorry for that! Life got busy, and the posts I write take time to put together.  I've also been fully immersed in a world building project and so haven't really had time to come up for air. 

In a change to the planned topic, I'm going to talk about what I'm making and why I've been deep in the creative well. 

A few years ago I started writing a novel called Army of Shadows. It's an Epic Fantasy story set in a pseudo Celtic set of islands, inspired by Celtic culture and mythology, and starts with a young woman on the run from the law who takes refuge in a barrow and accidentally frees something ancient and malicious. 

From there we pick up with a bunch of other people as the situation worsens and something else ancient is reborn — an underground resistance to the things in the night, as the ordinary people have to step up in their own defence. 

Initially I wanted to write some stories as standalone adventures but have realised that I'm working on a bigger canvas. When I abandoned the project it was because I was worried that I wasn't writing enough short work and building my portfolio enough to have an audience, which is something I constantly struggle with. I was also concerned about spreading myself too thin - like most authors I have a day job and keeping on top of everything that's going on can be a challenge. 

The world and story, however, wouldn't leave me alone. I developed an idea for an order of dragon knights in the same world, and wanted to tell a story of hubris and an eventual fall from power for them as the secrets held within their inner circle eventually escaped. Elements of the Knights Templar's fall and the breaking of other secret societies resonated with the project.

I also wanted to explore the nature of dragons. I feel we've become so used to seeing them as nothing more than dumb beasts through shows like Game of Thrones or the How To Train Your Dragon series, that we forget that in other media they can be shown as intelligent, and in some places, as benevolent. Delving into their nature and trying to bring something new to it is incredibly attractive to me. 

I also have thoughts about trying to create some stories about a Magus navigating the necromancy-haunted Carsh Empire, where dark secrets lie buried. These stories feel like they could be a lot smaller, but I'm also drawn to writing some larger narratives. 

All in all, I think my plan is to try and emulate Juliet E McKenna whose first novel series were all set in her fantasy world (which I think was originally an adaptation of her D&D world). I'd like to do that, it has an appeal because it would be cool to write sets of novels that all feed into the same mythologies and explore the fault lines that I've constructed. As a fellow roleplayer, I'd also like to develop my world to be a gaming setting, so getting as much work as I can in now, will hopefully assist with that. 

As a consequence, much of what I've been doing has been constructing the ancient history of the world because it has relevance to the stories I'm writing. Events thousands of years old resonate and return in the books I'm planning and I'm getting more things to write about and develop as short stories (and perhaps as narratives set in the world's past). 

This process is changing my way of seeing the part of the world I'm focusing on - a continent called Tarranlya, and the archipelagos that have formed around it as a result of something called the Araxian Disaster, a magical cataclysm that transformed the world. 

Here’s a quick rundown of the secondary-world fantasy settings I’m working with:

• Tarranlya – The main setting for my novels and short fiction. Epic fantasy with ancient legacies, dragon-knights, and a post-cataclysmic geography.
• Markov’s World – A Sword & Sorcery / post-apocalyptic setting inspired by ancient cultures and JRPGs. Focused on short stories and novellas.
• The Talons – Post-Viking horror/fantasy. Fae-haunted wilderness, medieval science, and ambiguous humanity.
• The Cauldron – A D&D setting in a magically warped crater formed by a Tunguska-like impact.

One thing that unites all these worlds is a focus on survival, underground groups who either fight evil or used to but have now disbanded while the powerful turn away. They also share questions about the nature and ethics of magic as well as the what we mean when we talk about deities. These are pretty common themes for me to play with, reflecting my interest in these areas. 

As I've said in the past, we put our interests and our selves into what we create. 

Hopefully things will get back to normal soon, and I'll be posting more often. Until then, enjoy your world building and let me know what you're up to in the comments below!