Where do I start?

Where do I start? I’m a child of the 1980s so I grew up with some of the most iconic fantasy and sci-fi films ever made (you will all agree, of course, that Back to the Future is the greatest film OF ALL TIME). Films such as Labyrinth, Neverending Story, The Goonies, Willow and Return to Oz all lit a flame within my imagination.

Those worlds and stories are amazing and breathtaking.

I loved reading books. My dad took me to the library every week. I’d borrow two or three books at a time, and it was only a matter of time before I discovered the Fighting
Fantasy books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. My love of fantasy was firmly cemented.

I always chose the wrong route, of course, and had to frantically try to find the numbered passage where it had all gone wrong!

I was then introduced to the classic fantasy books – C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I couldn’t get enough of these magical worlds and can remember making my parents leave the landing light on at night – not because I was afraid of the dark, but so I could continue reading my books when it was ‘lights out’!

As a teenager I was into Warhammer, the table top fantasy army game – Lizardmen and Beastmen if you were wondering. The mythos of the Warhammer world (very similar to Tolkiens) gripped my imagination and in between miniature painting sessions I would write my own little stories to bring the previous battle to life and give it more meaning. It’s a wonder I got anything done at school…

In a way, fantasy has shaped my life and so it is only natural that it is the genre I wanted to write within (sci-fi is a very close second – who knows, I might have a sci-fi novel in me too…).

I have tried not to go down the tried and tested medieval style fantasy route, instead opting to go for something in between medieval and industrial. People have guns, there are machines and steam engines, but there’s also magic, mystical weaponry and unnatural creatures.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Inspiration is all around. Just take a look. My characters are all blends of people I know or have seen on the TV or read about in magazines. Sit in the corner of a pub for an afternoon and you will see so many interactions between people.

Kara calls it ‘people-watching’, I call it ‘character inspiration’.

The places my characters visit or live are all inspired by my surroundings or by places I have visited. Living in the Peak District certainly helps with landscaping ideas. Go on Pinterest or Instagram and it’s not hard to find stunning photographs of far away locales that open the doors of the imaginarium within your brain.

Always look around, always write ideas down when they come to you (I have Google Notes on my phone so I have no excuse!) and always let your mind wander if you’re bored.

Share your ideas with friends and family. If people take to the idea it’s worth writing about.

Here we go then

Well, here we go then. I’ve spent the last <muffled noise> years writing, re-writing, editing, re-reading, editing, more editing. At times I lost sight of why I was doing it.

I had moments when I couldn’t face looking at the last sentence I’d written because I knew I’d have to write more when I wasn’t inspired to do so. I fell out of love with my characters. I’d leave it for a week and re-read a previous chapter and think “Bloody Hell, did I write this? I love it!” I fell back in love with my characters. Then I’d furiously write some more until the impetus wore off. All in all, writing a novel has been a roller coaster of an experience.

The process began with a simple story in my mind and I can still remember the dream that inspired part of the underlying mythos. I never set out to write a novel! As with countless other stories I have started over the years I found myself struggling to get it out of my brain and onto the page. I got to a certain point and thought: “Oh I’m stuck.

Don’t know what to do here. Nevermind, I’ll give up – it was only for fun anyway.” And that was OK. After all, I only ever wrote stories for my own amusement. Nobody else got to see them. But I’d written quite a lot this time. Not hundreds of words – thousands of them! Tens of thousands. It seemed like a waste of time if I gave up so I took a deep breath, let my better half have a read of the first few chapters and she implored me to carry on and make something of it.

So I did. I finished the story. I read it. It was alright. Actually, it was amazing in places but fell short in quite a few others. So I did the thing I had been dreading: I let others read my work! As an introvert, this step was huge. What if they hated it? What if I’ve wasted <muffled noise> years on this for everyone to say it’s rubbish and to stop dreaming? But that’s what all writers do and, as it turns out, I had nothing to worry about! The feedback I received from those who gave up their time to read my work was absolutely constructive. I ended up turning my characters into better people and my chapters into something more engaging. I had drive once more and edited each and every chapter several times.

By the time I finished I had a story just over 180,000 words long. I was a little concerned. Sure, fantasy epics eat 180k words for breakfast (just look at George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire word counts), but as an aspiring debut novelist it seemed a little too long. I re-read the entire manuscript and ultimately decided that I couldn’t get rid of anything else – those 180k words were all needed to tell my story the way I wanted.

Ignoring the usual word count warnings plastered across writers’ forums, I took a gamble and left it as it was. My next hurdle: find a publisher. I’d got it into my head that I wanted to be an independent author. Whilst the big publishing houses are great and have a lot of literary clout, I wanted to have more control over my work. I approached a number of publishers, several of whom are champions of new authors. I suffered a few rejections (and astronomical quotes for ‘self publishing’ fees!), which dampened my enthusiasm for the project, but finally received the email all budding authors want to see – we want to publish your book.

Cue the excitement and jumping around!

TL;DR – Anyway, the whole point of this rambling post is for me to say how exciting it is
to know that something I have imagined and created is imminent for publication. More
news/updates to follow.

Parting advice: Be excellent to each other…
Much love, Mike x