Ancient History

Why am I writing a brand new epic fantasy series when my long-suffering readers are constantly asking for the next episode in the Three Worlds saga?

I’ve spent two-thirds of my writing life on that 11-book sequence, and by the time I finished the last book, The Destiny of the Dead, in 2008, I was creatively exhausted. I didn’t want to grind out another series, full of reluctance and angst, and let my readers down with a story that wasn’t good enough. When I do write the next episode – the one that finally tells what fate befell Karan and Llian after The Way Between the Worlds – I want to be white-hot with enthusiasm.

Also, at the end of each big fantasy series I like to write something completely different, so as to freshen and rejuvenate my writing.

Inspirations

Three years ago I began The Tainted Realm, a new epic fantasy series set in an entirely new fantasy world. Or at least, a small part of a new world. Most of the world is covered in ice and it’s steadily closing around the last place where people still survive, the island of Hightspall, which is still ice free because it’s so incredibly volcanic. Though the eruptions have been catastrophic in the distant past, and they’re getting worse …

Hightspall, once home to the peace-loving Cythians, was brutally colonised two thousand years ago. The colonists were led by a band of Herovians, a supremacist race whose ancient sourcebook, the Immortal Text, told them that the land was theirs by right. The Herovians did their best to exterminate the Cythians and their culture, and thought they had …

For fifteen hundred years the surviving Cythians have lived underground in Cython, served by their Pale slaves, the descendants of noble Hightspaller children once given as hostages but, incomprehensibly, never ransomed. For all this time, the Cythians’ lives have been shaped by the alchymical books called the Solaces, sorcerously bestowed upon them by an unknown benefactor.

Now Hightspall is struggling under one natural disaster after another and the colonists’ power and magery are failing, as if the land itself is rising up to defeat them. Then the last of the Solaces appears in Cython, the iron book called The Consolation of Vengeance, and the Cythians know that it is time to take back their land.

And only Tali, a furious but terrified slave-girl, stands in their way.

I’ve long been fascinated by the nature of political power, and in particular how the means of seizing or maintaining power can undermine the legitimacy of the realm – it happens all the time in history. In Australia, where I live, the current government is constantly undermined because of the way its previous Prime Minister was overthrown.

Such historical realities were the germ of the idea behind The Tainted Realm – a nation tainted by a deep sense of national guilt about its own origins, and now facing a resurgent enemy it has no idea how to fight.

The Grim Task of Writing – and Rewriting

One of the best things about being a writer is the “next-book dream” – that the story I’m about to write will be original or provocative or funny or life-changing, or non-stop, edge-of-the-seat suspenseful. Sometimes, in moments of authorial madness, I imagine that it can be all of the above. And everything in my life: every snippet of research, every odd idea jotted down or moment of inspiration can go into the pot, get a good stir, simmer for weeks or years, then miraculously and effortlessly flow into the story. Ha!

One of the worst aspects is grinding out the first draft. It usually starts well, and sometimes runs well for as much as eight or ten chapters. Vengeance did. And I was lulled, poor fool that I am. Yes, I thought, this book is going to be a snap.

Then suddenly I was in the writer’s ‘death zone’ where every word came with an effort, every sentence sounded banal, every character was done to death, every situation boring and repetitive. Nothing worked; nothing felt inspired. What had gone wrong? Had I used all my ideas up and burned myself out as a writer? I started to think that I’ll never write anything worth reading again.

Nearly every book I write goes through this stage, a quarter of the way in, but Vengeance was one of the worst because I had so many interruptions from other deadlines – pre-existing commitments for a quartet of humorous children’s books, plus various other stories. Writing is hard work at the best of times, but doubly hard when I’m forced to jump back and forth between different kinds of books.

Also, because really big books present a writing challenge that doesn’t occur with small ones – it’s difficult to keep the whole vast canvas in mind at once. The only way to write such books (for me, anyway) is in long, uninterrupted slabs of time, otherwise every interruption hurls me out of the characters’ heads and I have to laboriously write my way back in again. And no matter how well yesterday’s writing went, each new day presents the same challenge.

As I plodded on, I realised that the story wasn’t working. I’d been too hasty; I hadn’t planned Vengeance properly in the first place. I stopped, tore the draft apart and spent a month or two planning the book anew, in vast detail, then revising the plan over and often until I was excited by the story and could block out many weeks of uninterrupted time to write full bore [see my previous post on Orbitbooks.net].

Then I turned off the internet, told lies to my clients, made excuses to friends and family, and pulled down the blind so I couldn’t see the overgrown lawn, which was already higher than the ride-on mower (we live in the country). I set the alarm clock for an hour before dawn, then wrote all day and late in the night, seven days a week, week after week, never looking back over what I’d written until the draft was complete. For me, this is the only way to short circuit the ‘my writing is crap’ phase, and In this time I made more progress – and better – than in months of plod writing.

The Joy of the Ending

And it worked. One of the greatest satisfactions of writing comes when it’s going well and the story is flowing onto the screen as fast as I can type. The faster I write, the better the story seems to work and the less editing is required afterwards. And once I have a good draft, the rest is easy. Even though I’ll work on the book for another 4-6 months, it’s a dream once I know where I’m going.

I love editing my books, particularly in the later stages. Doing the final draft is always a pleasure. The story has finally come together, it’s tight and dramatic and full of surprises, and as I go through it I see hundreds of places where tiny changes can add so much depth, drama and suspense: a line of dialogue, a character’s sudden terror or insight, reshaping a moment or a setting to heighten the mood.

I never feel my books are quite finished; there’s always an urge to do one more draft, because each draft makes it a little bit better. Thank heavens for deadlines, and editors who say, ‘It’s time!’ as they tear the final draft from my reluctant hands.

And I’ve learned my lesson, by the way. From now on it’s one series at a time.

That’s all very well, readers are bound to say, but what about the Three Worlds? What about the story you’ve been promising to write for a dozen years, the follow-on from The View from the Mirror, tentatively called The Fate of the Children?

It’s coming. Honest it is!