As Demon at the Window nears it's first draft completion, I'm starting to consider what's next up on the old workbench. I decided to do something a little different, something still within the realm of what I want to do, but not something horror-related. At least not primarily, though it may have elements of it in there somewhere.
It's not that I don't like writing horror; I really do. It's just that sometimes my mind needs a break from all the violence and over-the-top gore. Hey, it happens. So for this one, I'm actually resurrecting an older project that I've been letting gather dust on my hard drive.
A little background first.
I'm an old-school RPG'er. I played DnD for the first time back when I was still a kid in single digit ages. I may stop for long periods, as my group does have real life to contend with from time to time, but we always come back to the gaming table with our D20's in hand. A couple years ago, one of the guys in my group mentioned that he couldn't find a pre-made setting for the story he wanted to tell, so he wanted to make his own. He and I spent several months world-building, and we came up with a pretty decent world to run a game in. It didn't last long (that real life thing getting in the way again), but we spent some real time on it. It's a VERY fleshed-out world.
We had the idea to co-write a novelization of the game we were doing. It was going pretty well, but with the game itself being abandoned, that project was too. I then decided to write a tale of my own set in the world, about sixty years after the game we played in it. I did two chapters, my life got hectic for a while, and, unfortunately, I stopped working on it.
My normal routine is to write for a couple of hours, then browse the net until my brain is ready to shut off so I can go to sleep. For some reason, it didn't happen that way last night. I finished the writing, checked email, and then ended up re-reading those two chapters. Suddenly, I remembered where I was going with the story. All the things I'd been working on came rushing back. I actually remembered writing those scenes, even though the writing itself was almost alien since it had been so long since I saw it last.
Then I heard the characters again. They weren't done telling me their story. And they wanted to tell that story.
So instead of the next Jack Cochran book, I'm switching gears. I'm going to let their story be finished.
This one isn't horror, like I said earlier. It's a fantasy story. I'm not saying it's the start of a series, which is what most people think of when they think of fantasy novels. I'm not saying it's not, either, but for now I only have the one story to tell. Where it goes from there is anybody's guess.
Here's what I do know.
It's called Justicar,
Forty years ago, the church-state of Watika united the commonwealth under it's banner, forming an empire. Corruption from within caused a civil war, ending with the collapse of both the church and the empire. Ten years later, a former Watikan Justicar discovers a new threat emerging on the shores of the nation of Gallia. If allowed to spread, this threat could destroy or enslave the citizens of the commonwealth who only want to live their lives in peace. It falls to this one man, scorned by millions, to save them from a fate they can only imagine in their worst nightmares.
This is not traditional fantasy, in that there are no prophecies of things to come, very little magic to speak of in the known world, and dragons are only fairy tales. I'm sure it's been done - there's very little in the genre that hasn't been - but maybe it's a new take on old tropes. We'll see. I'm curious where it ends up.
More later!
No comments:
Post a Comment