Up till now I've been a little reticent about explicitly outlining the whats, hows and whys of the project. That's partly because I wasn't sure how the book would be read, consumed and interpreted. Anyway, below is a summary of what all of this stuff is, together with the obligatory 'about the author' section.
Project is perhaps too focused a word for the pieces of work I'm putting together as, to me, the whole thing is a compilation of 'things I like' that have somehow been crammed into a series of books. I suppose it can be described as a fantasy epic with incongruous humour and a strong romantic storyline.
So these books are all very well for me, but I wonder whom they appeal to. Actually, no - that's the sort of question a publisher would concern themselves with. I'm glad if anyone from anywhere reads it and enjoys it.
And now for the about me bit...
Many authors have a paragraph in the back of their best-selling novel that describes their reason for writing, and it's usually along the lines of a tragedy or hardship they've faced. Quite often they're dead, which seems to help enormously. Anyway, things for me have been a little easier and far less dramatic. I grew up in a fairly middle-class household, got into a private school, did my homework and got into Oxbridge. After that I studied a bit more, worked some long-hour jobs and returned to the gentle embrace of academia again. But this, on occasion, leaves me soaked in self-absorbed guilt because everyone else in my family has had it so much harder.
I'm the one who can sit down and write about how members of my immediate family conquered the problems they faced. This is going to sound as if it's dripping with Cheddar cheese, but they're the perfect inspiration for the heroes in my books.
Project is perhaps too focused a word for the pieces of work I'm putting together as, to me, the whole thing is a compilation of 'things I like' that have somehow been crammed into a series of books. I suppose it can be described as a fantasy epic with incongruous humour and a strong romantic storyline.
- Fantasy: I'm a fanatic of this genre and the idea of it: that strange mixture of the historical and the mythical. There's a real thrill to be found in making the rules (and making them logical) when contemporary literature is subject to rules we're already very aware of. Not that some of the greats don't manipulate those rules to their advantage... but I digress. I'm not so keen on elves and faeries and that sort of stuff, but fantasy offers a sort of exoticism that is both well-explored and has infinite opportunities for manipulation.
- Epics: When a story is good, I find single novels enormously frustrating! I want a detailed story that I can step inside and stay in. And the end is never really the end. Sometimes a book will finish with the Happily Ever After, and sometimes it will finish with the Shocker that keeps you sleepless for days afterwards. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I just find the prospect of exploring the possibilities of 'what happened next' really exciting. At the same time, a series that drags on will eventually bore a reader to despair and books need a visible end-goal. I can't explain the beginnings and ends of each of my books here without giving too much away, but it is born out of my interpretation of this sort of conflict.
- Humour: My sense of humour is about as immature as it comes. Toilet humour, Viz, euphemisms, puns and B3ta are all very welcome. I love an excuse to giggle like a naughty student over innuendo (in your end-o! <sorry>) and I get a kick out of visual jokes, too. The books contain a few references to this in the text, and most of the illustrations have some sort of hidden (or not so hidden) web meme. Melding these two things with fantasy isn't so unusual or unexpected. Some might argue it's geek literature with geek humour, but there's something else I wanted to throw in...
- Romance: This is where the path strays from the well-trodden OS Map of Public Rights of Way and crosses into an ether of bramble-knotted worm-holes. Thing is, I really enjoy a good romantic storyline. I'm not talking about the sort of drivel you see in so many 'romcom' films, or the stuff that's churned out by some <nameless> publishers on an hourly basis, and I'm not talking about what I call 'whiny-takes-itself-too-seriously' romance. I do, however, admire the enormously sarcastic tone taken by Jane Austin, or the utterly tragic desperation Thomas Hardy injected into everything he wrote. Some of the romantic subplots in fantasy have the potential to be very good, but I've yet to find one that's resolved in a way I find satisfying.
So these books are all very well for me, but I wonder whom they appeal to. Actually, no - that's the sort of question a publisher would concern themselves with. I'm glad if anyone from anywhere reads it and enjoys it.
And now for the about me bit...
Many authors have a paragraph in the back of their best-selling novel that describes their reason for writing, and it's usually along the lines of a tragedy or hardship they've faced. Quite often they're dead, which seems to help enormously. Anyway, things for me have been a little easier and far less dramatic. I grew up in a fairly middle-class household, got into a private school, did my homework and got into Oxbridge. After that I studied a bit more, worked some long-hour jobs and returned to the gentle embrace of academia again. But this, on occasion, leaves me soaked in self-absorbed guilt because everyone else in my family has had it so much harder.
I'm the one who can sit down and write about how members of my immediate family conquered the problems they faced. This is going to sound as if it's dripping with Cheddar cheese, but they're the perfect inspiration for the heroes in my books.
