On Urban Fantasy Worlds

I guess my latest writing project is urban fantasy. It doesn't contain any vampires, werewolves or other common supernatural creatures. It does feature magic, servitors, egregores and rituals. The magic is of the human kind. That is to say it's based around feelings and how these, when considered en masse, affect the world. So I have egregores, these vast, barely-sentient entities created through force of feeling, intent and memory. They sit behind humanity, nudging, assisting, guiding, blocking. In the case of my story, a human performs a ritual that corrupts of one them.

The ritual is the problem. Does the person know if it will work?

If they do then magic really needs to be a known factor in the world. I think it's unlikely that a group of mages/wizards/cabalists/whatever could operate all throughout the ages, without the public getting the slightest hint as to their existence. Mostly though, I just don't like that idea. Not just because a lot of writers take that route, but because I have no interest in my heroes being part of a group that denies mankind that kind of knowledge and power.

If not then why have none of the other rituals, that people perform every single day, worked? What makes this one special? It's highly unlikely that, assuming magic exists, no one has ever carried out a ritual that works, especially considering the ridiculously world-changing stuff people have a tendency to pray for.

Why do authors restrict how many people know about magic? Because it allows them to limit their world. A world with magic as a known quantity is not our world and as such would require far more detailed construction. The logic of their world is, mostly, that of the real world, so right off the bat they've removed a large chunk of complexity from their novel (and likely added a chunk of people to their potential readership).

So I find myself left with two choices:

I can attempt to create a world where magic works and exists in the public eye. This could be fun, but is most likely to result in an inconsistent mess.

Or I can back the hell off and have my ritual, somehow, be the first ritual to succeed and have significant consequences. This would feel like cheating.

Thoughts?

Project #2

Okay. I completed Project #1 last week and sent it out for its first rejection over the weekend. Thanks go to my workshop group for hammering out the bigger issues and to the lovely @mithciriel for reading it through several times (and forcing me to make it even better)!

So, on to Project #2!

• Title: Surface Tension
• Form Factor: Short(ish) Story (~9k)
• Genre: Modern Folklore(ish) Horror
• Logline: A man struggles to save his relationship, all the while haunted by the water spirit he met as a child.

This one is an older project that is probably on its fourth or fifth draft. I was initially inspired to write it while wandering the woods around Killarney a few years back. It's a story I really enjoyed writing and it deserves to be finished.

Onward!

Project #1

So, it's time to get a little more focused. Time is flying past and I seem to spend more time talking about writing than I actually spend doing it. So here's my first project:

• Title: The Krask's Garden
• Form Factor: Short Story
• Genre: Science Fantasy
• Logline: A man-made construct slaughters every last human, but then realises its mistake.

The story is now on its second draft. I've got a load of workshop notes to be going on with. Until such time as the third draft is complete and proof-read, I won't be working on any other writing project.

Don't let me fail!

Campaign for Real Fear

So I'm joining the people posting their rejected submissions. This was a lot of fun!

Penance

She drags me out of the bar and I pretend to stumble, pressing her against the wall.

Her face, cast bronze and black in the streetlight, is an inch from mine. Her eyes glow golden and her lips curl up in a wicked, playful smile.

"I'm taking you somewhere very special. Don't you want to go?"

I fall into her gaze and part of me snags, begging the rest not to agree. She takes my hand, pulls me closer still. I'm already hers.

Crowds part to let us through. We turn down a side street and enter silence. Moonlight, filtered through the fading storm, gives the untrodden snow a pale blue sheen.

"Wow," I breathe.

"Told you it's special. But we're not there yet!" She turns and stares at me. Her eyes glitter. "We were meant to meet tonight."

I nod and smile, drinking in her curves.

She passes me a bottle and I tip some fire down my throat. As the warmth spreads to my stomach, we move further from the throng of the centre. I don't look back.

"You like girls don't you?" Frost has matted her hair and coated her face.

"Yeah."

"And they like you?"

Her hand is still cold. It should've warmed up by now. A corner of my mind ignites, screaming for me to flee, back to the sanctuary of other people.

Instead I shrug, "I do okay."

She squeezes my hand tight. Cold fire lances up my arm. I want so much to snatch it away, but she squeezes tighter, insulating me from my fear.

The road ends by a canal that shimmers in the pale light. On the opposite bank a wall rises high, covered in rust and moss. We lean on the thin rail and stare into the dark water.

"Look at me." Her voice is a torrent. She steps closer, her dress crackling, her skin taut and blue. "Am I not beautiful?"

"You are."

"Am I not magnificent?"

"You are."

"Am I not perfect?"

Inch by inch the world twists under the weight of my body.

She slips an arm around my shoulders, halting my descent, and pulls my face close.

Our lips collide and her flesh cracks, leaving fragments of ice hanging in the air. Heat races into my mouth, down my gullet, exploding in my stomach. I gasp, as it trickles down my spine. I'm filled.

But, once again, the cold crashes down.

She steps back. I topple forward. The snow on the ground eats into my face.

"For my Lord I do this." Her words echo through the night. "For my penance I do this. I offer a lover!"

Her boot levers me onto my back, then I'm tumbling into space.

My jacket snags on a rusted mooring, slamming me against the canal wall.

Then it rips free and the water squeezes the breath from my lungs.

Above, twin points of gold fade to darkness.

Moving Forward

I got the marks for my dissertation yesterday. To say I was pleased was an understatement. I didn't do so well in the first year of my MA and didn't expect to be able to recover. I did and, thanks to the kindness of the lecturers, I got what I wanted. Of course - I keep telling myself this - getting the marks was only the beginning. It's what I do now that really matters.

Today I took the first step and had another look at my synopsis. Breaking it down into, what could potentially be, chapters was a really useful exercise. I knew there were scenes that I was looking forward to writing, but seeing them all laid out in bite-size chunks was almost too much. I wanted to stop my day job right then and there and start writing. This I think is a good thing.

One of my biggest worries was that the plot I've got planned out wouldn't be enough to reach my target word count of 40k. It seems like this might be unfounded though. I've even found room to fit in my aborted prologue as a flashback!

It helps to think of it as the novel I will finish.

Maybe I should try affirmations.

Hah!

Onward!

Creativity Failure

I spent a decent amount of time this week drafting a new story. It was set in a post-apocalyptic world, where a cataclysm had turned the landscape into glass. My two protagonists, a weaver, who had failed to prevent the cataclysm, and an oven cleaner, whose daughter is injured by protection racketeers, seemed interesting, perhaps even entertaining.

The problem was this: The world did not inform the story. As a result, I ended up with a simple tale of revenge, albeit one that re-energised my characters. There was no reason whatsoever that this story couldn't have been set in the real world, present day.

I want to write speculative fiction. I want new ideas, both big and small, to make a difference to my characters. So this story will remain incomplete, and tomorrow I'll start a new one.

Writing Again

Close to 11pm on a Sunday night. Clearly the best time to start writing again. Screw it. I've never been a morning person. So this is me resuming an earlier project. One that, to my annoyance, was too long to be used for a fiction assignment and too short to be used for my dissertation. I mean I loved those projects, but this is something else: the first short story that might actually be good enough to send out. Reading my earlier submissions, it's obvious why no one in their right mind would touch them. This one will be different.

Here's the first little chunk...

The Pressure of Ideas

It's been nine days since I handed in my dissertation. If I'm honest, I didn't feel much. I expected relief and maybe a little joy. I was denied. I spent the next few days milling around, sitting on the settee, thinking that maybe I should be getting my arse in gear and doing something. The pressure of the deadline (now passed) leapt from task to task, and in the end I forced myself to ignore it.

The weekend was good. Friends, food, a bit of booze, lieing in, relaxation. It broke the grip of stress. For a few days, I was able to relax, until I went back to work and life quickly became same old, same old.

But something is different. I'm now free to work on a project of my choosing. Of course, I've still got to take that dissertation and finish the novel, but I no longer have to ignore all those other chunks of inspiration.

For the last three months, any idea that popped into my brain, be it a scene, a character or just an image, got filed away in a Google document. This week their clamour became a roar and I realised it was time to pick my next project. That's how it works. Ideas, the ones that don't fade away, lodge somewhere and keep on nagging at you. Something has to be done with them.

It's a good feeling. A scene blazes its way across your mind. It feeds back on itself. It joins itself to others. It digs them up from the depths of your subconscious and, when there's enough to form a whole, your mind nearly implodes with the potential for awesome.

Never mind the fact that they normally turn up in the middle of a long car journey, when you're in a hurry and have no way of recording them. It's that feeling of being lost in something else, for however brief a time. It's nothing short of creation.