I wrote this short piece for the Shroud of the Avatar (new MMO, see previous post) writing competition, it was mostly rushed so not as polished as it could be. I still like the idea so I may re-write it or edit for use elsewhere. The concept was that the piece had to be about the underworld in the mythical realm in which the game is set.
I was aiming for something dark but not horror or gore. Enjoy!
While I’m writing this blog I figured I’d give a heads up to Shroud of the Avatar. A computer game (hopefully) coming out in late 2014. Created by Richard Garriott and his team at Portalarium. Check it out!
The team ran a successful kickstarter campaign and continue to allow new subscribers to join on their website.
“Journey to the world of Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a computer role playing game created by Lord British (aka Richard Garriott), creator of the genre defining Ultima series of computer games, Starr Long, director of Ultima Online, and Tracy Hickman, author of the Dragonlance series. It combines rich story, like those of the single player Ultimas, with deep and varied multiplayer experiences, like Ultima Online.”
I love a bit of Conlang! I even wrote about it before on this website (see the other section of my site: Constructed Languages). They are an almost essential part of any sci-fi or fantasy universe. Sometimes they are over done but when done correctly they bring a lot of added atmosphere.
Creating a new language, even a simplified one, is much tougher than I first thought. I experimented with creating one for my first novel but it felt too clumsy and amateurish. At some point I will try again but I think I’ll start from scratch and try to make it more logical!
See this TED talk where John McWhorter discusses Conlangs!
Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na’vi real languages?
48 65 6c 6c 6f 20 57 6f 72 6c 64 !
First post on this new part of my website, think I’ll just keep this first post but edit it… and yes that’s Hex for Hello World. 😉 This part of my website will be a simple blog for tracking my progess / updates for my creative writing efforts. While my first pieces were written at school (which included some fairly sizeable make-believe universes) I would say that my first proper attempt to write prose was about 10 years ago. At school I had to write short creative stories for exam work or under exam conditions, none of those were serious efforts. What I consider to be my first attempt is the novel I started to write 10 years ago, but like many aspiring authors it was never finished.
A novel is only worth writing if it is shared with others. Most of my work never gets further than a couple of friends or family members. I think it would be a regret to go another 10 years and never share my work with a wider group of people. If my work is never professionally published then that’s fine; while it would be nice to be published by one of the big companies, I would be content to self-publish and just have my stories on Smashwords or Amazon. Going to avoid using hashtag yolo… uh… oh wait… [email protected]!..
The first novel was a fantasy novel that covers a boy’s coming of age. Not unique by any means but it was fitting to my place in life at the time. It is perhaps little more than cliched fantasy but I enjoyed writing it and I think the story would appeal to all fantasy readers. That novel is almost complete and one day it will be. 😉 That would be my famous last words. This novel will be explored in a later post.
Before that work is published, or even finished, I intend to complete a newer work. The second novel I worked on is sci-fi and in some ways it is older. The original idea for my sci-fi novel came from an RP game that I created with friends back in high school (around 13 years ago now). I created most of the background setting and was the guardian of all the notes. Eventually I started to turn it into a novel about 8 years ago (roughly). As with my first novel it was never completed, at the moment it is somewhere near the half-way point. However, since then I started to work on a set of prequel stories which I plan to make my first publication. This will be a compendium of roughly 5 short stories set in this sci-fi universe. More to follow!