So, three short stories centered around an Elven Aquamancer,
coupled with various table-top campaigns and maps, single-subject notebooks
filled with notes and concepts loosely jotted down, and I had the stirrings of
a fantasy world to work with.
Stephen R. Donaldson, author of the much-celebrated
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and White Gold Wielder, had and
has been my hero since I first read Lord Foul’s Bane. Well, mayhap ‘hero’ is not quite the right
word here. Back then, I utterly
worshipped the man. His prose brought me
fully across the threshold and into a love affair with the genre of fantasy
that has lasted to this day (and will likely last the rest of my life).
By reading avidly his works, and the works of Terry Brooks
(the Shannara series mostly), I started to adapt my style to more closely
resemble something of a blend of all three narrative voices. I did this by working on more short stories
set in the realms of Tamalaria every time I could for my Poetry and Creative
Writing class. That only worked for
about a month, though, because I wanted more practice. So, I just started writing them on my own
free time, instead of hunkering down to my Playstation every day after getting
home from school.
I carried on that way for over a year and a half, going
beyond my class and, after my brief stint in the military (I’ll not go into
that in detail of any sort), I found myself turning to writing stories and
drinking as my primary off-work pastimes.
Again, just going to sort of gloss over that period of my life, wasn’t
pretty.
It was, however, months after sorting myself out, at the age
of twenty-one, that I decided it was time to finally start trying to write a
full-length novel set in the world of Tamalaria. I wanted my hero to be someone/something
dark, something damned, much like Thomas Covenant. I wanted him to be potent with both the blade
and with magic and tactics, like the Druids of Shannara or the Lords of
Covenant’s ‘The Land’.
I must admit that part of the reason that Byron of Sidius
became that first hero was also because I’d been playing a game called Medieval
for the Playstation, and he was an undead skeletal knight. I pictured that protagonist in my mind, and
wondered what he might be like with a Clive Barker-esque facelift. Once I had the visual in my mind, it was
merely a matter of conjuring up and writing down some notes about how he got
that way in the first place.
A basic outline for the tale that would become ‘Freedom or
the Fire’ (working title at that time: ‘Saga of the Dark Hero’, pretty lame,
right?) was scrawled in a newly purchased marble notebook, and after trading my
newly acquired Playstation 2 to a friend in exchange for his Tiger II laptop, I
got to work on fashioning from my notes, roleplaying experiences, beloved books
and outline, the first attempt at a full-length novel set in the magical realms
of Tamalaria.
Three and a half years later, the finalized version I’ve
posted on this blog for your consideration was complete. It would be another year, year and a half
until Mr. Robert Preece of Booksforabuck.com would pick it up, offering me my
very first publishing contract.
You may wonder why I decided, dear readers, to pull the
Tamalarian Tales from commercial sale.
The answer is somewhat complicated, but can be boiled down simply to
this; I am a storyteller. I’m not a good
business man, and I wasn’t doing very well at marketing myself or my
works. Sales never reached high enough
to afford me more than a couple of hundred dollars every few months from royalties,
and there were plenty of quarters where I didn’t even break one hundred bucks
between all of my books.
My love of the craft lies in sharing the tale, dear
readers. Money or no, I’d rather you
enjoy my offerings and share them with others than try to sell you
something. Sharing the story is its own
reward.
Cheers!
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