Just Won't Work
So I've got a book that's really, really good. It's the second book I'll be publishing, hopefully to be out before June (we'll see if that pans out).
Said book leads into a book series that was originally planned waaaaaaay back as a fan-fic sequel to the Lord of the Rings. Over time, as it's baked in my head, it's taken on a lot of other elements. But one thing it's remained is firmly fantasy. The type and style of fantasy has changed and evolved, but fantasy. Elves and dwarves of some variety. Magic and monsters. You get the gist.
The problem is currently, I cannot stop trying to make it into a darker, edgier - dare I say 'gritty' - sort of fantasy. I can't NOT make it Dresden Files or Hellboy or Once Upon A Time. And not to knock those stories and settings but I don't want that. I want some real, true-blue fantasy. And when I say 'fantasy', I don't mean Dragonlance/Conan/etc. I don't mind it being in the modern world. What I don't want is, well, dark.
In a lot of ways, I've got the Crossworld series for that. Crossworld goes some dark places, especially in the later books. The whole awakening, dichotomy of characters stuff alone gets pretty ugly.
I don't want that for this series. I don't mind it getting tense, but I don't want dark. I want, in a word, potential. I want to tap into the wide-eyed wonderment we all had the first time we played Legend of Zelda and the video game world seemed to go on forever and there were secrets hidden everywhere. I want that amazement the first time we went into a hobby store and saw the role-playing game books or the anime or the whatever. Potential.
Sci-fi has been lacking this badly of late. It's a casualty of the passing of Gene Roddenberry, I think. Most sci-fi is about how science is dangerous and has to be treated carefully; Star Trek (the Original Series and TNG, mostly) was always about how science is good and it will make our life and world better, not worse.
As sci-fi grew darker in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of cyberpunk (which I love, don't get me wrong), fantasy seemed to try to compete. The arrival of the Drow, I think is a good harbinger of that. When Necromancers stopped being the villains and became playable characters, I think was another indicator.
I like dark, please understand. And I don't want this story to be Disney-esque fairy tales. But I want the trials in these stories to be faced with 'how do we...', not 'can we...". I want a story that is the narrative version of looking at the dawn and smiling, not glowering.
Potential.
Said book leads into a book series that was originally planned waaaaaaay back as a fan-fic sequel to the Lord of the Rings. Over time, as it's baked in my head, it's taken on a lot of other elements. But one thing it's remained is firmly fantasy. The type and style of fantasy has changed and evolved, but fantasy. Elves and dwarves of some variety. Magic and monsters. You get the gist.
The problem is currently, I cannot stop trying to make it into a darker, edgier - dare I say 'gritty' - sort of fantasy. I can't NOT make it Dresden Files or Hellboy or Once Upon A Time. And not to knock those stories and settings but I don't want that. I want some real, true-blue fantasy. And when I say 'fantasy', I don't mean Dragonlance/Conan/etc. I don't mind it being in the modern world. What I don't want is, well, dark.
In a lot of ways, I've got the Crossworld series for that. Crossworld goes some dark places, especially in the later books. The whole awakening, dichotomy of characters stuff alone gets pretty ugly.
I don't want that for this series. I don't mind it getting tense, but I don't want dark. I want, in a word, potential. I want to tap into the wide-eyed wonderment we all had the first time we played Legend of Zelda and the video game world seemed to go on forever and there were secrets hidden everywhere. I want that amazement the first time we went into a hobby store and saw the role-playing game books or the anime or the whatever. Potential.
Sci-fi has been lacking this badly of late. It's a casualty of the passing of Gene Roddenberry, I think. Most sci-fi is about how science is dangerous and has to be treated carefully; Star Trek (the Original Series and TNG, mostly) was always about how science is good and it will make our life and world better, not worse.
As sci-fi grew darker in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of cyberpunk (which I love, don't get me wrong), fantasy seemed to try to compete. The arrival of the Drow, I think is a good harbinger of that. When Necromancers stopped being the villains and became playable characters, I think was another indicator.
I like dark, please understand. And I don't want this story to be Disney-esque fairy tales. But I want the trials in these stories to be faced with 'how do we...', not 'can we...". I want a story that is the narrative version of looking at the dawn and smiling, not glowering.
Potential.