Ten Ehrian Tales

For NaNoWriMo this year I decided to do something almost guaranteed to end well. Not having finished the third draft of Poisonroot (first thing I need to do in the upcoming year!) I didn't feel that I could start Tangleroot, the sequel, with a clear conscience. Sue, my wife, suggested I write some short stories set in the same world, and Ten Ehrian Tales was born. Featuring characters both seen and unseen, some main characters and locations mixed in with some hither-to-for unexplored areas, I quickly found that I could easily stay on top of the wordcount while actually having fun.

I was able to keep my attention on my work because each story was bitesize, and it definitely allowed me to flesh out the world a great deal. John Aggs, another friend of mine, suggested that the stories should be jumping-on points for the world. I'm not sure that I managed this; at least one of the stories is fanfiction set within the world itself. I'm sure that some of them stand alone, though.

I'll serialise the stories over December. Enjoy!

D&D and Poisonroot update

I've been busy recently doing a variety of things; I went to Edinburgh for a short holiday with friends and I've generally been relaxing into my summer holiday period. I've indulged my new hobby of jewellery-making and made a bracelet for my sister; it's good to stay interested in things I think, and I get bored easily. I've done a little writing as well, mainly reworking some previous things and, more recently, some world-building.

I've come up with a way to make Poisonroot, which is a project I started a while back, work and still be interesting, and I've also persuaded some friends to begin a D&D campaign with me as the Dungeon Master. With that in mind I've done a lot of reading and a lot of writing in preparation, and I've fleshed out the city of South Porton, one of the cities of the country of Lyria. It's much easier to set my D&D campaign in the country, and on the continent, that I've already named, mapped and designed. I've never liked playing with other peoples' characters or settings; this is a happy medium.

As the campaign progresses, and I write more, I'm going to upload things to the blog. I can't do it right now, though; if John, Nana, Sue or Chippy came here to read it, it'd be spoilers. And we can't have that. But at the same time, there's information they might never hear about, things I'll write that aren't ever going to be heard because the party chooses to go to The World's End for a coffee and pastry rather than a watered-down beer at Jakes'. Well, maybe I'll be able to work it in there somehow. But I think it will provide an interesting amount of unforced background if the things are available here, and I still get to say that I have a writing blog.

I'm hoping that our travels will flesh out the entire Lyrian country. There's no magic in Lyria, but we're playing D&D so there'll be magic. Hell, one of the party is a sorcerer. Disregarding the magic, the way the players see my world and the things they add should help to make the place come alive in a way that I can't on my own. It worked for Raymond Feist; why shouldn't it work for me?

All this said, I've actually got a new lead on Poisonroot, and I've gone back, added another 500 words and changed a few things around so that it fits in with what I've come up with. I'll say only two words: Zombie plants.

I'll update this blog with excerpts when I have more, both Poisonroot and D&D

New World

I've decided to start planning a new world to set stories in. It's going to be called Ehrian, and it's already fairly-well formed in my head. Made up of five countries, Ehrian is basically circular with an enormous tree in the middle. You can see the map of Ehrian here and I have to say I'm quite proud of that map. It took me a good six hours to do in Photoshop basically from scratch while watching episodes of Flashforward. That was two days ago.

Yesterday I decided to make a second map, using the first as a template, and here is the result: Lyria, one of the five countries of Ehrian. It's got a capital, Fennica, and it's going to be the setting for a story I'm tentatively calling Poisonroot. More when I have more, as it were.