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Sunday Inspiration: Wonder and Silence
It seems to me that some of us value information over wonder, and noise over silence. And I feel that we need a lot more wonder and a lot more silence in our lives.
—Fred Rogers
Shadow of the King: Building a Protagonist
“Is this a bad time?” Zoey said.
“Not at all.” Rune took a step back and welcomed his landlord’s daughter into his mother-in-law apartment. She had a stack of linens in her arms.
“Mom thought you could use these.” She handed over the linens and pushed her spectacles up to the bridge of her nose. “Said you’d probably prefer plain white bedding to the yellow flowers. Those were my Grandma’s. We just never bothered to change ‘em out.”
“Either are fine,” Rune said. “Thank you.”
“So, I guess you’re staying here a little longer?” Her voice was bright, hopeful.
“One step at a time,” he said. “I’m seeing somebody tomorrow about a job. Someone from…back home, I suppose you’d say.” Zoey was the only living soul who knew that Rune wasn’t from here, that technically speaking he wasn’t exactly human. So far, she had adjusted to that news surprisingly well.
“A friend of yours?”
“We’ve never met, but I’m told he’s well connected. If the wind blows right, I’ll be able to pay this month’s rent. After that, who knows?”
“Well, you know you’re welcome to stay as long as you want, right?” She bit her lip. Her eyes never left his face.
“Is something wrong?”
“Huh? No.” Zoey’s face warmed. “It’s just…funny how the wind seems to blow through your hair. I mean. Here. Inside, where there isn’t any wind.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” He pulled his ponytail tighter through the leather barette that held his hair in place. “Please thank your mother for the bedding.”
“Sure thing.” She didn’t turn to go. “Are you…okay, then? Anything else you need?”
Rune sighed. He was on the run, low on supplies, and in possession of stolen property that could get him killed. He still had a half-healed stab wound in his side and a phantom pressure on his throat from where his cloak had tried to kill him. What didn’t he need? “I’ll be fine.”
“Is there anything you miss? Something to make this place a little more like home?”
He clenched his jaw. “I don’t suppose you could do anything about the stars?”
“The stars?”
“Back home, the night sky was filled with them. Thousands of them. Here, you can only see a few dozen.”
“I see.”
Rune wasn’t sure she did. “The stars… It’s hard to explain. They’re constant. Ancient. Inscrutable.”
“It sounds like you’re talking about living things.”
“Maybe I am. They’re connected to everything else in the universe, products of the same elemental forces that surge within all of us. They may not possess life or intelligence, but they reflect it.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
“It may be something your people lack,” Rune said. He noted Zoey’s frown and continued, “No offense. Maybe it’s because you don’t have magic, but you don’t seem to be aware of all the life and energy around you. Do you even know what phase the moon is in tonight?”
“Uh…”
“In Saynim, everybody knows. It’s the little things. We feel the pulse of elemental chaos. Maybe that makes us more attentive. When I look up at the stars, the moon, it reminds me that I’m part of something bigger than myself.”
He lay the bedding on the arm of the sofa in his small sitting room. “I’m sorry. I should have offered you a seat. Would you like something to drink? I have…water.”
“It’s okay.” Zoey took a seat on the sofa.
“I’m not a fit host, I’m afraid. Back home, we had servants to…” He trailed off when he saw Zoey’s confused and suddenly withdrawn expression. “Well, anyway…” He found a plastic tumbler in the cabinet of his tiny kitchen, dropped in a couple of ice cubes from the refrigerator, and poured it full from the tap in the sink.
“Thanks,” Zoey said when he offered her the drink. She took a sip. Rune sat down on the other end of the sofa.
“Rune? What do you see when you look at the night sky?”
He thought for a second. “Beauty,” he said. To his own surprise, his voice cracked a little. “Stillness. Rest.”
“Seems like your life hasn’t had much stillness or rest lately.”
He sighed. “And that’s why I miss the stars.”
* * *
The shadow falls October 1.
Sunday Inspiration: Speaking of Peace
Before you speak of peace, you must first have it in your heart.
—Saint Francis of Assisi
Shadow of the King: Building a World (Ingredients)
In no particular order, here are the building blocks from which my story world is constructed.
1. Paraclesus. Published posthumously in 1566, Paracelsus’s De nymphis, sylvanis, pygmaeis, salamandris et gigantibus, etc. (“On Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, Salamanders, and Giants, etc.”) explained mythological creatures in terms of the latest scientific and philosophical speculations.
Yes, I know that Paracelsus made a lot of stuff up, and a lot of the rest he imported from Classical mythology whether it fit or not. I know that he tried to shoehorn a lot of folklore into an airtight system where it really didn’t fit. But from 30,000 feet, I simply note that he tried to link these otherworldly beings to the four classical elements: nymphs with water, sylphs with air, etc. And since I was already building a magic system around the classical elements, offering a nod to Paracelcus was a no-brainer.
One other thing thing: Paracelsus apparently coined the word sagani to describe these beings collectively, though I have not yet found a convincing etymology. I suspect it is related to “sage” in the sense of “wise” or “skillful.” At any rate, this curious word gave me Saynim as the name of my protagonist’s magical homeland, analogous to how pagani (“pagans”) and paganismus (“paganism”) gave us the archaic English word Paynim (“pagandom”).
2. Renaissance magic. Paracelsus led me to other philosophers, alchemists, and arcanists of the same approximate era: Johannes Trithemius, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee, etc. These thinkers straddled the line between “science” and “magic” as we usually understand those terms. This was, after all, the time when “chemistry” and “alchemy” had only begun to diverge. Trithemius and the rest drew from arcane traditions that can be traced through the Middle Ages and all the way to ancient Egypt.
While most magic in my story world is an innate property of creatures attuned to one of the classical elements, humans in the mundane world might tap into these arcane magical traditions.
3. Elizabethan fairy lore. In the British Isles, the last decades of the sixteenth century represent a high point in theorizing about the fairy folk. This was the era of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and King James VI of Scotland’s Daemonologie, where he argued that elves and fairies were in fact evil spirits. In general, the Fair Folk were still a real and terrifying figures in the imaginations of the country folk, though more so-called enlightened Londoners were increasingly skeptical.
4. Hominin evolution. Fifty thousand to 100,000 years ago, planet earth was a Tolkienesque landscape populated by several related human species interacting with each other in friendly or not so friendly ways. Just as Tolkien and most epic fantasy that followed him describes interactions among elves, dwarves, orcs, and the rest, Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, and probably others once coexisted in our own world.
To me, this fact is the perfect setup for explaining the various fantasy “races” (as much as I despise that term) in a quasi-scientific way.
The shadow falls on October 1
Sunday Inspiration: Empathy
Whenever I see someone with an abundance of empathy I want to ask what heartbreak they have endured, for compassion is often birthed in the valley of despair.
—Zoe Clark-Coates
Shadow of the King: Q&A
What is Shadow of the King about?
A defector from Faeryland is building a new life for himself until his past catches up with him.
Is Shadow of the King a book with kissing?
Not really.
In early English folklore, elves were understood to be sexually transgressive beings. The stereotype of elves as effeminate pretty boys goes back at least 1,000 years! So if you look closely, you might see indications of activities that may or may not comport to traditional sexual mores.
But that’s not what Shadow of the King is about. Those are not my stories to tell.
My protagonist, Rune, is more or less comfortable somewhere on the asexual spectrum. We’ll see what develops for him in the next two books.
Is Shadow of the King a book with cussing?
A little bit. Maybe about the same level as a PG-13 movie. The one character who is truly a potty mouth tends to use insults and swear words more at home in a fantasy setting than the real world. And let me tell you, doing the research for that was quite educational! I almost want to include a glossary in the back so people can be authentically offended.
If you’re put off by strong language of any kind, you might wince a little bit every now and then, but what the hell? You only live once.
Is Shadow of the King isekai?
How much of a purist are you?
Shadow of the King definitely involves a protagonist from a fantastical realm being dropped in the mundane world, so by the most generous of definitions, you might think of it as “reverse isekai.”
But as I understand it, the story doesn’t play (much) with other expected tropes of the genre. Rune wasn’t involuntarily dropped in his new world, and in theory he can go home whenever he wants. It’s just that going home would be…unadvisable due to a strained relationship with certain factions of unearthly power who live there.
Nor is Rune the recipient of a “harem” of potential love interests. The very idea would terrify him! And though he has *accidentally* become a pivotal person in the history of the world he has left behind, he certainly doesn’t see himself as a “chosen one”—and neither do I.
Some isekai transition the hero to the other world by means of death and reincarnation, often after being run over by a truck. In the first chapter of Shadow of the King, Rune’s first major experience in his new world is getting hit by a car. If you want to think of that as a subtle nod to the genre, I’m not going to stop you.
Is Shadow of the King flintlock fantasy?
No, but you can see it from there.
Flintlock fantasy is a relatively new subgenre. I understand it, it doesn’t simply mean that flintlock firearms exist in a setting that also includes magic; it also nods to the kinds of social and technological upheavals that took place on earth around the year 1800. It also involves large military actions: massive armies and brilliant generals. It gives vibes of Europe in the age of Napoleon.
Rune comes from a world where the overall technological level is AD 1700, give or take. Bayonets have only recently replaced pikes in infantry formations. Flintlock pistols and muskets are fairly common, but industrialization and social foment are not. Saynim is less Napoleon and more Natty Bumppo or Daniel Boone in that regard.
Still, it is a world that has found ways to blend magic and black powder, where devastating spells and curses can be delivered on balls of lead.
It’s an interesting world, but a dangerous one.
Do you have any other questions? Ask them in the comments, and I’ll answer them in a second installment.
The shadow falls on October 1.
Sunday Inspiration: On Purpose
Find out who you are and do it on purpose.
—Dolly Parton
Shadow of the King: Telling a Story (Setting)
Here are two random ideas that have been bouncing around in my mind for a while.
First, a handful of years ago, dungeon master and game designer Matthew Colville made a video where he asked, in effect, “If your D&D world is not at war, why not?” (No, I haven’t been working on Shadow of the King for quite seven years; it only feels like it!) The video drove home for me the fact that war is basically the default state in world history. Whatever I might think about it as a human being (spoiler: I hate it!), as a storyteller, this is a gold mine of plot ideas.
Second, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series begins with a world where the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) won, and now the characters are living with the aftermath. The Lord Ruler has only gotten more powerful, but a plucky band of misfits have a plan…
These factors, marinating over several years, shape the backdrop to Rune’s story in Shadow of the King. The takeaways for me are (1) everything has a consequence and (2) maintaining the peace take hard work.
In Mistborn, the BBEG won, and now everyone has to deal with that. But what if the good guys had won? What if they had been able to take down the BBEG? A rebel victory would upset the status quo, but then what? Especially if some of the victorious good guys aren’t all that good.
In Shadow of the King, the protagonist, Rune, was born into a world where the BBEG had been defeated…but now the petty kings who carved up his kingdom had been jockeying for position in a decades-long cold war that just needed the right spark to turn hot.
So what’s a writer to do but light a match and see what happens?
The shadow falls on October 1.
Sunday Inspiration: Character
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Darrell J. Pursiful 