It’s true I’ve not been writing stories for the recent Elegant Literature prompts. I’ve not found them interesting of late – many have seemed more prescriptive than I would like – and I’ve been focused on catching up on Impressions, on which I fell a bit behind schedule in the late winter/early spring. The last short story I tried to write was Phoenix Landing, which grew to three times the Elegant Literature length and requires me, in revisions, to work out the orbital dynamics of a complex star-gas giant-multiple moons interaction. With less time to write these days, I’ve put my many other story ideas on the back burner so I can make more progress on Impressions. As of writing this post, I’m still two chapters behind where my writing calendar says I should be (and I had rather hoped I might have finished the novel by now).
Despite my best efforts, though, I still think about other story ideas, and sometimes they beg to be written. That was the case with Golems and Kings, a piece I wrote over the course of two days earlier this year and which just needs me to find time to finish the last two thousand words or so before it will be ready for revisions. If I can catch up to my chapter goal on Impressions, I will take the time to finish it. It was also the case with my most recent distraction: The Legend of Meladerth’s Valley.
The idea for this story didn’t just pop into my head and demand to be put on the page. Like most of my stories, it’s a core concept I’ve wanted to write for a long time, an origin story for the magical enclave that pops up so often in fantasy books. Maybe it’s Rivendell, or the King of the Silver River, or a dozen other, similar concepts in fantasy and fairy tales, the place where the heroes find themselves when they are in dire need, where they can be healed, restored, and sent back on their proper path. In fits and starts I’ve tried to write it, but it never quite worked.
At some point, I realized that the world of Archmage and the Unicorn Queen was the perfect forum to write this story. Something about a human mage rising to such heights in a world dominated by immortals with far greater magic struck me as the right tone and a good conflict for this origin story. The Legend of Meladerth’s Valley has nothing to do with Archmage and the Unicorn Queen, happening probably tens of thousands of years before (I haven’t made an exact timeline for the world, which I probably should do at some point), but it manages to have a similar feel and a similar concept, this desire I have to take the old, wise, powerful characters in standard fantasy tales and explore, not precisely how they came to be that way, but how they are that way.
The challenge, of course, is that I still need a conflict and for these characters to change in order for there to be a good, impactful story to tell. Meladerth is an old man when we meet him, and he doesn’t so much change through the story as he does come to terms with who he always is. That was the missing piece, and what I figured out to finally make this story happen.
I wrote The Legend of Meladerth’s Valley in about four days, and I know it’s rough in places and will need significant revisions. I’m not even sure that I captured the right tone for the narration and viewpoint. However, it feels good to have finished a story, and especially one I’ve wanted to find a way to tell for so long. It might be awhile before you can read it – I intend to do revisions, and look for places to submit it for publication – but when it becomes available, you can be sure there will be an announcement and an author’s note. This might have been a detour from my main project, but I think it was a valuable one. It generated a new story, and it kicked me into a higher writing gear. Speaking of which, back to work on Impressions.
IGC Publishing 