Well…it has been some time, hasn’t it? I confess I am surprised my blog has survived and not been culled into the zombie internet. However! That means I can crawl my way out of the digital shadows once more and poke myself into keeping my writing habit going.

Which brings me on to the main point, really! I’ve had ideas bubbling, seething and developing since I was 15 or 16 years old regarding a sci-fi/fantasy world. I even kicked it all off back then in an online roleplay game on a Final Fantasy fan forum with some proto-info on the world I was slowly drawing together! (Though let us not speak of the acrimony that eventually it all fell into – teens are moody buggers) So for years I had all these ideas and talked to friends and family about it and what I was going to do…but I never really got it anywhere.

Until I met Ray Feist (yes, THE Raymond E. Feist) and David Gemmell (the LEGEND) at their book signings in Southampton. David was wonderful and said “I would like to see that, some day!” when I word vomited all about how I was an aspiring author and wanted to write my own books. Sadly, I never got the opportunity to show him as he passed away before I got the chance. But Ray (I feel I should call him Mr. Feist…), he gave me solid, if honestly blunt advice:

“You aren’t a writer unless you are writing. Until then, you’re a dreamer.” Ouch.

I’ve met him twice at different signings since then and pathologically have avoided mentioning it to him each time. Probably because I still hadn’t gotten my novels off of the ground at those points. Still dreaming, apparently!

But I don’t want to dream any more. I want to live the dream and actually do something about it. Not least because I have two kids to whom I want to be able to say: “You don’t have to just dream. You can live your dream.”

So. Writing! Two chapters and 13,103 words in and I am writing! Huzzah! I even have some short story ideas puttering around set in the same universe (or ‘world?’ not sure what the right way to put it is there…) to give more depth to it. Some of you (if anyone actually reads this) may be wondering what it is that I am writing about. Possibly. Maybe. It’s a bit like showing a newborn to the world, you want to protect it and keep it safe. But with a novel – or even (gasp!) a series of novels, you need to let people see, let them wonder. So, this is me letting my fledging novel and its world blink sleepily at the light of day and for everyone to know about it.

I call my world Viredia. Be gentle, she’s still fragile.

Nick