Final Post: Dolly Garland - Why I Write Fantasy?

According to Oxford Dictionary, Fantasy is "a genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in setting other than real world."

Magic. Adventure. Heroism. Fantasy makes it all possible. Even the least brave of us can travel through jungles, climb the highest mountain and fight the fiercest tiger. Fantasy makes impossible possible. Even the science fiction I like is because of its fantasy element - imagining things that could be or might be. Worlds that are similar enough to ours to portray humanity that we can relate to, characters we can care about, but different enough to show us a glimpse of a different, magical world that at some point in our life we wish to be in.

Fantasy opens the doors of imagination. It enriches our ordinary world. Fantasy offers a wide scope, with little magic that changes a person or something that changes a world. It could be a new way of looking at our own world, or a journey to completely different one. Fantasy could be anything, and as a writer and a reader of it, it makes me feel that I could be anything. 

I also like the freedom of being able to create my own worlds, and play with magic and creating societies. The most amazing thing is to make it believable, to portray it with such vividity that while people read it, they believe in the existence of that world. To sit in one's living room, and face the dragons or wield a sword or fall in love with a wizard or a vampire....where else could you have it all, but in a fantasy? 

P.S. "Why I Write..." series is at the end. Thank you to all the contributors and all the readers. I have enjoyed reading about what makes you love your genres.

Guest Post: Adam Slade - Why I write Humour?

My name is Adam Slade, and I write humour (usually in the form of humorous fantasy). My reason for writing humour can be summed up in four words. 'To make people laugh.'

Okay, see ya later, guys and gals!

"Ow, ow, OW! Cut it out! Geeez..."

*Rubs shoulder.*

Apparently Dolly thinks elaboration is required. Lemme see...

First up, my obligatory pimp:

My first book, A Reaper's Tale - The Undecided, is available from May 17th at Lyrical Press. There's an excerpt on the book page, and there will be another on my blog soon (I'm spacing 'em out for effect).

Right, onto the meat. Yum.

All my life I've played the fool for the entertainment of others. Anything to get a smile, pretty much. For a time, I wanted to be a stand up comedian, but was very shy (and still am to a degree), and the thought of standing up in front of hundreds of people terrifed me. As you can imagine, that would make a stand up career tricky, to say the least. Despite my love of making people laugh, when I began to write a couple of years ago, my first work was a rather serious fantasy novel. There was the odd light scene and snippit of sarcastic dialogue, but it was mostly, doom, gloom 'n fightin'. After that, I wrote a variety of genres of short stories, but again, there was no humour.

Then came 'A Reaper's Tale.' Hooo BOY, I loved writing that. The main character, Mal, is almost as sarcastic as I am, and the secondary main character, Amy, was about as perfect a straight-woman as I could have asked for. From the first word till the last, I had a riot. Even the editing was fun... to begin with, anyway.

Since writing (and selling) Reaper, humour writing has been on my brain, and I'm not sure why it wasn't before. It entertains, it produces larfs, and it's great fun to write. I can have the most ridiculous events, coupled with dialogue that any "serious" genre couldn't get away with. Couple it with fantasy (as I often do), and I have complete free reign! (For some great examples of what fantasy allows you to do, see Julia Knight's guest blog from a couple of weeks ago. Also, buy her books.)

My current project is a sequel to Reaper, and I'm having a riot pratting about on the page. I also produce a humorous serial blog called Gumshoe Casefiles, which is about a fictional sarcastic private eye named Frank Peterson. It's basically a spoof of old fashioned noir detective stories. I'm slow to update it, as I have to put my paying writing first, but I'm thoroughly enjoying writing that, too.

I'm not sure what else to put, to be honest, so I'll say that I'm happy to answer any and all questions (keep 'em PG), and leave it at that.

Toodles!

Adam

PS - May 17th. My book. You buy.

Guest Post: Julia Knight - Why do I Write Fantasy (with dollops of romance)?

 I write mostly fantasy with big dollops of romance. Why? Good question.

The fantasy part is easy I suppose. I’ve always loved reading it, loved the different worlds and cultures that authors present me, the sense of myth and Romance ( as in the old type of Romance, Arthur and his Knights etc). The fact that anything could happen.

Why do I write it? Firstly, the real reason for fantasy – the fantastic. If I want a god to turn up, *poof* there he is. If I want someone to burst into flames spontaneously, he will burn. People seeing into the future, no problemo. Flying elephants? Got it, and here’s a handy umbrella just in case. Provided I keep my world’s internal logic sound and think through all the ramifications and limitations of my fantastical elements, I can do pretty much anything. And those ramifications can make a really great plot or add to the conflict. It’s very liberating, and at the same time confining and I love the conundrum of it.

Then there are the cultures. I’m not limited to this world; I can play about with events and reactions and weird localised foibles without worrying if it really happened. The question of why do they do it this way here? In that country, all marriages are arranged between people of equal class but they have affairs of the heart and no one turns a hair. So far so normal. But in this culture over here, events in their past – a nasty war which almost wiped them out – mean there are no constraints on who marries who, because they needed to get their numbers back up quickly. However monogamy is rigidly enforced. What happens when these two cultures – or two people from these cultures – come together? Fireworks! Another culture might have a mortal fear of pigs because of the Incident We Don’t Like to Talk About. It’s like the back-story for the characters, only on a much larger scale. This happened in the past, so things are done this way now. Bingo! A culture is born. 99% never makes it into the book, mostly just the end results. It’s endlessly fascinating to figure how human nature would adapt to whatever I feel like putting in this culture’s past and see how it works out in the now. And, of course, how that screws things up for my poor beleaguered characters.

As for the romance, well, what can I say? I’m a soft and gooey girl at heart. Now straight romance doesn’t really interest me, there has to be more to a book than that for me to enjoy it. But a big old soppy subplot? One that supports and is supported by the main plot?  That only makes it all harder for the characters? I am your girl. Besides, I do such nasty things to my characters; it’s nice to see them have some fun sometimes. Until the next time I decide they need to spontaneously combust, at least.

Thanks for the oppurtunity!

Julia

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Check out Julia's Website - http://juliaknight.co.uk/

Exciting New Announcement

Starting tomorrow, for next several weeks on every Friday, I am going to have some wonderful Guest Bloggers on here, who are going to tell us why they write the genre they write in. 

It is going to be quite an interesting mix, with a combination of published, unpublished and in-between writers offering us an insight into their thoughts. 

On that note - if you are a crime/thriller/horror/hard science fiction/ military fiction writer, and would like to contribute to this series then please email me privately at dollygarland [at] gmail [dot] com. 

So hope you will enjoy meeting these wonderful writers, and stay tuned for our first post from an EPIC award winning author, Julia Knight. 

Have you found your perfect genre? Is it one or more?

How many WIPs have you got going? Are they all of the same genre? How many genres have you tried writing? Why not just stick to one? A lot of the people whose blogs I follow write in more than one genre. Many of them are more logical choices like fantasy writers who also write sci-fi, or romance writers who write erotica or paranormal romance. But what makes you branch out? The first draft I ever wrote was historical romance. At the time (teenage years), I was really big on romances, especially historical. The next draft was Indian fiction. Then Fantasy. I also started plotting a sci-fi novel, though haven't written that yet. I tried different things as different ideas came to me. I read a variety of things, so I am interested in different genres. But after experimenting and by process of elimination, I have come to realise that category romance and erotica are not for me. Working on different genres at the same time - I have two conflicting views. First is that it's good to have multiple wips in different genres because you are thinking about completely different things. Negative thing is that it takes focus away from one genre. What's your experience?