So by now you've probably read the about me and are wondering what this big literary project of mine is all about.
The short version: I like to write fantasy, but don't have time to write large doorstopping tomes a la Brandon Sanderson. The answer I came up with is to write sequences of short stories set in the same universe and utilizing the same characters that work toward an endgame that is still as epic as any thousand-page book but isn't going to take years of my life to write.
The long version: I am a nerd. I love the feel of ancient history and the sense of exoticness one gets while reading fantasy. Ever since I read Lord of the Rings in middle school, I wanted to try my hand at creating another world like Tolkien did. With Middle Earth, there are all these references in the books that hint at a wider world. That is what I wanted to replicate and do for myself. (Lord Dunsany is also a master at this hinting at a greater world.) One of my other story telling influences on the Fantastic Comedy is the MCU or Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, before anyone gets feisty in the comments about how bad Marvel's gotten in the past two years, I would like to point out that they created a pretty durable feat of interconnected storytelling. So Tolkien inspired my genre choice, and Marvel inspired my sense of scope. Those were my two primary influences. (Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere was also an inspiration as well. Despite the size of books he writes, they are worth reading.)
Now onto some works I discovered in my high school years that influenced me in the sense of I want to one up these two authors. The first author I want to one up with the comedy would be H.P. Lovecraft. (If you are a fan of his, I would recommend skipping this paragraph.) While the idea behind the Cthulhu Mythos was appealing in theory, with the idea of having a sequence of stories set in the same universe, but the connections are only teased by subtile easter eggs, Lovecraft's approach to cannonicy and his subject matter were not. Now, Lovecraft's cannon is kind of sketchy on the details between stories, which is not in of itself bad. Real mythology has the same cannon issues that Lovecraft has. This particular objection is subjective preference on my part.
My other issue with Lovecraft is not subjective, though. Lovecraft's main view point in his work is that humanity is insignificant in the wider scope of the universe and that if there was such a thing as a god, he would be a blind idiot. Now, I am a Christian writer who fully believes in the worth of humanity as made in the image of a God who is a skilled maker with plans of great import to benefit his creation. Obviously, I cannot let such rank blasphemy against my lord and master go unchallenged.
The other author I wanted to challenge/homage is Honore De Balzac. He was a French writer who had a similar idea to mine in the 18th Century with a sequence of novels on Parisian life known as "The Human Comedy." Balzac is a great stylist. What he lacks though and what I want to improve on with the same concept is a sense of wonder. Balzac was a naturalist writer. The Naturalists were a literary school of the 19th century who believed in depicting human life as it was, warts and all. This wouldn't be a bad thing, except for the fact that they left a sense of divine wonder out of the equation. This results in stories that focus too much on the miseries of human existence. Now as a writer I don't think human misery should be glossed over. However, depictions of human suffering should be leavened with a sense of hope and wonder. There is already enough suffering in the world around us. We need hope in these dark times.
Now to get into the structural nitty-gritty of this saga. Each group of stories is called an arc. An arc consists of about 3-4 individual stories set in a particular era of the history of the Dreaming. (For context, the Dreaming is the name of the world. The Fantastic Comedy is the series) Each arc follows the same protagonist (generally) from story to story. The plan is to write about 8 arcs, give or take, that will chronicle the Dreaming from its earliest days to the time preceding the end of the world. Then I'm going to write three novels, caping this mess off, that will show the death and renewal of the world.
Finally, some may be asking why fantasy? My answer is simple. (but I will explain this in more detail in a later post) We are as Christians called to imitate our master in acts of creation. Fantasy, literally creating a world out of imagination and dreams, is when done rightly an act that can glorify him. Hope that answers people's questions.