30 JULY
Monday
■ From my journal:
“There may come a time in every writer's life when he realizes he's been trying to write in the wrong genre.
“Once again, it all comes down to passion—what am I passionate about? What do I like to watch, read, and immerse myself in?
“As I've looked at my past or gone through my autobiography blog, I've come to realize that historicals are not for me, much as I would love to write them. For one thing, I hated history in school. It was a boring subject filled with dates, and people I really didn't care about.
“So why did I think I could write historical fiction? Because certain aspects of ancient history fascinated me, and I thought interesting stories that might be told during certain periods of time.
“However, that isn't really where my passion and interests lie. Rather, I've rediscovered that it's heroic fantasy and high adventure that I enjoy—the works of H Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs in particular (emulating them, I wrote The Hidden City of A-Ten, Return to A-Ten, and Zorab in the late 1960s) and also the science fiction of Robert A Heinlein.
“Why did I slowly move away from these? What caused the shift in my interests? When?
“One reason I know is that when I became a Christian in 1973, some well-meaning but misguided Christians said I should throw away anything I'd created before becoming a Christian because all that stuff was ‘of the devil’.
“Not knowing any better at the time, I blindly did as they suggested; I've regretted it ever since.
“Another reason is that they told me that fantasy has no place in a Christian’s life. So, I gradually left my fantasy worlds behind. To be replaced by what?—an emptiness I couldn't define, and a pressure to pursue ‘Christian’ subjects that didn't really interest me.
“As I rebelled against my parents sending me to Sunday school when I was fifteen, so I rebelled against the religiosity of Christianity after ten years.
“For several years, I wandered in a creative void which I endeavored to fill for several years with erotic stories, book reviews, and new age music reviews.
“Then, one day, a woman I met in a dry-cleaning business next to work came to see me and asked if I'd be interested in joining an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons™ group.
“Would I!? You couldn't get me there fast enough!
“Enthralled once again by fantasy, I soon began writing some AD&D adventures, not necessarily for publication, but for the fun of playing them with the group—which I did.
“Out of these adventures, one of my characters began to grow on me—Sheel Chandra, who eventually appeared in four erotic short stories as ‘Solomon Magus’.
“Soon after that, I began creating his world, Arabah, and then I realized I had the beginnings of a novel and, perhaps, a series of novels.
“For the 3-day Novel Contest, I wrote the embryonic version, Solomon Magus, which I thereafter worked on and finally self-published in 2006 as Wizard of Arabah.
“In order to describe the book, I used the term ‘historical fantasy’ simply because, although a fantasy, it did have some historical elements.
“That was a book which, although it was hard work, proved to be a lot of fun to write.
“So why did I think I could write historicals? Who knows? But I need to, I must return to the genres that first caught my interest and carried me away into the worlds of my imagination. With that in mind, I want to abandon Gladiatrix for now, and concentrate on the second book in The Scrolls of Solomon Magus series.”
[NOTE: A couple of days later, I returned to Gladiatrix...] <sigh>
