WIPs and Worldbuilding

If you have been reading my blog for a while then you know that I rarely have only one WIP at a time. I usually have a main project (currently the third book in my Stolen Away series), a secondary project (the second book in my An Affinity for the Dead series), and a “fun” project – or projects – that serve as a sort of palette cleanser for the other two. All of that was just so I could tell you about another new venture.

I have been working on an epic fantasy for a while now (*cough* thirty years *cough*). Out of all of my works, it is probably the best example of hard worldbuilding. It takes place on an entirely different world with no ties to the one we live in, it has its own mythos, its own creatures and peoples, its own seasons, its own language (not to the level of Tolkien, but certainly there are things there that do not exist here, so they have their own names and words associated with them). As with all worldbuilding, so much of it will never appear on paper, save for a word here or a reference there. But good worldbuilding adds depth to a story, like lemon in a recipe. You might not always taste it, but just having it in there wakes up all the other flavors.

Still, it is a shame that all that information will never see the light of day outside of my notebooks – then again, maybe it could. At least that is the idea that came to me. Not too long ago, I started following the Outrageous Crew on Ream, and I thought, Hmm, this has potential.

Now, I do share some of my worldbuilding on this blog, but I thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could share more! And what if I could share it in a format that allowed people to easily be a part of it? And then there it was – Ream Stories – a place to share my stories, and all of what goes into them, plus serials, short stories – a wonderful writing repository!

So about that epic fantasy I’ve been writing… Usually, when a story comes to me, it comes to me in a rush, near fully formed, like a movie playing through my head, and I scramble to commit as much to memory as I can before it fades. But not too long ago, something a little different happened. I don’t know if it was my desire for something peaceful and uncomplicated or what, but I had a picture pop up in my head of a lone woman sitting on the stoop of a stone hut, looking out across an endless ocean at the setting sun.

That picture stuck with me. It reminded me of a place I had built while playing Minecraft years ago, and I kept thinking about the novel Island of the Blue Dolphin. Scenes would present themselves from time to time, but there was no real plot behind them, just little slice-of-life moments. This was a nice change, a palate cleanser between my other WIPs. So I continued to daydream about this lone woman tending an ancient lighthouse on an archipelago in the middle of an endless sea; the creatures she would interact with, the peculiarities of the lighthouse she tended. Where had it come from? What were its secrets? Was there a race of beings that lived in the sea around her? Was there a creature sleeping in the caverns below the lighthouse? Where had it come from?

As time went on, I started to notice some parallels to another world, one that I had been writing in for some time. The more I thought about it, the more my Muse whispered in my ear that it was a good idea. But the lone woman and her lighthouse had no bearing on the story I was already writing in that world! Another whispering from my Muse, “This could be a way to share that little splash of lemon!” A place where the bones of that world could be seen.

To that end, I will be releasing the first episode of The Lightkeeper in September. I hope you all enjoy it, and I am looking forward to hearing what you think!