My Subconscious Might Be a Jerk

In the last two days, my writerly subconscious has thrown me two massive curveballs. They were great pitches, but I completely wasn't expecting them, so right now they're pinging off my conscious mind's bat and going foul all over the place.

That is almost assuredly the end of the baseball metaphor. Probably. I'm writing by the seat of my pants, here.

I have mixed feelings about fantasy as a genre. I've gone on about this once or twice. Even so, I came up with a couple fantasy ideas. One of them was a single novel dark fantasy story full of Vikings and Noir trappings. That became two planned books, the first of which is Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall and comes out later this month (most likely).

The other one is a re-re-re-reworked idea based around making a Paladin really work. I love Paladins. I'll probably do a blog post about that someday. Maybe even tomorrow since right now I don't have any other ideas and a list of my favorite Paladins or Paladin archetypes from around the world would probably fill a few hundred words.

Anyway, this story started out as urban fantasy Paladin set in a more or less "World Outside Your Window" a'la Dresden Files. For various reasons, that stopped working for me and it became a couple other things along the way. I finally really nailed the actual structure of the story, which simultaneously brought the entire first novel into focus as well as suggesting there would have to be two more. It wasn't meant to be a trilogy, but now I see it has no other choice but to be one.

But through all that, it was still a fantasy story. The trappings changed all over the place, but urban fantasy was as far as I got from the usual pseudo-medieval, Tolkienesque fantasy stuff. Well, until this week anyway. Then I read 18 Days by Grant Morrison and Mukesh Sing. It's a Kirby-ized retelling of an epic Indian war myth. The book isn't really a story as much as it is a story bible for an animated feature.

The myth sounds amazing, the art is freakin' fantastic, and the idea of a superhero flavored ancient myth sunk its claws into my brain and would not let go. I dreamed about it. Myth Reaver 2 started to look like it in my dreams until another part of my brain shook its finger and said, "No, stop hijacking things with existing themes! DOWN! NO! OFF THE FURNITURE!"

Then it hit me yesterday. The Paladin story that had been fantasy mostly because I didn't know what else to do with it and not because I really loved fantasy...that had to become a space opera. Or a planetary romance. Or a science fantasy. I'm not clear on exactly where the lines are drawn or how those genres shake out. Bottom line, my nice, pat fantasy story about a holy warrior in shining armor is now about a holy warrior in shining armor that looks like this:

Hell yes, right?

In addition to that seismic shift on that story, I had another epiphany just this morning. When I finished Myth Reaver: Downfall, I needed a sunshine and unicorns break. It is dark, it is gritty, and it is not optimistic at all. I said, out loud, "I need to write something happy for a while."

Only I didn't. Well, I wrote all these blog posts, but I didn't really start anything new. Between waiting on MR edits, the boy starting school, and blogging daily, I just didn't have the energy. I figured I'd write the Teen Agents sequel, except then I decided I'd like that to be a graphic novel (more on that later). Then I figured I'd write the Paladin novel. That felt right, it's very optimistic and , especially with the sci fantasy move, very shiny.

But then this morning I figured out how the first two chapters of Myth Reaver 2 would go. I knew the broad strokes already. I know the story question, I know the conflict Finn, the main character, will have to deal with, and I know that it won't go well for the guy. But I have also studiously been avoiding thinking about the details because I didn't plan to write it for a while.

Well, that's out the window now. My mind is racing. And you know what?

It's even darker than the last one.

I'm a little appalled with myself.

And all it took was a shift from physical violence to others and toward emotional and spiritual violence to oneself.

Anyway, I have like a bajillion words to write now on a half dozen ideas. And every one of the ideas is like a Meatloaf song: louder than everything else.

Stupid subconscious.