Night has well and truly fallen, dinner eaten, the dog walked, work packed up for the week and in some distant medieval castle in the corner of my mind, the watch is getting ready to call the midnight hour. All is quiet outside the realm of my laptop’s walls, but through the wires linked to my headphones a beat crashes, a melody soars and strings sing in perfect accompaniment to the possibilities unfolding upon the blank page.
Gods and men, goblins and elves, dwarves and fairies, dragons, angels, demons, gryphons, phoenix and kitsune assemble awaiting their chance to influence the threads of fate and somewhere I know there’s a plot there, a world imperiled waiting for the diversely united heroes to save it, for the twist, the sacrifice, the climax, the eucatastrophe, the homecoming but all my attention is drawn to the two strangely juxtaposed characters as they wrestle with their pain, hope and inexorable friendship.
The oil lamp burns lower, as the watch decries midnight, but my electric lamplight does not falter and I reason away the need for sleep. After all, I’ve been tired all day, and I’m awake now and there’s no time like midnight for thinking big thoughts. Or writing.
And so, gentle reader, I find myself trying to give shape to the existential, form to the empyreal that haunts my waking hours in these few short moments before the demands of sleep and civic function can be ignored no more.
In some ways this space has much the same purpose – a space to make concrete the abstract ideas of art, story, education and spirituality that float through my mind. But in other ways, it is very different. It is intended to be read, to have an audience, to be finished. It is a place to hone my fledging craft. Finally, although it is chiefly about subjects that interest me, and may be of passing interest to you, it is firmly in the real world, the nitty, gritty, dusty world we live in. Fantasy will feature, it is my favourite genre, but these are my musings given flesh, not my flights of fantastical fiction.
If then, you would like to join me as a stalwart companion on this journey, gentle reader, you are welcome. Shall we begin?