What the hell was I thinking?
I’ve worked part-time at my local regional theater for the past fifteen years. I’m lucky my job lets me work with one of my best friends, often as a professional shopper in the wardrobe department. I’m also lucky that my place of employment is filled with fabulous, funny, creative people—and that the theater is a mere two blocks from my house.
For several years during that time, I worked as a dresser. It was quite an experience, some of which I chronicled (with copious creative license) in my backstage horror novel, Final Dress. Sometimes, when the cast was large and the costume changes were numerous, I ran around backstage like a crazy person without so much as a bathroom break. Other times, when it was a one-person show with a single costume, I still got paid to sit backstage according to Equity rules, just in case something went wrong: a broken zipper, a missing shoe, an actress forgetting to put her pants on under a robe for a quick change (true story), or any other conceivable clothing emergency.
It was during one of those one-person shows—a production about Erma Bombeck—that I sat backstage with a notebook (I never use my phone) and began jotting down the ideas that would eventually become Starlight Over Oran, my first epic fantasy series.
This was way back in 2018, when HBO’s Game of Thrones was all the rage—back before they destroyed the series with that terrible ending—and my love of fantasy fiction had been regenerated with dragon’s breath and intrigue.
Fantasy was a genre I’d loved as a kid, although mostly through comics and movies rather than fiction. I was very late coming to Tolkien, but I devoured those epic ’80s fantasy films like Conan and Krull. Heavy Metal magazine was another passion. But GOT was what really got me back into fantasy.
I started with George R. R. Martin’s series (incomplete as it is), then moved on to The Lord of the Rings, which I read twice, followed by the brilliant film adaptations. Then came The Wheel of Time (unfinished), The Witcher, and quite a few vintage paperback doorstoppers. I dipped into some newer works–sorry, N.K. Jemisin, I tried. But it was really the old-school epic fantasies–Franzetta paintings brought to life!–that really moved me.
Sitting backstage in my theater blacks, with several indie horror books and two series already under my belt, I began to wonder:
Dare I?
Could I write my own epic fantasy?
The notes started flying. The pistons of my cognition began firing. And before I knew it, I’d created an entire world called Ardelym.
It took me forever to write that first book. I posted the first draft on Wattpad, then moved it to Amazon’s short-lived Vella, where it actually gained some traction while the platform lasted. Eventually, after investing quite a bit of money in all the bells and whistles that come with self-publishing, I finally released it on Amazon.
And then…
Crickets.
I was so discouraged by that outcome that I quit writing and suspended my BookTube channel for a while. I discussed what happened in a recent video.
In a nutshell, I’m back—to writing, to creating. Honestly, I just needed a break.
Since that video, I released a new book, Black and Blue Ivy, and the response has been good. I’m also writing Book Two of my fantasy series. I’m in the final editing phase, and it’s a bear.
Writing an interplanetary epic fantasy with multiple points of view has challenged me as both a writer and a thinker. The mental exhaustion of keeping track of these worlds, people (and a few beasts) while weaving together what I hope is an interesting story is something I never anticipated when I was sitting backstage, excitedly jotting down notes in the dark.
But here I am.
Hyperia Rising, Book Two in the Starlight Over Oran series, should be out before the end of the year. I hope you’ll check out Book One, Starlex, and let me know what you think.
And as I get closer to the end of Book Two, I’ve realized I’ve already set things up for Book Three.
Seriously.
What the hell am I thinking?
R. Saint Claire 