Notes on the Half Continent and Star Wars....

From the D.M. Cornish interview over at Finding Wonderland:

FW: The mythology of Rossamünd's world is intricately developed, particularly with respect to monsters and those who deal with them on a daily basis. Was this your starting point for the story—the idea of a world filled with monsters and monster-fighters? Or did it start with a character, like Rossamünd?

DMC: It began specifically with a city, actually, Brandenbrass, a more early 20th Century setting than the Half-Continent is currently; and with this a character called Icarus who (unsurprisingly) wore wings on his back and walked about this city of Brandenbrass in a state of poverty and perpetual confusion. Indeed, notebook 1 begins with a story some sour octogenarian is telling to the rather clueless Icarus, if I may indulge myself...

"There was this boy, you see," and he leant forward, "and he was stuck on an island with 'is dad. Couldn't get off – no boats and high walls all around, too tall to climb with spikes on top. But you see, he was sick of having nothing to do and only his old man there so he saw the birds--flying, that is--and said, 'I'll fly out too!' So he got some feathers and wax and made his own wings, and 'cause his dad bugged him so, a pair for him as well. And he flew out of there with his dad, but it doesn't end here. All was well, but this boy got proud and soon soared higher and higher still 'til he was right near the sun; too near! 'Cause the sun--the nasty evil sun--melted the wax out of spite and jealousy and the boy's wings broke and the boy fell into the sea and 'cause his idle olds hadn't taught him to swim he drowned dead."


So, in a way, it began with a soliloquy, though I had written role-playing rules (yes, I was into role-playing, I am that kind of nerdy) much of which now features--heavily modified--in the Half-Continent, and a few H.P. Lovecraft-ian bits of what these days would be called "fan fic." Deeper still, it all began with Star Wars at age 5, with The Lord of the Rings at age 12, Narnia, H.P. Lovecraft, Fighting Fantasy books, the illustrations of Ian Miller and Angus McBride and Rodney Matthews, the Iliad, Frankenstein, Dune, Steinbeck, building with Lego[TM] and inventing worlds and stories to go with the models, the dinosaur and ghost books I read as a child, that really really cool Galactic Aliens book in my primary school's library (looking out for it still)...and all those things that boiled and bubbled until Mervyn Peake's Titus Alone finally burst the lid.

See links and quotes from the all the Winter Blog Blast Tour interviews today, here.