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Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

Well, Clevenger is off doing his work… thing…. You know that thing where he makes money, does important stuff, and earns the respect of his peers. So I am going to cover for him today. You can read about his inability to write books (or blog posts) on Sunday. Haha.

So, Clevenger stumbled upon a great idea, and wanted us to start talking about specifics of our book, Manticore’s Shadow. Not the writing process, but the narrative itself. So let’s discuss that. Now, to be fair to both ourselves, to our books, and to you, the reader, we are sticking to discussions of the first book only. Especially for me, way too many of my favorites are in Shadow’s Reality, the second book.

My favorite author since high school, until perhaps the last ten years, was Orson Scott Card. One of the many writing concepts that he introduced me to was the idea of mixing genres. Many of his stories involve a fantasy planet stuck in the middle of a larger, more scifi universe. This concept has always fascinated me. Later, when I started playing tabletop miniatures games, I ran into a similar concept. Games workshop has two primary games: Warhammer, their fantasy game, and Warhammer 40,000, their science fiction game. However, in both they have the four Chaos gods. Now in 40K, there are many types of planets, including hive planets, agricultural plants, factory plants, and what they call Feral Planets. These are planets which are often populated, but are at such a low technological level that they are rarely considered worth of inclusion in the Empire of Mankind. Therefore, there was a fun fan theory that the planet of the fantasy game, was just a feral planet in the greater scifi game.

When I started developing a game world with Clevenger all those years ago, I decided to combine the two concepts. What if we had an interplanetary invasion force that was on its way to take over a rival planet, and on their way there, they were met in battle by the enemy? What if there was a space battle that took place in and around the solar system of an inhabited fantasy planet? What if some of the capital ships and landing craft, with all those cannon fodder troops and scifi weaponry were to crash and be discarded on this inhabited planet that was unremarkable to the rest of the known galaxy?

This became the world of Sainan, the setting for our new series. I absolutely love this concept. It’s like a reverse image of Outlaw Star, an anime where it is all scifi, but the main protagonist fires bullets that create spells. This is the direct opposite, a complete epic fantasy world, with wizards, Elves, Dwarves, dragons, knights, and kings… but with hovercraft, laser pistols, and teleportation. So much wonder, so many possibilities. This is the overall setting of Manticore’s Shadow.

As for the settings of the book itself, I think my favorite concept is the idea of the society being made up of, and controlled by, guilds. Everyone has a guild. Imagine a society that was run exclusively by corporations and trade unions. Even the governing bodies break down to little more than a “trade union” of politicians. How well would it function? How well would it stand against corruption? What if even the mafia operated as organized guilds? This is the societal backdrop of the Khorric Federation, where our MCs live and were raised. It is a fascinating system that I am having fun exploring, and I cannot wait to be able to share it with everyone.

We are currently editing book one, Manticore’s Shadow, and are planning to more to the Beta Reader stage by July first. Wish us luck, and until next time…

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham