If every story has a beginning then, as far as writing goes, this is mine. Except that it isn’t quite as simple as that. I can trace my emergent inclinations towards creative writing back to the year 2017 as I wrapped up a play-through of the three part sci-fi soap-opera extravaganza Mass Effect. Having completed the third game, I experienced that peculiar melancholy avid readers regularly succumb to when their journey with a particular cast of characters reaches its terminus. I was not ready to let them go; I was ravenous for further stories of the characters I knew and loved.
Next stop was FanFiction.net as I devoured two or three popular Mass Effect tales. It was whilst I gorged upon these that a curious possibility occurred to me. Could I do this? Could I write a story in this universe? I’d always loved words and the English language. Why not? And so I began. It didn’t last long. No sooner had I delved into my first dabblings than another thought struck me: why constrain myself in someone else’s universe with characters already brought to life by others?
I immediately launched myself into a short story of my own making that quickly became a burgeoning novel with a cast of characters and locations that grew and grew. Before I knew it I was scaffolding out my own tentative science fiction universe replete with its own chronology and origins. Since then I’ve drafted and redrafted, characters have evolved and the plot much like an errant grapevine has woven and wended through many iterations, been pruned and died back only to grow again. I’ve even stepped back and written a separate short story in the same universe.
Is any of it any good? Time will tell. But I do know that I love it like I’ve loved no other pastime. It consumes me and excites me, stirs passions and intensity I’ve never known before. I hope to complete the novel in late 2020. I have no idea what lies beyond that.
This is the first of what I hope will be semi regular blog posts. I haven’t a clue if I will be the only reader! Hopefully not. I’d like to sign it off with a tribute to my Standard Grade English teacher Mrs. Collins. She was a wonderfully passionate woman who loved the subject she taught and clearly wanted her pupils to share that passion. It was never about exams for her, it was about the love of the language. Mrs. Collins sadly passed away in Dec 2019. She believed I would be writer, or a journalist or a broadcaster. Sorry miss, I lost my way and became a software engineer. Perhaps it is not too late.