Digging Up Old Stories

Something I swore I would never do

I’m rewriting one of my oldest stories, a fantasy romance I’ve had brewing in my head since when I was a late fourth instar, early fifth instar.

There is magic, and romance, and darkness. The emphasis is on the relationship between the protagonists, from the initial encounter to the consummation. I aim to write about choice, and consequence, and cost, and what is remembered.

I aim to write a story which compels, with conflict but not combat.

I know that so much fantastic literature nowadays comes from dreadful video games and tabletop roleplaying games, and most core rulebooks have an encyclopaedic chapter on all sorts of combat and maybe a paragraph or two on social interactions. Also, many authors probably include lots of scenes featuring someone casting magic, just so they can give the special FX people something to add in post when the movie comes out. All that swirling mist, lightning bolts, flames, explosions, sounds and a Wilhelm Scream or ten. That which Isaac Asimov once described as “technical wizardry.”

So yeah - I’m rewriting my oldest novel. Again. New names; some new people; some protagonists will be rewritten as antagonists; and some will disappear altogether - but the course of the story is the same, in essence.

The story of a visitor to a very old town on the border, who meets a brooding, lonely magician, wounded in the soul, and who - in the course of seducing him - comes to heal, not only his wounds, but also hers.