It has been a tumultuous two weeks at the 2016 Warrior Games, but it was a blast. I had the honor of being amongst true inspiration for a writer like me … Real heroes in the wounded warriors participating in the games. The men and women I met live up to the title of being a warrior for their heart, courage, and determination.
The reason I bring this up is really a retrospect on my own writing style. I love to write about medieval fantasy. I love to spin my stories on knights and dragons, heroic battles and daring deeds. I write these stories because I am inspired by everyday heroes, just like the wounded warriors I met, and the best way I know how to immortalize them is to place them in my stories.
We idolize our heroes, and for good reason. They inspire us to be better people. I created the Forever Avalon series because I wanted to tell the story of Lord Bryan MoonDrake, the Gil-Gamesh of Avalon. Why? Because, deep down inside, he is me, or rather he is the hero I want to be,
That’s the reason I played Dungeons and Dragons as a young man. I was able to step into the role of the hero and I immersed myself in my characters. The Gil-Gamesh is based on one of my best characters in the game. As I grew older, I wanted to tell these stories and share them with others. That’s when I began to write.
Heroes maintain that quality of courage in the face of danger, selflessness to save others and the humility before God. These are the characteristics of the heroes I admire, the man I hope to be and the characters I write about. No one is perfect, mind you, but I want to convey the best in people at their darkest hour.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” That’s the kind of courage you see in the fireman that runs into a burning building, the policeman who gets between the victim and the perpetrator, or the soldier who runs into the firefight, not away from it.
Another great example is Navy Lt. Charles Taylor, flight leader for Flight 19, a group of torpedo planes that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1945. Here was a man who volunteered to serve his country at a time of war. His death, a mysterious as it was, was a catalyst for my story, where Lt. Taylor survived and became a knight of Avalon and friend of the Gil-Gamesh. That’s what you can do when you’re writing fantasy,
In fantasy writing, you take those heroic qualities and you amplify them tenfold. They may carry a magic sword or wear magic armor to protect them, but it’s the person inside that makes them a hero, not the weapon. Bruce Lee was, without a doubt, a living weapon and he had unbelievable courage and wisdom beyond his years.
I love fantasy because anything is possible. With magic, you are only limited by your imagination. You can build worlds with floating islands, flying ships, mythical cities, and immense, dark forests. Within all these possibilities, you need people who you can relate to, who you can believe in.
We have wonderful, real-life heroes in the world today. There are hundreds of stories about these heroes you read about each and every day. I just want to continue their story by using them as inspiration for the heroes in a fantasy world like mine.
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Forever Avalon is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Dark Tides is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse. The Outlander War can be previewed at Inkitt.
Let’s start at the end and work our way back. In 1973, Heston starred in Soylent Green with Chuck Conners, Leigh Taylor-Young, and the great Edward G. Robinson. In the year 2022, the people of Earth survive on a ration known as Soylent Green. When an executive at the factory is murdered, Detective Robert Thorn (Heston) investigates the case. This leads to conspiracy, intrigue, and murder along with the shocking discovery that their rations are made from the dead. Like a lot of the other movies of its time, Soylent Green hit upon the fear of the era … overpopulation, starvation, nuclear war, etc. The film is loosely based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. It won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film in 1973. This was also Edward G. Robinson’s last movie so that makes it even better, but it’s Heston that drives this film. His performance turned, what could have been a boring movie, into an edge of your seat crime thriller.
In 1971, Charlton Heston starred in The Omega Man, based on the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson. If that sounds familiar to you, it is the same name as the 2007 movie I am Legend starring Will Smith. There was also a 1964 adaptation called The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price. In any case, Heston’s version is, to me, the true representation of the novel. It’s about Dr. Robert Neville (Heston) the sole survivor of a plague that killed or turned most of the population into zombie-like creatures. His blood held the key to curing the victims and also vaccinating other survivors. This movie had many firsts, including the first interracial kiss between Heston and co-star Rosalind Cash as Lisa. Another great aspect of the film was the empty streets of Los Angeles. They filmed in downtown LA on a Sunday morning to show the post-apocalyptic, deserted streets. Though the movie only got a 55% rating on 
The last movie is the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes and it’s sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. As astronaut George Taylor, Heston and his team’s space flight takes them more than 2000 years into the future where apes now rule and humans are mute slaves. Of course, you don’t find this out until the end of the movie when you see the classic image of the Statue of Liberty, rusted and torn apart on the shoreline. This movie hits on a big theme of that era, equality and racism, but this time, it’s the humans being discriminated against. The movie was the first for large-scale make-up effects for all the actors cast as apes. Heston shines in his role as the only talking human in a world of talking apes. His arrogance, vanity, and narcissism comes through in his tough-guy persona as he struggles to survive. He also has to share time with the late great Roddy McDowell, who starred in all five Planet of the Apes movies. In the end, though, this is one of Heston’s most memorable roles.
The end of the world has been prophesied since the dawn of time. The Mayans said the world would end on December 21, 2012. The Vikings called it Ragnarök when the world ends and the Norse Gods die, only to be reborn. Of course, the book of Revelation in the New Testament goes into detail about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus; and with the current climate of financial, political and global upheaval happening today, people are scared that our time has come.
As writers, the end of the world can come about through endless possibilities and that gives us so many options in the stories we tell: Zombie apocalypse, machines taking control, deadly viruses, nuclear war, climate change, etc. We are fatalistic in our views of the apocalypse and show humanity at its worst to bring about the end of the world. Yet, through all that turmoil and tribulation, we find a glimmer of hope. There is always one guiding light or shining star that wins out in the end and gives everyone, from readers to storytellers alike, that spark of optimism that will inspire.
Disney is known for its great animated movies, the majority of which take place in the fantasy genre. Classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty and The Sword in the Stone have all the right elements of a great fantasy movie: wizards and witches, dragons and knights, good versus evil, etc. There is one, however, that was a beautiful adaptation of a classic fantasy novel that Disney decided was too dark and scary and swept it under the rug of forgotten classics. I am, of course, referring to The Black Cauldron.
The imagery in this movie was quite dark and spooky, especially for a kid’s animated movie. The Horned King looked like a walking corpse. It had all the earmarks of a Disney movie with the boy hero, a beautiful princess, the evil villain and his henchmen, and of course, the comedic sidekick; but even with all that, Disney had problems with the film. After its initial audience screening, the Disney Studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered massive edits and cuts in the film, particularly in the “cauldron born” scene where the Horned King brings his army of the dead to life. There was even scenes where one of the “cauldron born” monsters sliced the neck of one victim and the torso of another. It was very gruesome indeed.
Mark Piggott | Fantasy & Steampunk Author 