Tag: Michael Moorcock

These authors should be required reading for any up and coming fantasy author

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The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock

This may be a bit cliché of me to say, but there are some authors I would consider required reading for anyone wanting to step into it as a fantasy author. Sure, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, George R.R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey and Terry Brooks are names everyone is familiar with. These stories are the “bread and butter” of any fantasy author. They provide the basis for what we write and the stories we develop, but there are some others you need to consider (in my opinion) to make you well rounded. Please remember, these are my opinion and I may miss some of your favorite fantasy authors. So please, add your own to the comments!

I’ll start out with my all-time favorite fantasy author and the person who inspired me to be a writer myself. Michael Moorcock, author of the Elric of Melnibone saga, is one of the best fantasy authors on par with Tolkien and others. His world-building is amazing, something I’ve never read before. The mythology of the Lords of Order and Chaos, the Eternal Champion, and more are terrifying to say the least. His stories span centuries, millennia even, and yet they flow together in such perfect harmony. It’s not your basic Dungeons & Dragons type of story, but unique in every sense of the word, from magic to mythos.

Elric is the perfect anti-hero, doing whatever must be done to in order to survive and defeat his enemies. He sacrifices friend and foe and its such a sad, solitary life, and you feel for him, every step of the way. All of his characters, from Elric to Cymoril, Yyrkoon, Moonglum and Rackhir are deeply intertwined and carefully written. I adore his wistful yet colorful descriptions of people, places and events. The Sailor on the Seas of Fate and Stormbringer will always be my two favorite novels of this series, because the Seas of Fate introduces the concept of the Eternal Champions to the reader and Stormbringer brings the series to a close like I’ve never read before. It’s a shame that Elric still hasn’t made it to the silver screen, and he would shine amongst fantasy epics.

The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin

Next up is Ursula K. Le Guin and the Earthsea saga. She is both a fantasy and science fiction writer, but I’m focusing on her fantasy epic here. It’s interesting to note that Le Guin meant for A Wizard of Earthsea to be a standalone novel, but then she wrote The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore after discovering loose ends in her first book. I think this is a great example of what plagues fantasy writers when it comes to a single story or a series, and she handled it brilliantly. Then it took her nearly 20 years to write what is considered my many as the second trilogy in the Earthsea cycle.

This demonstrates the patience she had as a writer to properly flush out the story, something many of us (me included) don’t do with our own writing. What I love about her story is the fact that she didn’t plop it down into your standard “middle ages fantasy” where the characters are all white. She went out of her way to differentiate the races of Earthsea into something unique and different, especially for a novel written in 1968. That’s the beauty of Le Guin in all her writings. She does not stick to the boundaries of race, sex, color, creed, or religion in her stories, always outside the norms. She is a must read for just that fact alone.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynn Jones

The next one might seem a bit unusual but its Diana Wynn Jones, author of the classic Howl’s Moving Castle. Yes, we all know about it from the beautiful and inspiring Hayao Miyazaki film, but have you read the book? It is completely different from the movie and just as inspiring. I read the series after I saw the movie and I wish I had done the reverse. Her writing style reminds me a lot of Frank L. Baum and his Oz stories, tales with such frivolity and backwards talking that its just fun to read to try to get into the mind of the writer. The other great thing about her is that she has been an inspiration to many great fantasy writers of our time, including J.K. Rowling, Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman. She is an award-winning children’s author and yet her stories are beloved by all. Her books are a lot like Harry Potter in that she brings magic into our regular world and makes it a part of everyday life. It’s a joy to read her stories and be inspired in my own.

The Dark Elf Trilogy by R. A. Salvatore

Lastly, I would like to mention R.A. Salvatore . . . Yes, he’s not one of the more well known fantasy authors, but he’s one of my favorites because of his attention to detail in writing novels based on Dungeons and Dragons. As a teenager and young adult, I played D&D religiously, and reading these novels kept me in the game when I wasn’t playing. His books were especially provocative on different levels. I think he was responsible for taking the Drow Elf from a regular villain (in the game) to a hero in his Dark Elf Trilogy. Drizzt Do’Urden became so popular as a supporting character in his first book, Icewind, that he moved him to main character for his next three books. The other thing I love about Salvatore is he was once just like many of the independently published fantasy authors I collaborate and communicate with on social media. He worked as a bouncer, writing his fantasy stories in his spare time until he was picked up by TSR to write for the D&D Forgotten Realms novels. His publishing story gives me, and others like me, hope for own stories.

As I said at the beginning, these are some of my favorite fantasy writers that truly inspired me in my own stories as a writer, along with many of the classic and legendary authors of the fantasy genre. Let me know your thoughts or add your favorites in the comments.

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Mark Piggott is an independent author of the Forever Avalon fantasy book series and other fantasy novels and short stories. Forever Avalon is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon and as an audiobook from Audible and iTunes. The Dark Tides: Book 2 of the Forever Avalon Series is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook from iUniverse Publishing and at Amazon, and other booksellers. The Outlander War, Book Three of the Forever Avalon series is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook from Austin Macauley Publishing, and at Amazon and other booksellers. His latest fantasy novel, The Last Magus: A Clockwork Heart is available through Lulu and other booksellers. Get ready for The Prometheus Engine: Book 4 of the Forever Avalon Series and The Last Magus: Dragonfire and Steel, coming soon, and the steampunk historical fiction, Corsair and the Sky Pirates.

Author interview with InSpiris Audio Magazine with my friend and shipmate, Spencer Webster

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I had the great opportunity to be interviewed by my shipmate and friend, Spencer Webster, for his new prodcast, InSpiris Audio Magazine. Spencer and I met during my active duty days in the U.S. Navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65). We stayed in touch, even after we retired from the Navy. Spencer is working on a new initiative, a podcast called InSpiris Audio Magazine, and I was honored to be the subject of one of his first interviews.

We talked about my progression as a writer, everything that inspired me from anime to comic books and fantasy authors, and how I develop my stories in the Forever Avalon series and my other WIPs. Click on the link below to listen to the interview on YouTube or you can find him on Spotify.

Spencer Webster is a novelist, a storyteller and a retired U.S. Navy Sailor. He also has a million zillion creative ideas and never enough time to make them all a reality. So he’s diving down on a few prioritized goals and InSpiris Audio Magazine is one of them. He wants to learn what is creativity to other people and wants to share stories about what he finds. Spencer Webster is the author of Island of the Lost Soul, a book for sale on Kindle. He believes in the magic of inspiration and imagination and is confident there are a lot of people who might share their magic with him, and in turn with you. Spencer lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife.

Spencer is always looking for creative and inspiring people to interview for his podcast. You can contact him at InSpiris-Podcast.com. Also, make sure you subscribe to his podcast and on YouTube to listen to all his content!

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Mark Piggott is the author of the Forever Avalon fantasy book series. Forever Avalon is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon. The Dark Tides: Book 2 of the Forever Avalon Series is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook from iUniverse Publishing and at Amazon, and other booksellers. The Outlander War, Book Three of the Forever Avalon series is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook from Austin Macauley Publishing, and at Amazon and other booksellers. His next two fantasy novels, The Last Magus: A Clockwork Heart and The Prometheus Engine: Book 4 of the Forever Avalon Series are being released in 2021.

Building a world, from the ground up, isn’t as easy as you think

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Worldbuilding: How to Create a Believable World for Your Fiction ...

Worldbuilding is defined as “the process of creating a fictional world that can be as complex as designing an entirely new and unique location with exotic creatures, societies, religions, and governments.”

Most people think creating the story is the first step of a writer. Wrong. The first step is creating the world. Sure, the story is the idea, but you can’t have a story with the world it exists in. Whether that be another world like Middle Earth or a dystopian future, version of the United States, you need to create it first so you know the elements you’ll need in your story. We’re talking people and races, type of government, land masses, bodies of water, etc. Your cities will need names, what religion do they worship (if any), even the technology used (medieval, steampunk, cyber-tech, etc.) all need to be considered.

In the Forever Avalon series, I had to create the island of Avalon, from the various races, land masses, creatures, etc. It was a daunting task. I started with the capital, New Camelot, and worked out from there. A lot of my world building included a lot of research on myths and legends. From the Elven city of Alfheimer to the Dwarf mountain of Hursag, these are places within the our world mythology when it comes to Elves and Dwarfs. Since Avalon became a repository for all magic in the world (in my story), I wanted it to accurately portray the legends while adding my own touch.

When writing, you set your characters out on quests and journeys, and to do so, you need to know where they’re going and what lands or obstacles are in their way. Forests, mountain ranges, towns and cities all need to be identified with unique names and their own personality, for lack of a better word. In Avalon, the Fenris Mountains were named because the jagged peaks resembled the teeth of the legendary creature. Blackbriar Forest so named because, in the deep recesses of the woods, no light can pierce the canopy, leaving it a dark and dangerous place to travel. Merlin’s Pinnacle is a lone peak that stands separate from any mountain range, said to be the resting place of the eternal magician. These are just some of the places I created within the world of Forever Avalon, and even now, I’m adding or changing things as the story progresses.

One of the best tools in world building, for me, was Dungeons and Dragons. I played the RPG religiously as a young adult. As a writer, I found it to be a great tool in world building and character development. In fact, I took some of the characters and places I used as a Dungeon Master and player in D&D and used them in my novels. For example, in my latest novel, The Outlander War, there  is a new character named Abdel Ben Faust, a half-demon mercenary. This character is based on a half-orc fighter I played in the game. I had to make some adjustments since Orcs don’t exist in my world, but the basis for the character came from D&D.

A Brief Intro To Worldbuilding – Alexandra Peel

I also took inspiration from other fantasy novels, which I’m sure many authors do. In the Forever Avalon series, the home of my protagonist, Lord Bryan MoonDrake, is the floating dragon island of Emmyr. I took this from my love of Michael Moorcock and the Elric series, in which Melniboné (The Dragon Isle) and only surviving city is Imrryr, known as The Dreaming City. For many of us today, it’s the authors of these series that has inspired us to write our own stories. As they say, imitation is the most since form of flattery.

Another great tool for world building, especially when it comes to names, is Google. Searching through the different names in different cultures, whether its a Surname list or using Google translate to look up words in different languages for a town name, it becomes a helpful tool for writers. For example, when I named taverns and inns in Avalon, I always named them after an animal with an adjective to make it more colorful:  The Grinning Toad, The Weathered Wren, The Green Griffon, The Crooked Goose. This kept my thought process in line as I was writing the stories.

Maps are also useful. I’m no mapmaker, but as I put things together in my novel, I made a makeshift map of the world I was creating. I just marked the major points so I could figure out directions and to ensure consistency as I wrote my novel. I didn’t want to say they went north one time, and the next time they were going to the same place but I said south instead. You need to be consistent in your planning.

So, you need to think long and hard about the world you’re creating. The landscape is as essential as character development.

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Mark Piggott is the author of the Forever Avalon book series. Forever Avalon is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon. The Dark Tides is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iUniverse Publishing. The Outlander War, Book Three of the Forever Avalon series is available from Austin Macauley Publishing.

What is our love affair with myths and legends?

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:  “I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes! Old dead legends! Why must we go on forever writing about gods and legends?” 

Baron Van Swieten:  “Because they do. They go on forever. Or at least what they represent. The eternal in us.” 

─ Amadeus (1984)

I think it’s safe to say that people love stories. We’ve heard them since we were children, at bedtime, around a campfire, on our favorite TV show, and in the movies. Stories are what entertain us whether were sitting in a Broadway theater or watching the latest anime on our smartphone.

kingarthurThere are so many ways for authors and writers to tell their favorite stories, whether its a retelling of an old legend or a brand new story. These folk tales and fairy tales are the composite of our combined history. The give us hope, give us faith, and make us believe in something more than our everyday life. For writers like me, myths and legends are the source of inspiration for my writing.

As you travel around the world, you’ll find that every culture has a lot of the same stories, just told with different characters. There are creation stories, love stories, tales of famous heroes rescuing a damsel in distress, and some about a girl saving the day too. It’s all part of that shared history that all human beings have. No matter what the color of your skin, the language you speak or where you live, its the stories of the past that bring us together.

I’m reminded of the television miniseries Roots, based on the novel by author Alex Haley on how he discovered his lineage all the way back to Africa. He found it through a family story that was passed down from generation to generation. It was the story of how Kunta Kinte went out into the jungle to cut down a tree to make a drum for a gift, and how he was captured and taken away from his village. This story resonated through history until Alex Haley returned to the village of his ancestor and heard the story again, but from one of the village elders. That story connected them together over hundreds of years and thousands of miles That’s the power of stories.

“That’s how it is with legends. The greater they sound, the more must’ve got left out.”
― Tim Tharp, Knights of the Hill Country

Thou some are flights of fancy, others are based on some truths. We’ve seen some stories told over and over again, from Greek mythology and King Arthur, to stories from the Bible. These are some of the great tales that resound in all of us due to their morals, their heroism, their faith, and how they impact us emotionally. These tales have resonated from century to century, across thousands of miles and multiple languages. That is what makes them immortal.

Clash of the Titans is one of my favorite movies, from the original 1981 with Harry Hamlin and Sir Lawrence Olivier to the 2010 remake with Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson. No matter how much the story changed in 30 years, it still had the same myth at its base–Perseus, the Kraken, Medusa, etc. No matter how it inspired the writer, the story was the same at its core.

No matter how they’re told, myths and legends are the stories that we all share. We have a responsibility to keep passing these stories on to the next generation, in whatever form possible, to ensure they remain part of our history.

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51nd6H6sATL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_SKU-000941753Mark Piggott is the author of the Forever Avalon book series. 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 publishing. The Outlander War, Chapter 3 of the Forever Avalon series is coming soon.