Evolution of a Fantasy World
Small steps or Giant leaps in logic?
The Public Domain Superheroes website is a wonderful place and I found it to contain much fodder for my imagination. I set about mining it for every public domain character I could possibly use.
I kept seeing podcasts and YouTubers talk about Blue Bolt as the greatest option to possibly be reimagined for modern cinematic audiences. Personally, I found him boring and his infatuation with the Green Sorceress to be really forced and uninspired.
The Green Sorceress, however, definitely held my attention as a character worth exploring. If only she had a nemesis/love interest equally as worthy! I wanted to tell that story.
I ditched Blue Bolt as he was and replaced him with The King in Yellow in the role of Monsieur Bolt. Yellow was evil and I figured he connected so well with Green because of their shared alignment. Despite the efforts to rehabilitate Yellow, his heart still yearned for evil and chaos. Their story would be told in it's full tragic glory in The Kingdoms of the Underground Empire, which cover mockup graces my home page.
I dove in and started writing and got about half a chapter before I realized that I do not have the skills to tell the nuanced tale that is burning to escape. I would need to write and write a lot to get to that level. I started writing other, simpler stories to make sure I had the chops to hack it.
They were OK. I really did need to write a lot. I ran one of my stories through an AI critique tool and it suggested that there was a lot more to that story that could be expanded upon to make a novella. By George, that electronic whippersnapper was right! That story will be the first published novel in my series.
But I still wasn't there yet. I needed to write a lot more to get good enough to write that first novel, much less the book about Green and Yellow. BTW, that book will be volume 13 in the grand series and will be what sets things in motion for the remaining 6 books after that.
Hopefully after 12 books (including the Moon Witch trilogy) I will be good enough to tell that story the way it needs to be told.
