I have been asked to an article for the Author’s Lounge concerning my debut fantasy novel, The Collis Valle Saga, Book 1: The Salt Mine, but first let me begin with its own origins.
For many years I was reading numerous fantasy novels by a wide variety of authors, including JRR Tolkien, R A Salvatore to name a couple. I then became an avid role-player of numerous games which began with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy game books. While I did enjoy them, there was something missing. I found them very restrictive at times. Then someone introduced me to the classic red boxed set of Dungeons and Dragons Basic RPG. This began to open new possibilities where I found that I enjoyed creating the scenarios and storylines more than playing the game. This led to lots of scenarios, many of them never-to-be-run. Those that were run was never set in the pre-published worlds that TSR produced, but in my own little corners of some world that I had plans on developing. Regrettably, that is where many of them died. While I enjoyed the whole scenario creation process, I still wanted to do more.
Unfortunately, many years passed, and I wound up working a wide variety of different jobs from fast food restaurants, bar work, removals, teaching IT as a tutor’s assistant, and customer service. Throughout it all, I was still writing, albeit rather sporadically. My first attempt at a novel was a superhero themed one, I even sent it off to an Agent. It got rejected. After I got the manuscript back, I eventually looked at it once again and could quite easily see why. It was terribly written, filled with grammatical mistakes and, it soon became evident, I really had not put that much effort in to proof-reading it as I thought I had.
Then many more years moved along, and I took up roleplaying starting with another D&D boxed set. I was changing the scenario from Basic rules to D&D 3.5, when I saw four characters come to life in my mind. A Half-Orc Barbarian called Ghorza; a Human Cleric, Conn Bruis; a Half-Elf Magic User named Kali Celaeno, and the Thief, Reuben Bunner. But there were several parts that I was not still happy with, such as the character classes, the religions and so on.
I then began creating Pangaiea. But to create the world, I needed something more to bring the world into being. This led me to the creation of the Gods of Pangaiea and the writing of my first book, The Book of the Elementum which is still a work-in-progress, but this allowed me to provide a starting point for my characters. But the one thing most fantasy novels have in common is that a great many of them are set in the dark ages. I decided to wind the time period back to the Bronze Age simply because I truly find that era extremely fascinating.
I then looked at bringing the classes in line with the Bronze Age. I did away with Clerics, Fighters, Magic Users, and Thieves, renaming them Spiritualists, Warriors, Sorcerers, and Scouts. But with my Main Characters, I am starting them from when they become adults and only Conn is on his way to becoming a Spiritualist. Ghorza is just an oft angry Half-Orc due to her past; Kali is apprenticed to a Pensman; and Reuben is learning to become a Baker and is living with amnesia.
Each of these characters come from a different settlement where they are then forced together by a Sorcerer, Treorai, and his accomplices, who have also captured a belligerent Goatherder from the local settlement of Spire, Trystan Gibbs. These accomplices are the Half-Orc Warrior, Krilge; the Human warrior, Emlyn Bowen; the Hauflin Rogue, Salvia Potts; and the Human Spiritualist from the Southern Continent, Lusha Aravane. Treorai has travelled widely and wants to establish what he has seen and learnt around his home in Collis Valle. During his own quest, he has made a discovery that could help him bring forth his plans so much faster.
The book explores how five vastly different personalities who have never met before are supposed to work together to secure their freedom, while dealing with their own insecurities, their own upbringing and subtly touching on other issues such as racism, slavery, and abuse.
I just enjoy the ultimate escapism by writing fantasy fiction and, now I am working on an actual saga, I have finally found my focus. I may have started out with a RPG box set as a source of inspiration, but this has just launched me into writing a project of four-to-five books, and a side-track novel, that I hope other readers of fantasy will enjoy.
My ultimate goal is to find an Agent who will take my work on and, fingers crossed, maybe even get onto the big screen or even as a TV Series. That is my dream, but I really need that one Agent to help steer me in the right direction to bring that to fruition.
The Collis Valle Saga, Book 1: The Salt Mine is available through Amazon on Kindle, free for a spell on Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback:
or through my website at: https://ajgillhambooks.webador.co.uk/
