Stepping out into the new space of this blog with only the fragile curtain of a pen name for some modesty is rather disconcerting.
I will try to write consistently and honestly, but also to relax a little and enjoy sharing some of my thoughts, along with my recent work. As a not-yet-published author, I won't object if you take my opinions on writing with a hefty pinch of salt. But I do hope you enjoy my stories.
I'll be using four main categories for this blog: Writing for when I want to consider process and result, Review for when I am keen to share my thoughts on others' work, Short Fiction to post my own stories, and this last, Cornucopia, to cover all the other things which exercise my mind. You're likely to run across musings on history under this heading, or perhaps the troubles of the English countryside in which I live. I will also be highlighting some famous archaeological discoveries and artefacts, with a particular emphasis on the ornate, the macabre and on gold. It's a sadness of modern archaeology that in its efforts to distance itself from disgraceful Victorian adventurers it has nervously abjured interest in this gleaming stuff, despite the marvellous and intricate shapes and stories our ancestors wrought into its buttery sheen.
There is, you could say, a parallel here with the attitude of literary fiction towards speculative fiction and fantasy, an uncomfortable fear that just next door is something rather unrespectable. The old hunt for gold and treasure, which was often also a hunt for novelty and story, could be vastly destructive. Heinrich Schliemann got his wife to pose for the camera wearing 'Helen's Jewels', but he had just demolished large sections of late Bronze Age Troy. Not realising he had dug straight through walls from the time aligned with Homer's Iliad, he finally found his treasure in the ruins of a much earlier citadel. In a similar way, it can sometimes appear the hunt for novelty and excitement in a book, and the introduction of supernatural elements, perhaps magic - dragons, heaven forfend - might be incompatible with other things that authors value, such as quality of prose, insight or, for the want of a better word, 'literature-ness'.
This idea is easily debunked with a short list of writers: Ursula le Guin, Susanna Clarke, J. R. R. Tolkien, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett. But its very existence is itself instructive. Partly, I think, the problem is that things are always defined in opposition to other things. To be an archaeologists is to not be an adventurer, and to write serious literature you should not sell quantities of paperbacks with wizards on the cover. Allegedly. I will happily argue with all comers that Pratchett laid that particular fable to rest by throwing the book at it.
Fortunately, writing, unlike excavation, is not inherently destructive. We get to write and rewrite with new fragments of ideas, and if we do not find the walls of Troy the first time, we can seek them again and again, building up in any way we please until at last their architecture astounds the viewer. Also, as dragons need gold, and gold is prized by dragons, perhaps it is handy that I can claim an interest in both. More importantly, I must attempt to write something worth reading. We will see how it goes.
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