Liner Notes for Drowned

 

The liner notes for my story Drowned

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This story began with the single word “Drowned” on my story idea list. (I don’t remember why I put it there; the whole point of the story idea list is so I don’t need to remember. Obviously sometimes I don’t put down as much information as I could). My first thought was to have Walker wake up on a beach, with no memory of what had happened and having to figure it out. It’s a good idea, so good that I’d already used a similar device for Sailing The Skyless Reach (which I sorted to later in the publication order).

Instead I thought I’d start by putting Walker at the bottom of the sea and then see how things turned out. We’re in Viking territory here, in my mix-and-match fantasy world history and geography. Up in the north west corner of the Great Continent, a cold land of sailors, traders and, of course, pirates. So when he eventually comes up, it’s into a problem.

What’s at the bottom of the sea that they might wish to dive for? At one time I had elves out looking for natural things, often to give as gifts. Competing with wedding gifts, for the rarest, most beautiful things. Having started with a story about hunting down a necromancer this seemed a bit trivial, a minor story in the sequence – see Lubrication which I’d also already written, but have not yet posted. This would then be a cold-water deep fish for the skin, or a pearl from an oyster or… eh.

Instead I dug back into Tapping The Admiral. The cousin of Walker and Decider, an elf elder, Immaterial Tricks, plays a part in that. An elf elder is one who has enormous power that they can’t, or won’t use, due to it tipping the balance of the world. An elder is an elf who has lived through an entire age of the world, whatever that means. In another sequence of elf-stuff that age ended, in an homage to Tolkien, with the first sun-rise. Those born before were elders, whose powers were simply not to be used in the new world; those born after not-elders to defer to them. Also the Dawn-born, born on the cusp, but that was another story.

Swift Tail, a young elf, will appear eventually in these stories, and now we have her lineage; the great grand-daughter of Immaterial Tricks. As for the heavensphere, the change in the sky and the counter-earth, those will have to wait for another story.

This is one of my ones that I hope stands alone – as a vignette if not a full story – though it also lays out a lot of stuff that will come to fruition later. If that’s not working for you, sorry about that. Maybe wait for December when you can read them all at once?