Fourteen-year-old me wrote a massive four-book series very much in the same vein as the Dragonlance books, only with more blood and death, because it annoyed me that the characters never seemed to get hurt in those books, and when they did (IIRC, a couple of them died? I don't really remember.) they were as good as new pretty quickly. And when I say blood and death--the main character is a vampire (of course, in a heroic fantasy setting with dwarves, elves, humans, dragons, etc.) and he pratically dies before the first ten pages. And then he almost dies again. And again, and again.
This masterpiece was called Tales from Cairbre, and it's over a thousand handwritten pages long. I started it on August 12, 1989 and finished it on August 8, 1991. The first book was, if I remember correctly, my fourth novel. There's love, and loss (lots of loss) and betrayal and friendship and distrust and everything else I could fit in there along with a castle of ice (!!) a demon, and dragons! Of course.
While cleaning off my library table for the auctions yesterday, I found the notebooks. I'd loaned them to my sister Jessica, who was supposed to type them up for me, but that fizzled out, and she had them for a few years before I got them back.
Tonight, I started reading them.
From the viewpoint of thirty-seven-year-old me, they're hilariously terrible, but they have glimmers of hope. The dialogue is pretty corny in places. The action scenes are pretty funny. Aurek Cathaoir, the main character, does have a cool sword that follows him around. He's a vampire, but since vampires lose their identities and all memories after they are made (except their names), he knows nothing of his past until someone tells him he is a demon's son. Which is the explanation I give as to why he keeps getting wounded by silver and not dying. ;)
After this, after all, I wrote Wizards of Despair, where the main character only died seventeen times or something like that, which was an improvement. ;)
I think I'll read the whole series, just for the novelty of visiting my fourteen-year-old self again.
This masterpiece was called Tales from Cairbre, and it's over a thousand handwritten pages long. I started it on August 12, 1989 and finished it on August 8, 1991. The first book was, if I remember correctly, my fourth novel. There's love, and loss (lots of loss) and betrayal and friendship and distrust and everything else I could fit in there along with a castle of ice (!!) a demon, and dragons! Of course.
While cleaning off my library table for the auctions yesterday, I found the notebooks. I'd loaned them to my sister Jessica, who was supposed to type them up for me, but that fizzled out, and she had them for a few years before I got them back.
Tonight, I started reading them.
From the viewpoint of thirty-seven-year-old me, they're hilariously terrible, but they have glimmers of hope. The dialogue is pretty corny in places. The action scenes are pretty funny. Aurek Cathaoir, the main character, does have a cool sword that follows him around. He's a vampire, but since vampires lose their identities and all memories after they are made (except their names), he knows nothing of his past until someone tells him he is a demon's son. Which is the explanation I give as to why he keeps getting wounded by silver and not dying. ;)
After this, after all, I wrote Wizards of Despair, where the main character only died seventeen times or something like that, which was an improvement. ;)
I think I'll read the whole series, just for the novelty of visiting my fourteen-year-old self again.
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