So there I was, minding my own business when another story idea emerged from my fevered imagination. At this rate I should almost be outsourcing all these ideas and taking a cut of the profits…
Where was I. Ah, yes, minding my own business. Well, kind of. Recently I had been going through my DVD collection after having an urge to watch action-adventure treasure hunting type movies – you know, the Mummy movies and National Treasure, King Solomon’s Mines, etc and so on. Which reminds me, I still need to get Indiana Jones and the Goonies some day.
This gave me the thought that I should have a go at writing a fantasy treasure-hunting tale of the type in those movies. Kind of like The Hobbit, but more on the action-adventury side.
And then I put the thought aside to go back and concentrate on Winter Wolves. Except the thought didn’t like that idea and raised a name with me – Sir Richard Hammerman. And that kind of forced back the idea into prominence.
And now we go back a step, to where Sir Richard first appeared from.
It started with a picture I saw, of a man standing at the top of a steep walled valley, on the far side a village clinging to the side. I think it may have even had steampunk elements to it – whatever it did, it gave me an idea for a village for a steampunk setting. In this village lived a young man called Preston who, for reason still being worked on, left the village to see the world. He fell in with a company of explorers, lead by the gentleman-adevnturer Sir Richard Hammerman, and in the course of his adventures crossed the seas to the colonies and a wild land where ancient cities moldered amongst thick jungles and were strange creatures lived.
That was about the sum of the idea at the time. Sir Richard’s name came from the Steampunk Name Generator at Brass Goggles and was too good a name not to use at some stage. For a while the idea languished and may have been forgotten for some time until this new idea came to light and suggested Sir Richard.
This instantly made the story a steampunk story, and personalities and ideas began to swirl around. The characters – Preston, Sir Richard, Captain Archibald ‘Archie’ Hammerman, Miss Eva Redsmith and Professor Hamilton Gooding had before been only names, but now personalities began to form, perhaps inspired by the DVDs.
Sir Richard is the quintessential gentleman-adventurer. Polite, well-mannered, with a dry, straight-faced wit and unflappable stoicism, he is the type to face the certain doom of an oncoming dragon with the line ‘Drinks at seven chaps?’
Captain Archibald ‘Archie’ Hammerman is Sir Richard’s younger brother. Fair-haired and blue eyed, he is charming, adventurous, excitable and with a reckless innocence that can get him in trouble at times.
Professor Hamilton is less mapped yet, but is the intellectual voice of reason and caution in the party, though his deep-seated curiosity for the unknown and mysterious can often override that caution.
Miss Eva Redsmith is even less realised yet, beyond being somewhat mysterious and a treasure trove of obscure knowledge.
The young man Preston is wide-eyed and new to the broader world, fascinated by all that he is seeing and often lead astray by Archie.
Their adventures take them across the seas to the jungles, searching for an ancient treasure, surrounded by the danger of monstrous snakes, piranhas, tribes of lizard men, crocodile men and trolls and the wonder of lost cities and magnificent winged serpents.
Therein lies the gist of the story. The difficulty lies in not starting another story when there are already others in various stages that need working on first.
Mist and Shadows 