The wonderful thing about ideas is that they never present themselves at the right time. In fact, they usually turn up at entirely the wrong time. They come out of nowhere and hit you sideways.
Last night, an idea for a Swords and Sorcery novel dumped itself in my head. I’ve been thinking for the last couple of days how much I enjoy the whole “rogue’s tale” subgenre (a subgenre that includes Lies of Locke Lamorra and the brilliant Among Thieves). As much as I love big epic fantasy, I find that it’s sword and sorcery that is leaving me fulfilled these days.
The important thing is that this wasn’t an idea I was looking for. If anything, the idea I want is some added element for Gods of the Wild Frontier. But over the 10 minutes whilst I was cooking last night, I came up with an opening scene, a concept and four main characters. Not bad, and I think the book could be a lot of fun, both to write and read. On the downside, it’s a bit safe for me. It sits firmly in Sword and Sorcery. There’s no spaceships or helicopters, and I can’t help but wonder if the idea has been seen before.
So I after cooking I basically sat down and pitched the novel to myself in an additional note to my file of ever growing novel ideas. It depresses me to look at this list. I really need to be able to write a complete novel in about 2 months to ever get through this backlog. I’ll be glad once I move, so I can get down to some very serious writing, although at this time I have no idea what I will be writing.