|
Written - beginning of 1989 to mid 1990
There are all sorts of influences in here - a bit of Pratchett, a
touch of Hithchiker's, some Lovecraft, and some roleplaying stuff
too. There are also some rather dated similes, but I didn't know any
better at the time.
As with The History of the Druas, this was
written as a part work for colleagues. The original
intention was to try and get away from fantasy and write a crime
story. That intention lasted almost exactly until the end of the
third paragraph.
It still amazes me the way I wrote this - the first few
chapters were written as random ideas sleeting out of the aether and
out onto the keyboard, the rest of the text is spent tying them up. I
had no idea how the story was going to end until I was halfway through
the final chapter. This may explain the flat characters.
Again, the text is as it was originally distributed, apart from fixing
typoes and the removal of an editorial note which I left in by
accident. This is included as an appendix.
A note on character names: the central character's name is borrowed
from that of a character of a roleplaying campaign I ran. Both he and
the baddie owe their names to working at a telecoms company.
I did start a rewrite of this tale, and also did some work on a
sequel, but rather infuriatingly I lost all that to a computer fault
in 1995 (not all I lost, to be sure, but all I lost that's relevant
here). Maybe I'll do a proper rewrite one day, but not soon I
suspect.
|
