Five Things “Everyone Knows” About the Pre-Modern World

Most fantasy secondary worlds tend to be inspired by pre-modern society in our own world. In theory, that shouldn’t be a problem. The trouble is that, whatever in-world details you put in, someone will object that it’s wrong — because everyone knows it wasn’t like that in the old days.

Well, it’s a useful rule of thumb that anything “everyone knows” is suspect. And that’s generally true of these objections, for the simple reason that very few generalisations can actually be made about pre-modern times.

The “modern” world (starting with the period referred to as early modern) is generally considered to have begun with a series of social, cultural and technological changes during the 15th century.1 These included:

  • The Renaissance, reviving classical learning
  • The decline of the feudal system and rise of the middle classes
  • The introduction of gunpowder to warfare
  • The voyages of discovery to Africa, Asia and the Americas
  • The printing press revolutionising the spread of information
  • The Protestant Reformation2

These transformed the world that had existed in Western Europe for several centuries. But many of the things that “everyone knows” about history before that point are, at best, unreliable. Here are five of them.

1. All Pre-Modern Cultures Were Alike

Part of the problem with what “everyone knows” is that people tend to know (or at least think they know) about a specific historical period. Most often, this is mediaeval Europe — though, even then, it tends to be popular history, rather than actual history.

The Middle Ages, which constitute a useful if inaccurate division of history,3 are actually a tiny portion of pre-modern history. For one thing, the description only really applies to Western Europe. The social, political and cultural conditions that defined the era weren’t found, for example, in China, India, the Byzantine Empire or the Arab world. Nor were they found in the great civilisations of Africa or the Americas.

The other thing is that human history is a lot longer than most people assume. The oldest identified walled city (a fair test of civilisation, though not the only one) was around 9500 BC. This means that, by the time mediaeval Europe had given way to early-modern Europe, civilisation was already at least eleven thousand years old.

And there’s an almost infinite variety in that period.

2. Countries Were Always Kingdoms

Fantasy writers who create lands of a pre-modern type generally give the country a king to rule over it. Or perhaps a queen, at a push. And these rulers are usually imagined in a mediaeval (or pseudo-mediaeval) way.

And there were plenty of kingdoms, there’s no denying, but other systems of government existed, too. Republics were common enough in classical Europe, for instance, from the small Greek states such as Athens to the Roman Republic. And yes, they all eventually collapsed to either internal or external pressure, but so do all political systems. The Roman Republic, which ultimately succumbed to the pressure of changing from city-state to empire, lasted successfully for far longer than its American equivalent has yet.

Republics existed elsewhere, too. The Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation, for instance, seems not to have had kings. In the great city of Mohenjo-daro, no building has been found resembling a palace — in fact, all the houses seem remarkably egalitarian (though there would certainly have been “have-nots” living outside the city). The available evidence suggests that the city was a mercantile oligarchy.4

Oligarchies and democracies can be found in the ancient world, as can theocracies (rule by priests) and stratocracies (rule by the military). And, even when there were kings, they didn’t always conform to the standard pattern. Ancient Sparta, for instance, always had two kings simultaneously — but they didn’t actually rule the city. They were purely war leaders, with a council of elders holding actual power.

3. Ancient Cities Were Small

If you try giving your pre-modern-style world a vast, sprawling city, someone’s bound to object that “ancient cities were small — hardly bigger than a village today.”

Well, for some eras and some civilisations, that was true. Mediaeval London is famously a square mile, and most of its contemporaries in Western Europe were little bigger. The classical Greek cities, like Athens, Thebes or Corinth, were similarly tiny.

But that doesn’t mean the whole of pre-modern history was the same. Rome in the time of Augustus had a population of around a million, and the walls of Babylon are said to have stretched for fifteen miles. China had vast cities; and, around the same time that London was filling its square mile, the city of Angkor in Cambodia stretched almost as far as modern London.

The size cities can grow to depends on a wide range of factors, from the overall size of the population to the number of people who can be supported without directly contributing to food production. Pre-modern cities came in all shapes and sizes.

4. Ancient Battles Were Skirmishes Between a Few Hundred People

In the same way, I’ve been told many times that “in the old days” a typical battle would consist of armies of no more than a few hundred facing one another. A couple of thousand, at most. And, again, that was sometimes true — but by no means always.

Mediaeval armies weren’t huge, but in major battles the numbers were certainly many thousands. Although exact figures are difficult to nail down, the armies at the Battle of Hastings were possibly eight or nine thousand each, while some estimates of the numbers at Agincourt put the French army at twelve thousand and the English at nine thousand.

Even these numbers, though, were tiny compared with some of the great battles of ancient history. The Battle of Raphia, for instance, was fought in 217 BC between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms. One of the most significant battles of the Hellenistic world, the Ptolemaic army was around 75,000, while the Seleucids had about 68,000.5

Even these armies, though, would look tiny beside some of the forces at the disposal of Chinese emperors. There were battles fought in the history of China where the imperial army number half a million or more.

As with the size of cities, the armies a state could put in the field depended on many factors, such as the overall size of the population and the degree of organisation the rulers could exercise. Ancient battles could be anything from a minor raid to an apocalyptic confrontation that would overawe Hollywood.

5. There Was No Global Reach in the Pre-Modern World

It’s true that, until very recently, the great majority of people throughout the world didn’t travel very far from home. But “the great majority” doesn’t mean everyone, and there has been a surprising amount of travel since prehistoric times.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Just because they didn’t have planes, trains and cars, it doesn’t mean humans were incapable of long journeys. Just to put it in perspective, at a travel rate of twenty miles a day (and ignoring obstacles in the way) it would take little over a year to walk from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the Pacific coast of Asia. Even a more realistic journey, allowing for crossing mountains and avoiding deserts, might be no more than three or four years.

Now, I’m not suggesting that any one individual actually made this whole journey, but it wouldn’t have been beyond people whose patience was greater than ours to cover significant parts of it. And then, perhaps, meet people who’d covered a significant part of the journey from the other direction. Of course, this would have been even easier when means of transport like horses or ships were available.

A lot of travelling would have been for trade. There was a surprising reach for trade even in Palaeolithic Europe, and this increased in later times. The Greeks and Romans were aware of lands from China and South-East Asia to the Baltic to Tanzania. Later, the Silk Roads supplied a substantial link between China and the Middle East, with goods brought along them finding their way as far as Western Europe.

Where trade goes, ideas, culture and technology are also transmitted. While no period of the pre-modern world was as joined up as we are today, it would be wrong to imagine people isolated within their little kingdoms, knowing only vague legends of what lay beyond their borders.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of false facts about the pre-modern world. There are misunderstandings everything from the amount of technology available to the wide range of gender roles.

Hopefully, though, this will give you enough that you’ll be able to challenge the next person who lays down the law about what things were like “in the old days”.

1 This is very approximate, and only really applies to Europe. Other parts of the world developed either faster or slower, or a bit of both.

2 The Reformation is usually reckoned as having begun with Luther’s Ninety-Seven Theses in 1517. However, this was really a key moment in a process that had included earlier reformers like Wycliffe, Ball and Huss.

3 See my blog The Middle Ages That Never Were

4 There’s also no sign of either organised religion or warfare. On the other hand, large numbers of children’s toys have been found.

5 This was probably the only major battle in Western history in which both sides had elephant divisions, along with infantry and cavalry.

Writing Goals for 2026 — Same as 2025, Really

About this time a year ago, I was setting my goals for 2025, and I was pretty sure what I was going to achieve in the following twelve months. After finally finishing the first draft of The Empire of Nandesh, the second novel of my octology, in the dying days of 2022, I’d spent much of 2023 and 2024 working on shorter stories, ranging from 100 words up to over 30,000.

This had included a return, after several years away, to my Sam Nemesis series. Sam is a hard-boiled private detective — you know the type. The difference is that he’s based in the realm of Hades and his clients are “gods, heroes and monsters”. A couple of the stories were published years back, and this time I took Sam further into Greek mythology and even solving an Egyptian myth.

The Challenges for 2025

By the time I was starting out on 2025, I still had six of the stories from the previous two years to finish revising, all set in the Traveller’s World. These were:

  • The Tower of Zeka-Zomi — The Traveller battling against an immensely powerful evil sorcerer.
  • The Forbidden Library — Prequel to my Kari and Fai series before they became (in their own minds, at least) outlawed wandering sorcerers.
  • Smoke and Mirrors — A curious story about Loshi vi Assarid and a companion who might be an old woman or a ten-year-old girl.
  • The Demons of the Past — A story about a new character, Alliou (known as the Maimed Warrior) and her leopard companion Shavsi.
  • Secrets of the Black Cape — Archaeological fantasy in the “contemporary” era, a sequel to the published The Lone and Level Sands.
  • Shadows in the City — A “contemporary” magical Hitchcock-style story set in my favourite location, the strange city of Errish.

And then, when all that was done and dusted (probably by the summer), I’d finally turn back to doing the second draft of The Empire of Nandesh.

Well, that was the idea.

What Happened in 2025

The Forbidden Library, Smoke and Mirrors and The Demons of the Past were relatively straightforward (even though the last ended up considerably longer than it started). All three are complete and have started collecting their own personal hoards of rejections.

Secrets of the Black Cape was more complex because it’s longer. After four drafts, it’s ended up at a little over 23,000 words, so now I’m figuring out what I’m supposed to do with a story of that length.

One possibility is to combine it with The Lone and Level Sands and then write a third story to create a plausible-length book about the two main characters, Musu and Zadi. That’s assuming, of course, that I could get the book published.

Shadows in the City was the monster. The first draft was already over 30,000 words, and I knew I was going to have to add some more content, but I underestimated how much. The second draft is now around 50,000, and officially a short novel.

And that left The Tower of Zeka-Zomi. I did a second draft that took it up to nearly 10,000 words — and was told by several critiquing partners that it needed to be considerably longer. I had doubts about that at first, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve drifted towards agreeing — it would certainly give me more option to develop the characters. I have some ideas now about what I need to do with it — and I strongly suspect that this is going to turn into another short novel.

All this has taken a good deal longer than I’d expected. The plan was to come back to preparing for the second draft of The Empire of Nandesh by around the mid-point of the year. In fact, it was mid-November before I got to it, and I’ve spent the past month and a half reviewing critiques and writing up guides to the characters and locations. There’s still plenty of preparation to go.

And yes, I know all lot of writers do all this before the first draft, but I have a slightly different approach. Outlining is something that comes between the first and second drafts.

A Fun-Filled 2026

As I’m midway through the preparation for The Empire of Nandesh (which, incidentally, will almost certainly not be the final title), completing that process will be the first task — characters, locations, themes, arcs and a breakdown of a largely new chapter structure. The second draft is going to be substantially different from the first, and probably longer. So what’s new?

Once that’s done, of course, the actual writing will begin — but not right away. I’ll probably slot in finishing Shadows in the City first. This needs a third draft, but that should only involve tidying up a number of points, and then a final polish. I’m hopeful I can get that done in around a month — but we’ll see. And then trying to get it published begins.

Then onto the second draft of The Empire of Nandesh, which I imagine will take up most of the year. I’d like to think I can have it done by this time in 2027. It’ll need one or two more drafts after that, but again, hopefully those won’t take as long.

On the other hand, there are likely to be distractions along the way. Other projects I may well divert onto include:

  • A story for the next Fantasy-Writers.org anthology. We’re planning on starting the process in a couple of months, and I’ll need to think of a subject.
  • The third Musu and Zadi story. I have a rough idea of the plot, and I’d hope to at least start it this year.
  • A couple of stories I’ve had the beginnings to for a while and feel as if their time has come. One is another “modernish” Traveller’s World tale, while the other is essentially weird — set on board a ship that’s navigating by eight cardinal directions, instead of the usual six (no, that’s not a typo).
  • Possibly one or two more Sam Nemesis stories. These are typically fairly short and shouldn’t take too long.

And then there’s The Tower of Zeka-Zomi. I don’t know if I’ll actually start writing it this year, but I’d like to have some kind of outline of how I’m going to open out 10,000 words into more like 50,000.

And no doubt other projects will ambush me in the course of 2026. John Lennon said that “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” — and so is writing. I’ll let you know how that goes in January 2027.

Decorating the White Room

Most scenes in a story consist of people having a conversation, in one way or another. Or fighting, of course, which is bizarrely similar. Even if there’s only one character in the scene, the chances are they’re thinking — and that’s communication of a kind.

This is fine, but there a scene usually needs more than that. It takes place somewhere; things are happening that don’t directly involve those characters; there are surroundings; there’s a variety of sensory stimuli. This is more than window-dressing. Although the communication may be the heart and soul of the scene, the rest helps to give it a meaning and a context.

However, many authors (and I include myself in this) all too easily fall into the trap of writing scenes that might as well be in a plain white room. In the first draft, at least, though not everyone puts it right even in later drafts.

Of course, like pretty much any approach to writing a story, there are cases when this can work. Some years ago, I wrote an experimental flash piece called In the White Room, where the single scene consisted only of a plain white room and a single character viewed objectively. Not one of my finest stories, but it was a valid thing to try out.

In general, though, a scene needs more than the foreground. So, when I’m trying to decorate the white room in later drafts, what are the things I focus on?

Constructing the Scenery

Every scene takes place somewhere — even if that somewhere happens to be the mists of nonbeing. That can be relevant, too.

For the most part, though, what surrounds the characters gives the scene a sense of place that can be very relevant to what’s going on. Are the characters in a palace room or a hovel? Are they in the middle of a bustling market or in the middle of an eerie forest?

This can be significant for a variety of reasons. It might say something about the characters to know where they hang out. It might be part of the plot, or else play a role in the tension of the scene. Or it might have a practical function — do they need to avoid being overheard, for instance?

Now, obviously I’m not suggesting that each scene should start with a long, detailed description of the surroundings. Or include any long, detailed descriptions at all. A few writers do it awesomely enough to get away with it (Mervyn Peake, for instance) and even they can put some readers off.

In general, describing scenery is like describing characters:

Firstly, focus on a few outstanding features —specific features that tell the reader a lot and help them fill in the rest. Your character is in the throne-room, having an audience with the Queen — that mural behind her head, rich with gold leaf, can speak volumes. They’re in a dark, dingy alley — tell us how the shadows move, rather than what materials the walls are made of.

Secondly, as far as possible, show the scenery dynamically. In the forest, show the trees swaying in the wind, rather than just telling us what kind of trees they are. In the market, don’t just list the types of stalls on show, let the traders cry their wares.

Interacting with the Surroundings

What surrounds the characters talking or fighting doesn’t have to be static scenery. Besides being dynamic in itself (those traders crying their wares, those trees swaying), the scenery also provides abundant opportunities for the characters to interact with it.

Does the space have furniture? You can describe it by having the characters using it. Is there a glade in the forest? They could make camp there, or set a fire. Is the tavern rowdy? They could be interrupted by the server having to picking her way through fights to reach them — or even the fights exploding across their table.

This doesn’t have to be just “business” or window-dressing, though. It could play a crucial role in the scene. Do you want to show the reader that there’s a large window in the room? Have a character look out through it and see something that affects the course of the story.

Make your scenery work for its living.

Using the Senses

We have a lot of senses — far more than the traditional five, in fact, but let’s just use those as a starting-point. Most of us tend to lean very heavily on sight, and that’s certainly true of me. There are sounds, of course, but usually only when they play a practical role in the story. But the sounds surrounding a scene can play as crucial a part as the visuals.

I’ve mentioned the traders crying their wares in the market, but a busy marketplace will be a positive smorgasbord of sounds. Depending on your main character’s state of mind, it might come over as a cacophony or as tantalising snippets from here and there.

Every scene will have its background sound: the wind in the trees, the swish of clothes, the clank of armour and weapons from the royal guard, voices in the distance, the crying of birds high above. Or maybe of dragons.

And then there are the smells. Now, this is the one I really have trouble with, for the simple reason that I have very little sense of smell. There are very rarely any smells in my first drafts, and I have to really think about adding them later. Even though I can’t do it from experience, I can “collect” smells at second hand and have a pretty good idea how to describe and use them from the ways other writers have done it.

Smells can be crucial, though. For anyone who’s not like me, they can be the most direct connection to emotions and memories. If you can make the reader smell what’s around, whether it’s a heady scent or a foul stench, you’ll go a long way to bringing them with you.

Touch and taste are harder to get into the background, although of course both can be important foreground features. Even so, there are possibilities, from the feel of tools, weapons or furniture to the taste of the ale your character’s drinking while having that secret talk in the tavern.

There are other senses, but many of them are more abstract — which is why they’ve only been recognised fairly recently. It would be nice to be able to get balance or proprioception into the background of a scene, but that might be challenging.

Building Through the Drafts

Every author writes in a different way, and that’s perfectly right. For some, the white room is never a thing, and background sensory details flow out naturally in the first draft. For others, everything has to be added later, while I suspect most of us lie somewhere between those extremes.

Wherever you lie on that spectrum, it’s probably best not to try and change it, as far as first drafts go. If it’s how you write naturally, then by all means have a few white rooms — but be ready to start decorating when you launch into your subsequent drafts.

The Shape of a Legend & Wyrmbane in Quest — 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey

It’s exciting to have any story published, but I’m especially looking forward to the release, on 21st September, of Quest — 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey. An anthology published by Fantasy-Writers.org, which I’ve been a member of since 2004, it features two of my stories among the twenty-two.

A communal effort by the members, this is our second anthology. The first, The Light of the Last Day, was published back in 2014, so it’s taken a while to follow it up — but the wait was worth it.

While the previous book was loosely themed simply by many of the stories beginning with the same phrase, this one had a more specific theme: the Hero’s Journey. Using the twelve stages proposed by Christopher Vogler, rather than the seventeen in Joseph Campbell’s original formulation, the challenge to each author was to write a story relating to a specific stage. The connection could be anything from literal to punning — but each stage was to represent a separate story.

In fact, we ended up with two or three stories for some stages, while some authors (including me) contributed two pieces. Mine are somewhat contrasting tales called The Shape of a Legend and Wyrmbane.

The Shape of a Legend (Tests, Allies & Enemies)

The Shape of a Legend takes the requirement for “tests, allies and enemies” fairly literally. At first glance, it’s a high fantasy about wars and alliances between nations and the decisions of their rulers. Midway through, however, it takes a sharp left-turn into something more like fairytale territory.

The story involves a queen whose homeland and adopted country are going to war with one another. She and her husband are deeply in love but constrained by duties and obligations that push them apart.

On her way to a fateful encounter, however, the young queen, Shalla, encounters a couple of fae-folk, who put her through a series of choices — although Shalla doesn’t realise until the end of the process what she’s actually choosing.

The story is fundamentally about identity and remaining true to who you are — as well as, like any good fairy story, also being about growing up and taking responsibility. Like Sarah in Labyrinth, Shalla is tempted to retreat back into the safety and comfort of her childhood, but has to make the harder, more dangerous choice.

In the end, Shalla discovers both who she really is and what she really wants to achieve — neither of which is anything like what she believed at the beginning of the story.

Wyrmbane (The Resurrection)

Whereas The Shape of a Legend was an idea that fitted into its stage, Wyrmbane was deliberately conceived to fill the Resurrection slot, which at that point had no stories. While the stage in the Hero’s Journey is usually treated symbolically, I decided to be very, very literal about it.

In contrast to the fairytale ambience of the other story, Wyrmbane is gritty sword & sorcery. A character who has no name other than a description of what he does is doomed to endlessly slay dragons, endlessly die in the fight and be endlessly resurrected to a different world and a different dragon.

Until, that is, a dragon that’s different from any he’s met before offers him a way out. Is the dragon to be trusted? And is Wyrmbane willing to make the compromise necessary to break the cycle?

There’s an aspect to this story that wasn’t part of the planning, just something that I realised as I wrote it. Not a “this is what it really means” thing, just another way of thinking about it. But I’ll leave the reader to see it or not — I wonder how many will.

The Evolution of the Anthology

This anthology has evolved as a communal effort by the members of FWO, with stories developing through feedback and suggestions by the membership. Several stages of more formal editing were undertaken by about a dozen of us (mostly, but not all, contributors) in dialogue with the authors.

Every ship has a captain, though, and the anthology’s captain has been B. R. Turnage. In addition to formatting and designing the book, Beth created the stunning cover, oversaw the listing on Amazon, assembled an array of resources for us to use, and much more. The book wouldn’t have got to the verge of publication without her efforts.

So, on the 21st of this month, you’ll be able to buy Quest — 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey and read my stories and the twenty other awesome pieces. It’ll be available either as a Kindle download or as a paperback, however you prefer reading your books.

On the other hand, if you really can’t wait, you can download an advance copy free, on the understanding that you leave a review. There’s no obligation what you put in it. You’re even entitled to leave a bad review — but you won’t want to.

Whichever way you do it, I hope you’ll follow the Hero’s Journey with us.

Fantasy-Writers.org Anthology —Author Interview with David Staiger

As I highlighted in a recent post, the writers’ group I belong to, Fantasy-Writers.org, is about to publish an anthology of members’ stories. This is Quest: 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey.

To whet your appetite, this is an interview with David Staiger, one of the seventeen authors represented in the anthology, about his stories and his writing in general.

David’s stories are The Dragonfly Dish, which he describes as “a mythic quest involving beasts, barriers, and the elusive prize contained within a legendary vessel”, and The Last Virtue, described as “a lowborn champion must choose between fleeting fame and a true path forward in this tournament tale with a twist.”

What drew you to the Hero’s Journey structure for your story? Was it a challenge, a comfort or a surprise?

For the anthology in particular, I suggested the Hero’s Journey as a focal theme, as it represents a common starting point for many writers. We decided that each short story should tackle a different stage of the Journey, which is what, for me, proved to be the really fun challenge—trying to present a whole character arc within a single fragment of that larger arc. My writing does not follow a prescribed format, though I do have a pattern that I gravitate towards. I usually know where I am going in a story and fuddle around with how to get there along the way. I understand the developmental beats I want to hit, but I don’t hold to any specific formula or percentage breakdown to reach those checkpoints. Since I do know the theme and ending I am steering towards, I can always drop in small teases and set-ups ahead of time—not exactly structural foreshadowing, per se, but close enough to offer that impression.

Tell us about your stories in the anthology. What stage of the Hero’s Journey do they represent, and how did you interpret that beat?

I have two stories in the anthology, and I cannot remember which one I began first. I think I selected the resurrection stage first because no one else was grabbing for it (at least initially). When I hear “resurrection”, it invariably comes with the thought of death, specifically life-death-rebirth as part of the life cycle. So I wanted to have something die but not die, trapped in that in between. Once there, the ideas started rolling.

As part of the Hero’s Journey, specifically the Joseph Campbell version, I will always return to the image of Luke Skywalker entering the cave on Degobah and facing Darth Vader, which turns out to be his own dark self. It is the descent into the underworld, the shadow side of ourselves as human beings, that truly makes the stage significant. I needed a story that could represent that, so I needed a setting that could properly hold those elements and amplify that theme. Turns out I already had one.

I managed to export the setting, but I also required a different hero, so I stole that, too. I made Luke Skywalker, the parentless young teen on the cusp of adulthood with aspirations of becoming a knight. I changed the name, of course, and a few other details. In the back-and-forth story structure between past events and the present, it works well to escalate tension by keeping secrets. The best part of the story is the reveals. Knowing where you are going as an author makes hint-dropping and set-ups a breeze. And thematically, I have a setting with all the symbolism I could ever require. The sun is Life, and the moon/night is Death. The “past” part of the story stays in the daytime, while the “present” sections move from day to evening to the deep of night, suggesting that descent. The knight of Moonsmont could not be clearer if I tried—the embodiment of Death itself luring the dying hero in. Yeah, I had fun putting it all together, and throwing a little extra lore into my larger setting was a bonus.

As for the other story, I think I picked up the Ordeal because literally no one else did. Having no real ideas to start from, I had asked my fellow writers for some additional prompts as well. The magic of computer randomization gave me “daycare” as a setting, with Tender Moments and Jellybeans & Dragonflies presented as suggested names. I laughed, then sighed. I said, “I’ll see what I can do.” I had no idea where to begin.

Turns out, it was easier than I thought. Again, knowing where you are going makes the whole structure simple. What ordeal could a daycare toddler get themselves into? What are they after? How do I, the author, make that a compelling narrative in a fantasy-themed anthology? Calvin & Hobbes to the rescue. The story that came out in the anthology is pretty close to stream-of-thought. Sometimes the stories write themselves.

What’s your favourite type of hero—reluctant, chosen, flawed or fearless? Does your protagonist fit that mould?

I definitely prefer the flawed hero when it comes down to it. Not the overly-troped grim-and-pensive anti-hero, mind you, but the truly flawed hero. I prefer all my characters to be imperfect, to have failings, to wrestle with their inner demons. I believe that is what makes them most human, most like the people who are reading the story. We all have flaws, so why shouldn’t they? I love working in the gray area, in that murky soup of moral ambiguity that makes readers have to think and form their own opinions. I have characters that perform evil, despicable acts right alongside ones that rise to heroism on occasion. But driving those acts are the same muddy mess of moral confusion that drives us all. That contrast serves to highlight the importance of choice. Superman isn’t really brave or heroic, is he? He’s just invulnerable and better at everything. Rising to the occasion makes a hero, and the farther they are forced to rise, the greater the heroism truly is.

In the anthology, I’ll leave it to readers to decide if either protagonist can be considered a hero. Thi Cam Hanh, daughter of all daughters, says it herself with a laugh. She is only acting in self-interest, so she is the hero of her own story, certainly, but that’s as far as it goes. And Miekal in The Last Virtue isn’t really the hero either‌. He might struggle and overcome and lay it all on the line, but in the end, he gets himself fatally injured for pride. To me, the genuine hero of that story is Emely, the young graymaiden who rushes to heal him when he falls. It is her efforts alone, in opposition to the lure of Death, that brings him back.

Yeah, I definitely prefer my heroes messy.

What was the biggest challenge you faced while writing your story?

Keeping the word count manageable. That is always my biggest challenge. I have so much I want to say and so many minuscule details to express that, to me, are still important to the overall picture. It’s like micro-expressions in animation. The slightest narrowing of the eye or tilt of a lip can speak volumes louder than anything a character actually says or does. Good writing can be like that. It’s daunting to pack each sentence and word with every ounce of usable meaning. Sometimes, packing a sentence with two or three extra seemingly meaningless words can be a matter of voice and tone, of pacing and pause, rather than anything else. When every word of every sentence in every paragraph requires a justification for existence, I would call that a challenge.

If your main character had a theme song, what would it be?

Thi Cam Hanh: Get Jinxed by Djerv (League of Legends).  I can definitely see a little manic-pixie-anarchist brewing in her. I would put it in the background of her conflict with the Beasts easily. And the crumbling of the Wall, surely.

Miekal Sevensons: I have to settle on Angels Fall by Breaking Benjamin. There’s certainly a tragic fatalism to his sense of prideful determination. He absolutely fills the broken-winged angel motif.

Why did you want to be part of this anthology? What does community writing mean to you?

If nothing else, Fantasy-Writers.org has provided the subtle but ever-present motivation to really pursue the projects I have always put off and forgotten about in the past. Having the extra eyes providing feedback and sharing thoughts on my work, even if it’s only a few people, gives me all the encouragement I need to keep going. The idea that someone out there is waiting for me to finish a story or might be looking forward to a new one is incredibly inspiring. I don’t understand what is wrong with Martin or Rothfuss, or even Muir. Don’t they understand people are waiting! Maybe they just need to join FWO to keep things moving. (The invitation is open — Nyki)

What’s your favourite classic or modern story that uses the Hero’s Journey? (Books, films, games—go wild.)

As I previously alluded, Star Wars, the original trilogy, is my go-to representation of the Hero’s Journey encapsulated. Somewhere out there, a college essay of mine shows how all the stages of the Hero’s Journey are on display through all three movies, as well as in a micro-context within just A New Hope by itself. I mean, descending into the Death Star—how much more underworldy can you make the symbolism?

I’m sure if I examined the many stories out there, I could find a bunch of my favorite books or movies that exemplify the model. To be honest, though, I don’t really ascribe to that story form all that much in my stories. It is great to be aware of, and to break some elements down after the fact, but as I also mentioned, I don’t usually set out to follow one plot model over another. Maybe I should, but that isn’t really how my brain functions at the moment.

What is one writing tip or lesson you learned through this project that you’d share with others?

Many hands make light work. It takes a village to raise a child. If you want something done right, do it yourself. Wax on, wax off. All that and more.

Seriously, one of the best things this project allowed—and that the site itself offers on some basic level—is the opportunity to edit each other’s work, both in terms of line and developmental editing. I have learned that I never want to be an editor in any professional capacity for any reason whatsoever. I can proofread or provide feedback and opinion on a story, but to actually do what the editor’s job is—nah, not for me. I put too much energy into my work to worry about what other people are doing in theirs. I am definitely not the hero on this journey.

Describe your writing style in three words.

Only three? Seriously?

Where can readers find more of your work?

As of this moment, I only have drabbles published. I have one in the Festival of Fear anthology from Black Ink Fiction and at least one in each of the past four years of Dark Moments from Black Hare Press. Oh, and I also have an honorable mention entry in the Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest for 2022.  That’s it presently.

David Staiger lives with his family and assorted dogs in Upstate New York. In addition to writing, he enjoys hiking, mountain biking, rollerblading, and hockey. When he’s not in the classroom teaching special needs children, Dave argues with fellow FWOers about what makes a good story. Sometimes, he’s right. If he could, he’d make his living writing drabbles, but he’s found the scant pay-for-word won’t keep the mortgage company happy. While working on his WIPs, he has been published in two anthologies, Festival of Fear by Black Ink Press and Black Hare Press’ Fourth Year Anthology. He’s been a member of Fantasy-Writer’s.Org since March 2017.

The Middle Ages That Never Were

There seems to be a fixed idea that, at least until very recently, most fantasy has been set in a mediaeval-type setting. This is almost an article of faith to many people, in the face of all evidence, and shows that they have very little understanding of what mediaeval1 really means.

Some fantasy authors have certainly based their settings on mediaeval Europe, from William Morris to George R. R. Martin. However, this is only one of many models that traditional fantasy authors have used — though it’s undeniable that most have been centred on Europe or the Middle East.

Tolkien is often cited as an author who uses a mediaeval model, but in fact there’s very little mediaeval, as properly understood, in Lord of the Rings. The Shire is an idealised version of 19th century England without guns; Rohan is early Anglo-Saxon; the Dwarves are ancient Norse; Gondor has a distinctly Babylonian feel, although I suspect Tolkien was going for Solomon’s Israel; and some of the other cultures, such as Lothlorien, have no obvious real-world model.

Similarly, most of the pulp fantasy of the 30s and 40s, such as the Conan stories, tend to be set in a mashed-up imagining of the classical world and the pre-classical Middle East. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser’s environment, on the other hand, has a lot in common with Renaissance Mediterranean culture. In general, while some mediaeval influence was there, it was only one type of setting among many.

What Were the Middle Ages?

The problem seems to be the common assumption that any pre-gunpowder period is mediaeval. In fact, the term only refers to a few hundred years (for part of which gunpowder actually was in use) on one of the world’s smallest continents.

To give a sense of perspective — besides Europe, civilisation has existed (before modern colonisation) in Asia, Africa, North America and South America2. The earliest known civilisation (i.e. people living in a city) was over 11,000 years ago, in the town later known as Jericho.

In reality, the Middle Ages (also known as the mediaeval period) didn’t exist at all. It was a sneering term coined in the Renaissance to dismiss western Europe between the fall of the classical world (good) and the birth of the new age (nearly as good). In the same way, the sometimes-exquisite art and architecture of the period was described as Gothic, implying it was the work of the barbarians who’d destroyed the Roman Empire.

The period the Renaissance scholars thus consigned to the scrapheap actually covers many different cultures, over both its timespan and its geographical distribution, although there are certain generalisations that can be made.

There isn’t even any clear agreement as to when it started or finished. To some extent, of course, all historical periods are just convenient places for historians to begin and end their books. Some periods have more obvious bookmarks, but it’s rare to have such a significant change that people living at the time would notice it.

My own view, with all possible disclaimers in place, is that the Middle Ages (to the extent that they existed at all) started in 732 AD3 and finished in 1453. On a Tuesday. At teatime.

When and How Did the Middle Ages Begin?

Everyone knows that the Roman Empire fell in the 5th century. Except that it didn’t. The Roman Empire had been changing and evolving throughout its lifetime, most obviously after the reforms of Diocletian in the late 3rd century. By the 5th century, it consisted mainly of barbarian warlords controlling their own territories and paying nominal fealty to the Emperor. This would have unrecognisable to Augustus, five hundred years earlier.

When the last western Emperor was deposed in 476, these warlords and their peoples just carried on the same way. The only difference was that they paid even more nominal fealty to the eastern Emperor in Constantinople, where the Roman Empire carried on until the 15th century.

For the most part, the barbarian warlords were proud of being part of the Empire. They fought the legions internally, as when the Emperor Honorius double-crossed the Visigoths and they besieged Rome, but they’d no wish to tear it down. Well, except for the Huns, but they were a rival empire, not a ravening horde.

Nothing substantially changed. Civilisation and culture had been declining through the later part of the imperium, most notably in the decline of cities and the rise of serfdom, and continued to do so. In fact, it wouldn’t have been obvious at the time that the Roman Empire was gone for good. It was just a pause.

In this situation, western Europe largely marked time and didn’t really move on to anything new till the Frankish leader Charles Martel smashed the Moors at the Battle of Tours in 732.

There are two reasons why this was crucial. For one thing, although Charles was never actually king of the Franks, his son was crowned and his grandson became Charles the Great — Charlemagne. By the time the Carolingian dynasty had played out, only a few generations later, the map of Europe had changed beyond recognition, the first signs of our modern nations were stirring, and the concept of empire had been updated.

The second reason was the reason why Charles Martel had won the battle. This was a radical new type of fighting-man he’d copied from the Byzantine Empire, called the knight.

Aristocrats in older civilisations are sometimes described as knights, but this is retrospective. The knight as we know him first arose in Persia, following the introduction of stirrups, which made heavy cavalry possible for the first time. Unfortunately, the equipment and, in particular, the great war-horses were expensive to keep up.

The Persians solved the problem by imposing crippling taxes on the cities, with the result that, when the Arabs invaded, the cities opened their gates and went over to a more reasonable enemy. The Byzantines, learning from this, came up with a new idea: to give each knight a parcel of land and let him pay his own way. It was this concept Charles adopted, and so the feudal system was born.

The feudal system was, if anything was, the central institution of the Middle Ages, and any fantasy setting that doesn’t have it can’t be described as mediaeval. In reality, it was two separate but complementary systems. One was a contract the king made with his nobles and knights, whereby he granted them land and they undertook to fight for him when called on. In fact, many knights were more interested in running their estates, and it became increasingly common, as the period wore on, for knights to pay money in lieu of service, which the king would use to hire mercenaries.

The other, which had existed since the later Roman period, was manorial serfdom. Serfs were distinct from slaves in that, though they weren’t free to leave or refuse to work, they belonged to a manor, not to a person.

They had rights, too, although that varied considerably from kingdom to kingdom. English serfs in general had the strongest rights. The feudal system wasn’t used in England until after 1066, and many of the people’s ancestral rights were restored a few decades later.

Serfs in other kingdoms were usually a lot worse off, but the lord of the manor didn’t legally have any power of life or death over them. Of course, that assumed that they’d be held to account if they broke the law — which sometimes happened.

When and How Did the Middle Ages End?

And what about the end of the Middle Ages? 1453 was the year that Constantinople, the last remnant of the Roman Empire, fell to the Turks. The immediate significance was that many scholars and artists fled to the west, fuelling the already growing Renaissance in learning and the arts.

In fact, the Renaissance wasn’t a sudden development, and the Middle Ages weren’t quite as culturally bleak a period as they’re often painted, although certainly a low point. Knowledge had been seeping in for some time. Much of this had come from the Islamic world, at that time the most culturally advanced civilisation in the west. Art certainly took a huge step forward in the Renaissance, but it’s been suggested that the biggest academic change was that they started following Plato instead of Aristotle.

Besides the Renaissance, though, the mid-15th century marks a point where most of the characteristics of the Early Modern age were already becoming established. Gunpowder had come to stay and was making the transition from field guns to hand guns, rendering knights obsolete. Gutenberg was setting up his printing press in Mainz, and the voyages of discovery were well under way — the Portuguese were venturing down the African coast en route to India, leading the Spanish eventually to try another direction.

Social mobility was growing, too, as was religious dissent. Neither were anything like as absent from the Middle Ages as is often assumed, but both increased immensely after the Black Death.

The mediaeval Church was either divided or powerless for much of the period, and there’d been radical preachers from at least the 12th century whose arguments were essentially similar to Luther’s four hundred years later. By the 15th century, spurred by widespread distrust of a Church that had been able to do nothing about the Plague, dissenting movements led by Wycliffe, Ball, Huss and many others became bigger and better organised. Luther’s was simply the most successful of these.

In the same way, there had been towns and cities throughout the Middle Ages, and industries had flourished there. It wasn’t easy to escape from serfdom, except by going into the Church, but those who managed it had the chance of getting rich. After the Black Death, the feudal restraints became untenable, due to the shortage of manpower making labour a marketable commodity. The powers that be fought a long rearguard action against change, but it was becoming inevitable.

Know Your Middle Ages

The Middle Ages were a long and varied period — even without considering the great civilisations that flourished outside western Europe — and almost everything changed in their course. The armour worn by knights, for instance, developed from ring-mail sewn onto leather to the familiar suits of plate armour (which, contrary to popular belief, were not too heavy to manoeuvre in), driven by changing weapon technology.

At any given time, none of the typical mediaeval institutions were present everywhere, and some areas — Scandinavia, for instance — were barely affected till very late in the period.

So, if you want to create a fantasy setting “based on the mediaeval period”, by all means do so — you’ll be in good company. Decide what you actually mean by that, though, and do plenty of research on the specific country and era that interests you.

On the other hand, if all you want is for your hero to wield a sword or use a bow and arrow, you have an entire planet and eleven thousand years of civilisation to your model your world on. Why not have fun?

1 The original and most accurate spelling of the word is mediaeval, but medieval is now more common and acceptable. Seeing the word (as I all too often have) spelt midevil makes me want to stick my head in a bucket of water and scream. Please don’t make me do that.

2 Pre-colonial Australia can’t exactly be described as a civilisation, in the strict sense, though that doesn’t make its cultures any less rich and fascinating.

3 Yes, I use BC and AD, which have served perfectly well for the past 1500 years. Get over it.

Quest — A Fantasy-Writers.org Anthology

There have been a few moments in my writing life that have changed everything. One was a long walk I took the family dog on when I was fifteen, in the course of which I thought up and planned a story which proved to be the germ for much of what I’ve written since.

Another happened on the 31st January 2004, when I Googled “fantasy writing groups”, intending to search through what was out there to see if anything might be helpful. The first option I tried was a website called Fantasy-Writers.org. I joined, looked around and ignored the rest of the list.

More than twenty-one years later, I’m still part of FWO (as we like to call it), now as one of the site’s administrators. Virtually every story I’ve written since then has been through the FWO critiquing process, which has helped dozens get published — including a novel. I’ve learnt vast amounts about writing from the forum discussions, and from both giving and receiving critiques. And I’ve made a lot of good friends.

Eleven years ago, we published an anthology, Light of the Last Day, consisting of stories and poems by members. It turned out pretty well, but was extremely hard work — which is probably why it’s taken us till now to get to the follow-up.

This time, we decided to go for a theme. The concept of the Monomyth, or the Hero’s Journey, is a familiar one to many people. It was first proposed in 1949 by Joseph Campbell as a way of defining a common structure of stories, from ancient myths to contemporary media. He structured it as a hero on a journey involving a series of Jungian-style archetypes, which is at the same time a journey from childhood to adulthood.

Campbell’s Journey was a complex affair with seventeen stages, but more recently Christopher Vogler has proposed a simpler version, with only twelve stages. Essentially, the hero begins in their Ordinary World, goes through a series of challenges, dangers and opportunities to the quest’s fulfilment, and then returns with a real or virtual treasure as a reborn and transformed person.

Our plan was that each author should write a complete story relating to one specific stage of the Journey. Not as part of some overarching plot, but as a tapestry that, put together, would display every part of the Monomyth.

Although we toyed with the idea of twelve authors each claiming a specific stage, we decided to make it looser. We invited everyone to post a story on the site (either as part of our monthly challenge or more randomly) using any stage they liked. And then, as inevitably there were stages no-one had chosen, some authors submitted a second story, to help fill the gaps.

The upshot was that we ended up with twenty-two stories from seventeen authors, with every stage covered at least once. And then the fun began.

Each story underwent FWO’s usual process of peer critique — twice, for the first and second draft. Then, with all revisions complete, some of us volunteered to line-edit the stories, working on details such as grammar, punctuation and word choice. And, when both author and editor were happy, the stories were ready.

So what have we ended up with? These twenty-two stories are a mix of high fantasy, low fantasy, sword & sorcery, contemporary fantasy, and even a touch of science fiction and Afrofuturism. Not to mention one or two that defy classification. They might thrill you or make you think, they might make you laugh or cry. Fantasy covers it all.

FWO is a broad gathering of authors from many countries and many places along their writing journeys. Countries represented in this anthology include the USA, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Malaysia, Egypt and Nigeria, and authors range from complete beginners to some who make their living from writing.

So the voices in the anthology might be idiosyncratic, and they use many different versions of the great Global English language — and that’s fine. Our variety is our strength. And, while we were prepared to find tactful ways of telling authors their stories weren’t quite up to scratch, it turned out that we didn’t need to. Which, I think, is a testament to the level of support we give each other in FWO.

Generally speaking, this anthology has been a communal effort, but in the end it takes one person to pull it all together. I’d like to thank B. R. Turnage, who’s designed and assembled the book — not to mention creating the beautiful cover.

So what are my contributions to this book? Well, besides writing the introduction, I have two stories:

The Shape of a Legend uses the “Tests, Allies and Enemies” stage, and all those elements make up significant aspects of the story. That’s especially true of “tests”, as the central part of the story is a traditional fairy-tale “three tests” sequence — although not quite done in the traditional way

A young queen must choose between loyalty to her homeland and family and loyalty to her adopted land and the husband she loves. In the end, though, her magical allies show her that her real choice is about who she wants to be.

Wyrmbane uses the “Resurrection” stage. In the classic Hero’s Journey structure, this is normally interpreted metaphorically, but here it’s completely literal. Wyrmbane is a dragonslayer doomed to eternally fight, die and return to life to fight again.

Until, that is, a dragon offers him a way out. Is Wyrmbane willing to abandon his endless task in order to escape his fate?Quest: 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey will be released over the summer — so watch this space for more information.

You Get Your Sword and I’ll Get My Trowel — Archaeological Fantasy

We’ve always been fascinated by far-off lands, unknown civilisations and lost cities. Ancient legends, from Gilgamesh to Odysseus to St Brendan, told of voyages that discovered lands lying just a little off the map. During the late mediaeval and early modern period, countless books were published purporting to tell of voyages to bizarre and fantastic countries. These were the books Jonathan Swift was satirising in Gulliver’s Travels.

In time, of course, the world shrank. Or, more accurately, the areas of the world we could plausibly fantasise about shrank, as more and more of the earth was explored. But then a new frontier opened up.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, archaeology really took off. It wasn’t a new discipline1 but this was when it began to evolve from random hunting for treasure or sacred relics into the academic discipline it is today. Discoveries in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor and many other countries fired the imagination of people who longed for unknown worlds. Here they were, emerging from the past.

Tales of Lost Worlds

In this atmosphere, “lost world” fiction blossomed in the later 19th century, led by H Rider Haggard. In novels such as King Solomon’s Mines and She, many of them featuring his iconic character Allan Quartermain, he created a genre of stories where explorers, mainly in Africa, find lost civilisations, sometimes (as in She, for instance) including supernatural elements.

Haggard writes according to the colonial concepts of his time, and the stories today do come over as racist. For their time, though, they were relatively liberal in their portrayal of Africans, compared with the prevailing views, and many of his African characters were portrayed positively.

Many authors followed Haggard in the lost world genre. Perhaps the most notable was Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose Tarzan books frequently involved the discovery of similar hidden civilisations.

Another approach to archaeology in fantasy popular in the earlier part of the 20th century was for stories that revolved around ancient remains that prove to have supernatural powers. An example of this is A. Merritt’s The Ship of Ishtar, in which an archaeologist gets caught up in a battle between two ancient gods. A related approach can be seen in the 1932 film The Mummy, which combined archaeology, Egyptology and magic.

The Return of the Archaeologist

Lost world tales never disappeared, but they became somewhat less fashionable, until 1981, when Spielberg and Lucas introduced the world to Dr Henry Jones junior — better known as Indiana. George Lucas, who wrote the story, based Indy loosely on Allan Quartermain (including the iconic hat), and the films inspired a whole new range of films and games, from Tomb Raider to the new versions of The Mummy.

Most of the characters in these, like Quartermain and the heroes he inspired, are explorers and treasure hunters more than real archaeologists2, but serious archaeology was also becoming extremely popular, at least in the UK. This was largely due to various TV shows, such as Time Team, which showed archaeology in progress and had huge audiences.

Some experts accused these programmes of dumbing down the discipline. Whether or not this was justified, the fact remains that large numbers of people were not only hooked, but also could recognise Samian ware when they saw it and understood the importance of geophysical surveys. They were both educating and entertaining the public.

Nevertheless, mingling fantasy adventures with the methodical processes of true archaeology has proved less successful. The BBC drama series Bonekickers (2008), for instance, attempted this and bombed. In spite of having excellent writers and cast, it proved to be rather dull and unconvincing.

Archaeology in Other Worlds

Lost world stories have also been a staple of secondary world fantasy. This is especially true of sword & sorcery, where endless heroes and heroines have crossed mountains to find forgotten kingdoms or searched dense forest for lost cities, lost temples, lost towers… lost pretty much anything. For the most part, they’re after the treasure that’s been left lying around, but occasionally they also crave (as Henry Jones senior put it) “enlightenment”.

But what about real archaeological fantasy in secondary worlds? After all, Indy and his kind investigate our world’s ancient legends — and other worlds would have their own to uncover.

Back in 2011, when I was getting into the idea of writing “modern” stories in the Traveller’s World, it occurred to me that archaeology would most likely have developed there. And the big advantage I had was that I’d already written about many of its ancient legends.

The story I wrote was The Lone and Level Sands, which was published as a standalone eBook by Musa Publishing — unfortunately, just before the publisher folded, so that it was only briefly available. It involved two students helping their professor excavate a site associated with the ancient city of Kebash, which occupies a position in their mythology roughly equivalent to Atlantis. And, needless to say, they uncover more than they’d bargained for.

It’s taken a while, but I’m currently working on a sequel, provisionally called Secrets of the Black Cape. Here, the same characters, a few years on, are excavating a site associated with events in At An Uncertain Hour — and again, they find more than they expected, this time perhaps with slight shades of She.

The stories certainly have an Indiana Jones vibe, but they’re also both set in the context of properly organised excavations. I’ve no definite plans for further stories — but there are still plenty of legends to investigate, so who knows?

I’m not aware of any other works of secondary world archaeological fantasy, but it seems unlikely that I’m the only person who’s thought of it. I’d love to read other authors’ takes on the genre — but, in any case, I hope my stories will soon be available to fill the gap.

1 It’s been suggested that the first archaeological expedition (that we know of, at least) was St Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, finding the True Cross and other relics in Jerusalem in the 4th century. This is highly dubious, but certainly similar activities were common and could loosely be described as archaeology.

2 Although Raiders of the Lost Ark does actually show Indy doing some excavating at one point. Archaeology also plays a significant role in two classic Doctor Who stories: The Daemons and Battlefield.

Diversity in Fantasy

This is a heavily rewritten version of a post I wrote for my old blog almost exactly ten years ago. At the time, I felt points needed to be made about diversity in fantasy, but I suppose I tacitly assumed that things would continue getting gradually better, as they had up until that point.

What a difference ten years can make. With diversity and inclusion now under a more concerted attack than at any time for decades, I think it’s vital that we, as creators as worlds that can be as we choose them to be, don’t make the mistakes of the world around us

Yes, prejudice can certainly be a powerful force in our worlds — and perhaps they wouldn’t work if it weren’t. But we get to choose how it’s presented.

Why Is Diversity Important in Fantasy?

Now, discussions advocating diversity in fantasy (and fiction in general) generally talk about the moral and social importance of showing positive diversity. In particular, it’s important to present positive role-models for members of under-represented races, genders and orientations.

All that’s vital, but there are two other reasons why it’s important. Lack of diversity is unrealistic. Lack of diversity is boring.

We read and watch fantasy, after all, for the differences. We love strange worlds, strange peoples, strange creatures, strange customs. And we want the characters to be varied — heroes and villains, fighters and scholars, royalty and simple folk.

Why would we want them all to be the same race, gender and other forms of identity?

So does that mean every story has to have a “diversity quota”? Not at all, and especially not short stories. If you were write a story set in the World War One trenches, for instance, your cast would have to be predominantly male and probably mostly white — though any opportunities for more diversity would be welcome.

There are even situations in secondary worlds where this makes sense. I’ve written stories with all-male casts, but then again I’ve also written stories with all-female casts. When you’re only dealing with two or three people, it has to meet a specific need.

Diversity is best measured over an author’s opus, or even over a widespread trend. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed, after all, if I write one story focusing on white males. The next story might have black females coming to the fore.

Race in Fantasy

Traditionally, fantasy and SF worlds have tended to be populated by a wide variety of exotic races — yet they tend to be depressingly uniform. Elves are all snooty tree-huggers, for instance, dwarves are all gruff axe-wielders, Klingons are all obsessed with their honour… and so on.

In SF, if a human protagonist visits a planet, they’re likely to find an alien race who are all alike and all follow a single culture and religion, wherever they are on the planet.1 And, where a fantasy world is populated by humans, those humans will very often be exclusively European-type in both race and culture.

OK, to be fair, film and TV adaptations are increasingly dealing with this — but usually in a very illogical, haphazard way. Not that I’m criticising “colour-blind” casting, but it doesn’t give a very realistic picture of a genuinely diverse world. That requires races, cultures and religions that have grown up naturally in situ.

Why would the entire population of a world be either alike or just randomly different? There are good reasons why people are different in different parts of our world. We all started off black, in Africa a hundred thousand years ago, and we’ve adapted to the climate and conditions our ancestors settled in. The same would be true of any world populated by humans — and probably by any humanoid species.

That doesn’t mean, though, that they have to slavishly follow what happens in our world. Of course, to a large extent races with lighter skins will tend to live in cooler climates and those with darker skins in the hotter regions, but this doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily have the same cultures as their real-world equivalents.

In my main world, for instance, the predominantly black continent not only had ancient, high-achieving civilisations (as Africa did) but, in the “modern” era, these civilisations were never destroyed or held back by colonialism and slavery. Now, some might say that, in portraying black races who don’t have the legacy of the slave trade and colonial exploitation, I’m belittling that heritage.

My view, however, is the exact opposite. It seems to me that, if I were to portray another, unrelated world whose black races have suffered slavery en masse, I’d be coming perilously close to suggesting that was some kind of natural destiny for black people. Obviously it’s not. In our world, it was something done to Africa as a result of a specific lining up of global factors, and there’s no reason to assume this would happen in a different world.

Gender in Fantasy

Both SF and fantasy were at one time predominantly about men. Not exclusively. William Morris, writing fantasy in the 1890s, tended to create stronger and more vivid female characters. This included The Water of the Wondrous Isles, which focused almost entirely on the heroine, with the “hero” reduced almost entirely to love interest.

Morris was an exception, though, and aside from a few female main characters, such as C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry, for the first two-thirds of the 20th century fantasy was largely the domain of men. Things began to improve a little with the emergence of more female authors in the 60s and 70s, such as Ursula Le Guin, Andre Norton, Tanith Lee and Louise Cooper, but it was a slow process.2

On the face of it, you might think this battle has been won, but here, as in other areas of diversity, we’ve been going backwards for a few years now. That could be seen clearly by the outcry when Doctor Who introduced a female Doctor. Many reasons for this were given by the objectors, but on the whole much of it boiled down to good old misogyny.

Even when female characters do play a significant role in modern fantasy, though, there’s often a tendency to portray them in subservient roles in their society. You might say that this is how the world always has been, and it would be unrealistic to portray things any other way.

To some extent, that’s true, and it would be a reasonable argument if you’re writing about a real historical setting. Although, like so many other things that “everyone knows about history”, the real picture is a lot more complex. But, as with race, a secondary world doesn’t necessarily have to follow the same cultural assumptions as our world. As long as there’s a good internal logic, you can have whatever kind of society you want, including sexual equality. Invoking history is just an excuse.

Other Diversity in Fantasy

Race and gender are both crucial diversity issues, but by no means the only ones. Sexual orientation is a huge factor and, like race and gender, fantasy has made huge strides with this in recent years — but that’s under attack now in society in general.

In my experience, an LGBTQIA+ character is more often than not met with the question “What’s the justification for their orientation?” And, of course, it might seem reasonable to ask that about any facet of any character — but the problem is that it’s a question only reserved for those that are seen as “different”. I don’t recall anyone ever asking “What’s the justification for making this character a straight white male?”

The implication is that you should only have a gay character if you’re dealing explicitly with “gay issues”, just as it’s also implied you should only have a black character if you’re dealing with “racial issues”. Certainly, you may want to use the character for that purpose, but to insist that they’re irrelevant otherwise is to create a ghetto with very high walls.

This is even more the case for other kinds of inclusion. When did you last come across a disabled or neurodiverse character in fantasy? I’m not saying they don’t exist, and there’s certainly more probability of them featuring than a few decades ago — but I’d personally struggle to think of many.

Diversity in the Traveller’s World

The Traveller’s World, in which a large proportion of my stories are set, started out in the 1970s, and back then I was writing about a small group of countries inhabited by European-type populations. While I did include a number of female major characters, and even one or two gay ones, the majority were straight white males.

This has changed as both my perspectives and the world have grown, and the world now comprises seven continents. These have white, black, yellow, red and tan races (plus an isolated race with a green tinge) in a roughly similar distribution as in our world (except for the green race, that is).

I also have a lot more female characters. This is partly a conscious choice, but I’ve also come to realise that, on balance, I actually enjoy writing women more than men. Of my six recurring-character series in the Traveller’s World, three have female protagonists, one a male protagonist, and two a male and female who alternate point of view.

The racial spread isn’t quite as even — of the eight characters, only one is black, two would be middle-eastern in our world, one would be half Chinese, half Native American, while three are white. In terms of sexuality, four are straight, two bisexual, one gay and one asexual. And my latest addition, known as the Maimed Warrior, is disabled.

I have made mistakes in terms of inclusion, though. The one I’m most annoyed with myself about, in hindsight, is in At An Uncertain Hour, which centres around a thousand-year war where each side is led by an immortal. And, although the continent on which the war takes place has a predominantly black population, the two immortals are white.

This isn’t for any obviously “colonial” purposes. The idea for the novel goes back decades, when the issue simply didn’t occur to me. While I don’t believe I’ve been at all belittling to any of the many black characters in the novel, I certainly wouldn’t write it that way now.

I don’t think the issue’s egregious enough to warrant withdrawing a book I’m otherwise proud of, but I do apologise for it. I’ll do better in the future.

The Future of Diversity in Fantasy

As I said at the beginning, ten years ago I assumed diversity, both in fantasy and in the world generally, would be continuing on an upward trajectory, but that’s no longer guaranteed. There’ll no doubt be people who regard this blog as “woke” and “virtue signalling”.3 To those, I’d simply ask: “Are you actually a bigot, or taken in by bigoted rhetoric?”

I suspect there’s going to be a sharp divergence, with one group of fantasy authors and readers (of whom there are still many) asking for and writing more and subtler diversity, while another group slips back into the old prejudices. So there’ll be a choice between boring, monochromatic worlds and stories, and those trying to further explore the whole, amazing range of possibilities in humanity — and beyond.

I know which I’ll be reading and writing.

1 Assuming there is anywhere else on the planet. “A planet”, especially in film or television SF, often seems to consist of nothing but one city, or a small group of villages. In the same way, a fantasy “world” is often only a handful of kingdoms surrounded by terra incognita.

2 Even Le Guin and Norton initially tended to default to male main characters, although they certainly had more gender diversity than most of their male colleagues.

3 As idiotic terms as most of those that allow bigots to believe they have the moral high ground. “Woke” means being awake to what’s important, while as for “virtue signalling” — anyone who doesn’t set a personal example of their moral position is a hypocrite.

My Writing Goals for 2025

It doesn’t seem five minutes since I was posting my goals for 2024, and now it’s time to do the same for 2025. The past twelve months have certainly thrown up some unexpected plot twists on the world stage, but it hasn’t been a bad year for my writing. I didn’t achieve all my goals — but, on the other hand, I achieved some that weren’t planned. So that’s not bad.

What Happened in 2024

Like the previous year, 2024 was to be “the year of the short story”. Progress in 2023 had been painfully slow, since I’d been finding difficulty carving out times when I could get stuck into writing. Towards the end of the year, though, a friend recommended taking the approach of simply making a commitment to write 50 words a day. I’ve largely stuck to that through 2024 (with the variation of 200 words when I’m revising) and found that I’ve invariably far exceeded the target. It’s a great psychological trick to play on yourself.

The first task was to get the unfinished Shadows in the City finished. I did so early in the year, rounding it off at 30,631 words. And that’s just the first draft. Both my own thoughts and invaluable peer critiques have left me realising that it needs a lot of work, and will most likely end up closer to 40,000, near the longer end of the novella scale. I haven’t written anything before in that slot.

After that, my goal was to write five more stories, not counting flash or drabble piece. I got drafts of the first two done before the end of March — The Forbidden Library about recurring characters Kari and Fai, and The Demons of the Past, about a new (hopefully) recurring character, known as the Maimed Warrior.

Then I got sidetracked for a while. Fantasy-Writers.org, the online writers group I help run (and affectionately known as FWO), decided to get together a second anthology — only ten years after the first. We chose for a theme the stages of the classic Hero’s Journey, so I ended up writing two unplanned stories for it — The Shape of a Legend and Wyrmbane. I’ll be blogging more about this over the next few months.

Back to plan, and I wrote a new story about my young thief Loshi, Smoke and Mirrors, and then I returned, after a very long gap, to my comic fantasy series about Sam Nemesis, private investigator to gods, heroes and monsters. I wrote the first three in 2011 and 2012, and two were quickly published, but I hadn’t been back to it. I wrote two new ones — The Case of the Missing Eye, about Odysseus and the Cyclops, and The Case of the Forty-Two Pieces, which takes on the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris — Sam’s first venture outside Greek mythology.

That was going to be all, but I added another unplanned story. Secrets of the Black Cape is a sequel to my novella The Lone and Level Sands, which was published by Musa in 2013, though now out of print. This is archaeological fantasy, in the Indiana Jones tradition but set in a secondary world. It was planned on being around 10,000 words but ended up over 17,000 — and the second draft will almost certainly be much longer.

There were other bits and pieces. I wrote six flash or drabble length stories, as well as expanding a very short flash piece into a longer story. This was The Other Stars, one of my rare pieces of pure SF. I also came across a story called The Omniscient which I wrote in 2011 and never did anything with. It’s an extremely weird story (maybe I didn’t know what to make of it) but I liked it and revised it into a usable shape.

The aim was to write all the first drafts in the first half of the year and then move onto revision — but that didn’t quite happen. I got both the anthology stories completely revised, but otherwise it was the end of September by the time I had all the first drafts done and could start revising.

By the time the year ended, I still had the final polishes to be done on The Forbidden Library and Smoke and Mirrors, while I’ve done nothing yet on The Tower of Zeka-Zomi (left over from 2023), Secrets of the Black Cape and Shadows in the City. And I certainly haven’t done anything about revising the current novel yet, as I’d hoped.

I was also targeting 52 submissions (I made 64), 52 critiques on Fantasy-Writers.org (I did 69) and post 12 blogs (I did 11). As far as acceptances are concerned, not counting the anthology I’ve had three drabbles and two flashes published, as well as one longer story — Gerda and the Darkness in a Harvey Duckman Presents anthology. But still no book. The publisher that has Echoes of Ancient Magic in its queue has been having problems, and I’m not sure it’s actually going to happen.

Goals for 2025

My 2025 goals are straightforward enough. The earlier months of the year will be devoted to getting the remaining stories submission ready. That’s started well, with The Forbidden Library already done, but the three last stories (The Tower of Zeka-Zomi, Secrets of the Black Cape and Shadows in the City) are likely to be the most time consuming, and I don’t anticipate those being finished till late spring or summer.

Then, finally, I’ll be back to the novel. It currently has the working title The Empire of Nandesh, but I’m considering calling it Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tongue. The phrase is from King Lear: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is/To have a thankless child.” This is because the novel focuses on a series of dysfunctional parent-child relationships — some literally a parent and child, some an analogous relationship.

The novel is a sequel to At An Uncertain Hour, but I think it could be understood reasonably well without having read that. The main action (though there are plenty of scenes at earlier times) is set over eight hundred years later — and, just to keep me on my toes, it features four separate first-person narrators.

Based on both the feedback from colleagues on FWO and my own feelings, the second draft is going to need some major surgery, so I’m not counting on being done before the end of the year. If I am — well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it (which is, of course, the only time you can cross a bridge).

I’ll be carrying on with the aim of writing at least 50 words or revising at least 200 words every day, and I’ll also be targeting 52 submissions, 52 critiques on FWO and 12 blogs — ideally nicely spaced out at one a month, but maybe that’s too much to ask. And I’ll redouble my efforts to get a book published during the year.

And, speaking of books published, there’s also going to be the publication of the FWO anthology. Although I’m not primarily responsible for that, there’ll no doubt be a lot I can do both to help make it happen and to work on publicising it. So you’ll see more about it here — watch this space.

And I’ll see you in January 2026, to find out how I got on with it all.