Why fantasy? Well, it’s comforting. I grew up with nerdy parents, who passed their love onto me. I also have always enjoyed stories about fantastical things that would never happen. My dad is the biggest reason I’m so big into fantasy. To this day he is still one of the few people in my life that, if I like something, I know he will too. It might be because of all the afternoons spent reading the various books on his shelves. The Hobbit was a huge hit for me as a kid and is still one of my favorite books of all time.
Of course, as a fantasy nerd he also liked science fiction, and he passed that love onto me as well. Science fiction I haven’t written a lot of, but that doesn’t mean I like it less. Going by my reading habits over last decade it’s safe to say it’s my favorite. Fantasy, though, has always been easier for me to write. Space operas are my go-to when I need a bit of a brain break, but fantasy is –for me- a lot more fun to write. I don’t have the gift for imagining future technology the way Heinlein did or painting the kind of speculative picture Asimov did. But with fantasy I find my groove.
Maybe it’s the years spent playing first Dungeons and Dragons and then later Pathfinder that helps me out. I started on second edition Dungeons and Dragons after all. Most of the books I read during that period were also fantasy. When urban fantasy became a thing, I loved it. All my favorite elements of fantasy in a modern world setting were too much to pass up. It was almost like the best of both worlds for me. And that’s where my ideas, after a time, began to lead.
I still have notes on my high fantasy worlds that I intend put to good use someday. After all, if they’ve survived the last twenty years to modern day, and I still enjoy the concepts, that’s surprisingly good. As time progressed, I could add things like steampunk to the mix of things I consume on a regular basis. Current events gave me a fascination with dystopian worlds as well, for better or worse. I don’t read a whole lot of dystopian because I read as escapism. It gives me a break from the real world, a place where I don’t have to worry about the burdens of real life. It’s a shelter against the very real problems in both my personal life and in the world abroad. I do sometimes write dystopian because it gives me an outlet for the anxieties about the world at large that are hard to shake.
It’s also a lot more fun to build fantastical worlds. Honestly that’s my favorite part. I love the stories I create, the characters I write about, but my real love is worldbuilding. It’s so much fun to figure out how new fantasy world’s work. Politics and societal norms and magic systems and what have yous are a definite happy place I wish I could sometimes live forever.
Unfortunately, the downside to worldbuilding is I eventually have to put it to use. And that is fun too, don’t get me wrong. My favorite part is hands down the worldbuilding, however. It’s an absolute joy to piece everything I can together before I get down to the nitty gritty. Luckily enough, I like writing the story almost as much. It just took a while to figure out how to make it all work.