Even though I’m not as yet a published author, as an amateur writer I certainly have my opinions about writing and the creative process.

For me the first thing is empowerment, believing that your story is worth being told. For each of us that sense of empowerment needs to be defined and felt. For much of my childhood and young adult years I felt that I lacked that empowerment, that the weight of the judgement of my peers would somehow nullify any effort that I made, so making any effort was therefore useless. It was only later in life that I understood both how wrong that was – why would these people be wasting any thought about my efforts, and more importantly, why would I care if they did?

Yet, and yet… the first time that I tried to actually type out a story, a feat that meant borrowing my father’s typewriter, my mother’s response was, “What, are you going to write the great Canadian novel?” Her disbelief, which in later years she has strenuously denied ever feeling or uttering, weighed heavily on me.

But the creative desire (I won’t call it instinct) wouldn’t abandon me. I drew comics, I wrote short stories, I drew buildings that I wanted to see in movies. And somewhere along the way, in my adolescence, a movie called Star Wars came out. Now, almost 40 years later, it’s easy to miss just how revolutionary that film was. But then, it was breath-taking, from its opening scene of two ships and the ultimate forced perspective of scale to the wookie and the trench.

Some time between the release of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, a three year period, I read an interview with George Lucas, probably in Starlog magazine, in which he said that he made Star Wars because he wanted to see it. That thought was very empowering to me, that simply wanting to read, hear or see a story was reason enough to author it.

I started then writing two stories; Hryka and The Key to Alexandria.

Hryka was your basic seven samurai story; about youthful initiation into a mystical order; almost magical powers; and a tragic star-crossed love story, all told gainst the backdrop of a brutal war in outer space.

The Key to Alexandria was an Earth-bound story of demons and angels, magic amulets and the fire that destroyed the great library in Alexandria.

Over the years, I’ve kept writing both of these, however they’ve both changed almost beyond recognition.

Hryka, although still the basic seven samurai story, is now more aptly described as MacBeth retold from MacDuff’s perspective. Alexandria has changed so drastically that it no longer takes place on Earth, and isn’t a fantasy about demons and angels, but a story about corruption and rebellion against an imposed social order among alien species. Along the way it’s also outgrew its title. I’m still not sure what this story is called, but the working title is now Tau Ceti 12.

Other things have changed as well. My starting point for each of those stories was distinct, and still is. Hryka is a hero myth, looking at how one rises to become a hero. Again to paraphrase George Lucas (in the words of Princess Leia), “he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, of course he became a hero.” Alexandria was, and Tau Ceti still is, a god myth, although I believe that in Tau Ceti the reveal of that aspect doesn’t become obvious until later.

One element that the two stories share is consequences. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, we were bombarded with hero (Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones) and anti-hero (Rambo, John McClane) movies that showed the protagonist achieving great feats with little real consequence. I felt that heroes needed to pay a steeper price than they were in popular culture. I resolved that if they didn’t die by the end of the book, that they would at least suffer immeasurable pain, despair and self-loathing. (I never felt that Luke’s mourning for Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru was sincerely expressed— they were his only family, parents from when he was days old!)

The Key to Alexandria was always intended to be a two-parter, followed by The Legacy of Alexandria, but before I was halfway finished the first draft, I knew that there was a third story there. Even now, Tau Ceti 12 is the first of three interlinked stories, and even though I feel driven to write Tau Ceti, it’s the unnamed second story that I truly want to write. The third, and last, part will have to wait until I mature as a writer. It’s too dark for me to write properly at this time of my life.

And the time of your life, the stage that you’re going through, also impacts the kinds of stories that you write. Both Hryka and The Key to Alexandria are stories that I initiated while a young man, before I’d even attended university, and they match the themes of my life at that time – they’re about humanity stepping up to be one among equals, much as a youth becomes an adult.

Later stories that I’ve written or mapped out look more sharply at the inevitability of the end, of dying, not at the joy of new life. The Winds of Zephyr is a story about a young man who comes of age as his planet is dying. Tau Ceti has become as much about growing, failing, and dying as it is about god-hood. Pilot is a story about the dangerous risks you have to take after you have ignored the consequences for too long. How it really happened… recounts the death of humanity from a, I believe, much more realistic alien invasion. We never see them, communicate with them, nor even know what they look like. Their motivation can only be determined from their actions – bombing a defenseless Earth with asteroids from the outer rim of the solar system.

Although Dune has been and remains a major influence on my writing (as well as other Frank Herbert stories, such as Dragon in the Sea), other writers have left a mark on me. I’d like to think that my Deacon Carver Chronicles, a young adult space opera if there ever was one, echo James Blish’s Cities in Flight saga crossed with the universe of Pernell and Niven’s Co-Dominium from The Mote in God’s Eye.