A Whole New World
People often ask me why I love to write about imaginary worlds. Is it because I don’t like this one? Or because I’ve explored it so completely it’s not so interesting any more?
The truth is, I love our world. Much of it, at least. For despite the darkness of the time we are now living through—rife with hatred and violence, bigotry and greed—this world remains full of natural wonders, human kindness, spiritual wisdom, and heroic qualities.
As to exploring our world, I will never tire of doing that. My beat-up old hiking boots, which hang from a hook in our farmhouse in Colorado, have trekked on every continent except Antarctica. (And I’m working on plans to go there before long.) I have climbed mountains in the Himalayas, camped in Africa, hiked in Patagonia, rafted north of the Arctic Circle, swum in the Great Barrier Reef, and ridden a rickety old bus in Uzbekistan. Yet I am still eager to explore, to deepen my limited understanding of our remarkable planet.
No, the reason I enjoy creating imaginary worlds is, quite simply, there is no better way to travel. Just in the realms of space and time alone, there are no limits, no boundaries whatsoever. One can travel back in time, forward in time, or sideways in time (which my characters will do in Book Three of my trilogy, The Great Tree of Avalon.)
Yet space and time, as we know, are not the only contexts of travel. There is also travel in the realm of ideas—and that is where the greatest excitement can be found. In writing a novel—let alone a trilogy such as The Great Tree of Avalon (or, indeed, a “five-book trilogy” such as The Lost Years of Merlin)—I get to create a landscape, a mix of characters, and a society in which they interact. But the aspect of all this that really gels my creative juices flowing is wrestling with a set of ideas. Big ideas, the sort that thoughtful people have always wrestled with.
Who are we? What is mortal life about? Does it have any intrinsic meaning, or only that which we give it? What does it mean to be human? To possess free will? To act as responsible stewards for the planet that sustains us?
Those are some of the questions that enliven me as a human being; they are also some of the questions that inspire me as a writer. Every story I write, at its core, is an effort to explore such ideas.
Take, for example, The Great Tree of Avalon. The entire world of Avalon has sprouted from a magical seed planted long ago, a seed that beat like a heart. It grew so enormous that it became a world-tree, with roots the size of continents. Each of those roots is created around an element: fire, air, stone, water, light, darkness, and mystery. The trunk of this tree is full of surprising peoples and places—some wondrous, some terrifying, some simply bizarre. And the branches of the tree are pathways leading to the stars.
The stars of Avalon have always been a source of profound mystery. What they really are, what they truly mean, I will leave for readers of the trilogy to discover. But on the very first page of the first book, all the stars have suddenly gone dark. A terrible Year of Darkness has struck Avalon. And no one doubts that this signals the final doom of this world—as well as other worlds, too, for Avalon lies between all places mortal and immortal.
Now come the heroes of the tale. The only way Avalon might still be saved is on the extremely unlikely chance that three young people can find the solution to the darkened stars. They are: Tamwyn, a wandering wilderness guide with a clumsy streak; Elli, an escaped slave who has become the most young (and most unruly) priestess in the order that guides Avalon; and Scree, an eagleman who can fly at will—and who guards a deep secret. By the time Book Two begins, there are five separate plots running, for each of these characters takes on a dangerous quest. And several more characters are determined to stop them. Not until the very last page of the last book will it become clear whether they have prevailed—and what things must be lost so that other things might be saved.
I go into such detail to make the point that, no matter how complex and fantastic the imagined world one writes about, it still comes down to a simple human story. There must be a person, or people, we care about as readers. What makes the imaginary world believable—what makes it true—is the combination of three qualities: sensuous details, meaningful ideas, and heroic individuals who must struggle to prevail in their time and place.
The bedraggled boy who washes ashore on the first page of The Lost Years of Merlin was so weak and dazed that he had no idea who he was or where he came from. And he certainly had no idea that he would one day become Merlin: the mage of Camelot and the greatest wizard of all times.
Each of us, at some point in life, has felt washed ashore. I know that I have. And yet, just like that boy, each of us possesses surprising qualities down inside. Heroic qualities. We can reach down into our deepest selves and find courage, perseverance, hope, humor, compassion, and generosity.
Those are remarkable qualities. They are enough to create a whole new world, whether real or imagined. And they might just be enough to create, in every one of us, a wizard.
