The Bloodlet Sun: An Introduction

I have something very exciting to share with you. Okay, I lied, I have something very exciting I’m about to share with you, and I wanted to introduce it. Those of you who have been following my blog will have acquired an awareness that I’m not primarily a genre author. Both the novel I’m currently editing and the one I’m currently writing can be best described as literary fiction. Not to say that I have any aversion to genre fiction. Most of my early short stories were science fiction (think really crappy Black Mirror episodes), and one project in particular has been growing in my head for a decade and a half now. And it’s this project that I want to talk to you about today.

The Bloodlet Sun has its roots all the way back in high school. Having grown up on Star Wars, Babylon 5 and to a certain extent everyone’s unfavourite Star Trek series, Voyager, I have always longed to create my science fiction or space fantasy universe. It was one of those ideas that I always believed in but knew for the longest time that I did not have the requisite ability to give it justice. It has suffered through many stages of the creative process since then.

I attempted to actually put it down on paper once, and never got past the first chapter. To give you a sense of how the project has evolved since then, not a spec from that original first chapter, except a couple of character names, has survived into the vision I currently have for it. I’ve bounced plot ideas off my friends for years, being met with everything from encouragement to “this particular thing makes no sense.” I took every piece of feedback I received and threw it into the cooking pot that The Bloodlet Sun has become.

For years I worked on additional plot lines, finding ways for them to intersect and grow in scope. I’ve worked out additional details of the universe going on for years in each direction to make the world seem more dynamic and “alive”. I rewatched Babylon 5, read and watched Game of Thrones, and the Kingkiller Chronicles and dabbled in the fine line between inspiration and plagiarism. I’ve noted similarities to other works and tweaked them into something different or else embraced them and made them my own.

It’s amazing how much goes into a piece of work that’s not necessarily “writing”, which again why I think one should not define their writing by soulless “words per day” goals. If you are truly a writer, then it doesn’t matter whether you have a pen in your hand. Your mind is always working through ideas and plot and dialogue. So much of a writer’s craft happens in their daily life, and I’ve extolled the virtues of this “off the page” writing on multiple occasions. However, every piece of advice can go too far.

Over the last few years, The Bloodlet Sun has been stuck in worldbuilding hell. I’ve convinced myself that I can only return to writing it once every meticulous detail is in place; only when every character has a name and complete biography, every alien race has a name and history and the all the star systems have been mapped and their political relationships defined. For some writers, this works, but in my case, the project was tied to an unrealistic goal.

And so as I was reflective on my last year in writing, on my successes and how to grow them, I decided that perhaps this would be a good time to stop procrastinating. I feel reasonably comfortable with the framework I have in place so that the story won’t get away from me, but at the same time, I need to start growing it organically.

So I’m excited to announce that starting next week, this blog will become the home to The Bloodlet Sun, which I will plan to release in somewhat irregular intervals over the course of the next whenever, since I will be posting it at the rate that I write it. I want to do this with a manageable schedule and in manageable chunks as I don’t want my other projects to be sidelined. But because this story is always itching to be written, I think this will be the perfect opportunity to allow myself an outlet, and finally share with the world something I have been working on for basically half my life.
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So here’s hoping that it catches your eye, and that you stick around through the adventure.