I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot.
Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). The same applies to my sci-fi, really I prefer gritty over shiny. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire.
I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off.
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