Famfrit's Jewel - Afterword
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A massive thank you to all who have been reading Famfrit’s Jewel, it is wonderful having people reading my fiction rather than it merely collecting digital dust. Thank you also for being patient while I had health problems in the latter half of last year that meant all publication stopped for a few months. The health problem, Crohn’s Disease, is chronic but can be managed, if you missed my updates you can read them here and here.
Many thanks to commenters, likers, and restackers, your enjoyment and engagement pleases the algorithm gods and leads more people to find my fiction and, hopefully, subscribe.
Having written this novella over such a long period of time, Chapter 1 went live on 28th June 2024 and the final chapter was meant to be done sometime in August/September but obviously that didn’t happen and instead was published at the end of January 2025, the inspirations and thoughts I had along the way have been misplaced. I do know it began with the villain, Marazoth, and Famfrit’s Jewel, the finer details of which I didn’t nail down until Chapter 4 or 5. Worldbuilding, in general, was light for this project and mostly done on the fly, as was a great deal of the writing. While I had a thin plan, a sentence or two for each chapter, the bulk was done via “writing into the dark” and then cycling through to add in richness. Cycling being were you re-read what you write/wrote and add in as you go and that’s it. No editing after it’s done, no big changes, just trusting yourself in the moment to get down what needs to be said for the story to work. In fact pretty much everything written on R.O.W since November 2024 has been done without much in the way of plotting or planning. Detailed plotting has its place and I won’t give it up completely but “just going for it” is a lot of fun and allows for a different sort of writing, more organic in a way. The flipside is I feel all the short stories I have written have burst their bounds and become prologues, chapter 1’s, or snippets of larger tales rather than contained stories.
Anyway, this is meant to be about Famfrit’s Jewel.
I don’t have much to say about it. HUNTED, my previous novella, which is still free to read (!), was easy to write about because it’s a small story in a very large galaxy which I have worldbuilt and planned stuff out in. Famfrit’s Jewel on the otherhand isn’t like that and was very much about Dagnar’s quest for revenge/Marazoth’s attempt at world domination or at least a quasi-Bronze Age equivalent of it, all with a soft magic system. The idea of Famfrit’s Jewel was part ancient myths and part Final Fantasy crystals. Alaea, that treacherous minx, came later when I realised there needed to be a femme fatale but that archtype didn’t quite fit with a man hell bent on revenge for his wife and child so she was rebuffed and found she quite liked the man she was meant to capture, or was it kill. I cannot remember. Nor can I remember which of Alaea’s claims were true and which were lies, it’s all a bit muddled. This is the only problem I have with writing into the dark, it’s that the reason for events in the story can be hazy and keeping it all straight while avoiding plotholes is more difficult.
A vague idea of a plot is good, something written down is better, but it isn’t a prison. The plot should shift and change as you write if/when the story goes off on a tangent or some idea occurs that is better/more sensible/more exciting than the original.
All in all I enjoyed writing Famfrit’s Jewel, especially Chapter 8 when Dagnar is tracking Marazoth as the weird landscape and unexplained oddities occuring reminded me why I write and read fantasy. It is for those incomprehensible moments and features, to characters or readers or writers, that have no explanation, need no explanation, they are simply wonder. The Force, sandworms on Arrakis, the Painted World of Ariamis, these elements are fantastical and are not made better by being explained, in fact giving reasons for the enchanted parts, the mystical and strange, can lessen them.
Anyway, enough Writing about Writing what’s next?
FUTURE PROJECTS
A few weeks ago I wrote a scifi short story titled Arrival at Proxima b written in Captain’s Logs. I wasn’t expecting much of anything from it but I had comments and restacks asking for more so you’re getting more. The first chapter will be published on the 20th February 2025. The novella will retain the style of being written in Captain’s Log entries as well as the point of view character of the unnamed Captain. In the mean time you should all read, and then like and share, what is now the prologue to my upcoming novella:
Thanks for reading!
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Make sure to read Arrival at Proxima b. Many thanks.