Night of The Falling Stars - by Steven Savile

It's never easy to talk about the genesis of an idea - especially  

when you are working toward creating something of *scope* that  

resonates with the reader while at the same time entertaining...  

because that is what it is all about, after all. Forget longevity and  

fame and all the rest, your reader chooses to lay down cash they  

could have spent on beer or cigarettes, movies, a nice chair or a  

latte down at the coffee shop, in other words anything that eats  

disposable income. They make that choice, your words over some other  

form of enjoyment, so it strikes me you owe it to them to make those  

words entertaining.

        Okay, rant over.

        So, about eighteen months ago I was on a nine hour drive back 

from a convention knowing I needed to come up with an original back- 

ground for this fantasy novel I wanted to write. I always thought it would  

be interesting to look at fantasy land where the hero hadn't crossed  

over in time to save the day - where he had refused the call to  

action and instead stayed home to grow old. What would have happened  

then to this fabled land of elves and dwarves and pretty maids?  

Nothing good, that's for sure... so that was the starting point, a  

world gone to hell because it's chosen one decided it wasn't worth  

the effort of saving them. Lee and I (my co-editor on Elemental for  

Tor) back and forthed ideas, having a blast simply creating. That's  

one of the drawbacks of doing stuff like Dr Who and Warhammer and all  

these other IPs, you get to exercise your writing muscles but your  

creativity ones begin to fester. The drive disappeared in a flurry of  

world building and by the end of it we'd essentially mapped out an  

entire world, elements of its past and future, and of the fall.

        Then like all good ideas it got to sit on a shelf for the best part  

of a year, building into something more.

        I wrote the first Thera story back in April, for Solaris' Book  

of Fantasy (The Song Her Heart Sang - It's a love story) and then a  

linked one for Meadowhawk Press' Touched By Wonder. When Ed asked 

me to do something for IMGS I knew I wanted to do something in Thera,  

giving one of the legends some life. Most stories tend to be written  

in coffee shops, this one was written on the plane to Croatia, in  

Dubrovnik and on a balcony in Markashka during a hurricane. Little  

bits of Bosnia (Mostar) and Dubrovnik snuck into the story in the  

architecture - which is always something I find difficult to do - I  

tend to just want to say it's a house, it's a place, it's a big shiny  

ball... and leave it at that, but surrounded by so many amazing  

constructs I knew I had to do the visual aspect justice this time.

        Late next year there's a mosaic novel coming out, The Machineries 

of Silence (Bad Moon Books) which will piece together more of the  

legends of Thera while I work on the first novel.

        All that remains is to thank Ed for his work on the piece, and my 

co-pilot on that long drive without whom the world would cease to be.