The Dark Side of the Moon (Kieran's Works)

Next Fic to be Updated: Trinity VII: The Twilight

Completion Level: 2.5 pages (approx. 25%)

Estimated Upload Date: Sunday, though I'll know for sure by Saturday night


As most of you know, I aim to write professionally, one of these days. And as some of you know, I love alternate histories. My interest probably started with the Anno Dracula series, which asked the question "What if the events of Bram Stoker's Dracula actually happened - and Dracula won?" It's been fanned, over the years, by things like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Shadow, the BioShock series . . . You get the idea.

Usually, my efforts in writing in that kind of direction are hampered by a lack of resources - my original idea for an "Anno Frankenstein" series was set in the Napoleonic Era, and compared to some time periods, the amount of research material available is scant, which makes writing realistically a problem.

Of course, it's not my onlyproblem. Some of the research material I do have access to, through work, have been out of print for 15 - 20 years, so I'm still out of luck for gaining a permanent reference copy. And in some cases, as well (like with "Frankenstein," apparently - at least in Canada), there are issues with its not being a public-domain work. So I get shafted all kinds of ways.

Lately, however, I've been beaten down simply by the question of what to change. Do I make it a mystical change, as in "Anno Dracula" with its existence of vampires, or go for a scientific one, like "BioShock" . . . Or do I go for broke and do a bit of both?

On the one hand, I have a ghost character, and/or a sorcerer antagonist, begging to be used. On the other hand, I have a stage magician-turned-private-investigator protagonist, with an advanced mechanical prosthesis courtesy of the First World War, begging for the second option . . . Unless I go for a totally different idea, like the "Robbing Hood" . . .

My imagination needs a damned "off" switch.