Steve Trail, “The Kingdom and the King”

Writing a novel is hard, and worldbuilding is also hard; one would think combining the two exercises into one project to be a difficult talk, and one would be absolutely correct! When I started writing The Kingdom and the King, I didn’t know anything about constructing scenes, writing dialogue, or providing compelling imagery. All I could do was come up with cool sounding fantastical names, names like Oren Dolitch and Crelend Visby. 

But my ideas persisted to the point where I had to write them down, and then looked for sources to inspire me. I got the idea for Oren Dolitch after glancing through one of my dad’s old Horatio Hornblower novels, a series about a Napoleonic British sea captain. I decided Oren should be a privateer after watching Pirates of the Caribbean 4, which sees Barbosa betray his pirate brethren and sign up for the king’s navy: essentially Oren’s backstory (which I didn’t explain in my artists’ book). Undoubtably George Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels were a huge inspiration not on my creative process per se, but my overall enthusiasm to tackle this kind of project. There are resources for writers on YouTube—accomplished scholars and writers breaking down how to write and how to write effectively—that I took advantage of.

Because I don’t have the time or capacity to write a full novel, I chose to write three short chapters forming narrative that sets up a cast of characters. The artists’ book ends at chapter three, but I hope when you finish reading you will find that the story has the potential continue another ten chapters, or maybe even a whole series of bestselling fantasy novels that gets adapted into a blockbuster television series by HBO only to end with a terrible final season because I couldn’t finish them in time.

What I wanted to accomplish with this project was to make a quick, compelling  narrative set in an alternative, medieval/colonial-esque world that doesn’t overwhelm the reader with “nerdy” exposition, or fantasy lore that is fun to write but boring to read. Such trivia I tried to keep to a minimum in the actual book. Instead, I decided to incorporate this lore through the deleted scenes found on WordPress, should you wish to explore the world I created further.

To view the digital content of “The Kingdom and the King,” click on this hyperlink.