Between 1997 and 2001, throughout my military service, I wrote my first proper fantasy book. It was a hefty effort, 630,000 words in total. The book had everything: magic, monsters, lore, epicness, colorful protagonists. Only I never published it. Simply put, I tried sending it to various agents and publication houses, and they all turned it down. Rightfully so, because it wasn’t very good. In fact, it was pretty bad.

Fast forward some 20-odd years, I sort of want to publish the book. The idea is solid, it’s just my young self writing is sort of meh. Tedious, with too much focus on descriptions, plus a severe dearth of character development. It took me a long while to truly and fully create my (unique) writing style. It evolved over the years. I became more “impatient”, focusing on characters and situations and less on the surroundings. I lost the heavy influence Tolkien, Jordan and Goodkind had on my in my youth. Their effect is quite apparent on how I wrote my first fantasy book.

Even when I wrote The Lost Words series, it was only in the second volume that I felt my style emerging into its true form. Even then, my writing kept on morphing further until my first Dietrich book. That’s when Igor finally emerged from his cocoon. It took me roughly 1.5 million words to shed any external influences and zone in on the essence of my own wordsmithing. This is perfectly normal, and lots of authors undergo phases in their writing, especially early on in their careers. There’s a double effect of age and experience.

This brings me back to my fantasy novel. The 1997-2001 saga simply isn’t publication-worthy. There’s roughly 90% fluff, which can be removed without harming the storyline. I tried to that in 2017. I tried to “edit” my own book and failed miserably. Reshuffling the chapters, removing descriptions, trying to make the plot faster and more captivating … it was simply too much effort. So I gave up.

Now, in 2024, I finally feel I’m ready to make this book happen. But rewriting the old stuff is not to work. There’s no conceivable way I can take the old, ponderous, boring writing and make it into something captivating, fresh, exciting. No way. The new old book needs to be exactly that – new. The idea stays, but everything else must be from scratch.

And so, I’m writing the book. A 27-year-old idea, being given new life with brand new words. This time, it feels right. Everything sort of clicks. I am finally ready to give this phenomenal volume of imagination its rightful closure.

Of course, I wouldn’t be me without an extra challenge. As I hate repeating myself, and I always try to come up with new ways to tell a story, I will not be doing the same old linear multi-POV third-person epic fantasy formula I used in The Lost Words. Instead, I’m going to utilize a non-linear temporal narrative. This is something I’ve not done before.

In parallel, I’m working on the publication of my career book, because challenge. And, there’s yet another book that I have started putting together. Right now, it’s still in the early concept phases, but me mental glands be tickling. A brand new genre, something I’ve never done before. A complete 180-degrees twist from my usual stuff. For now, let it be our secret. More details coming soon.

Stay tuned for updates. Commence to fantasy!