I mentioned before that I’m writing a book. It takes up a lot of my time. Like, I’ve been researching a lot of things just to build the world because I don’t want to talk out of my ass about stuff I only know a little about. Like one of my characters is a dude from 1980s California, which I can totally write about because I grew up there, but he also surfs, and I don’t know nuthin’ about surfing except for whatever I saw in the movies. Especially about 1980s surfing in Northern California. And that’s not so easy to research. Because it’s kind of a niche thing. You know?
So anyway. I’m sure this isn’t the most original idea in the world, but I think it’s not a common one either. It came from two questions. The first one has been banging around in my brain for oh… ten years now and that’s, “What would the world like if it were only immortals?” I know it’s been bopping around in my brainpan for that long because I have “research” in my back files from, like, 2013. Lists of “famous” immortals and such. So, yeah.
The second question was, “If a vampire exploded Buffy the Vampire style (in a cloud of dust and ash), how long would it take for them to reconstitute?” My idea is that the magic that makes the vampire immortal would create a “like calls to like” pull on the dust and ash and no matter how far it spread, it would eventually “come together’ enough to magically bring the vampire back to… well… life. So it doesn’t matter if the ash gets eaten by birds or insects or broken down in other fashions, it will inevitably find its way back to the place the vampire “died” and the vampire will be reborn.
Converging the two ideas together, we come to my story, which takes place about seven thousand years from now — two thousand years from today and five thousand years after The Event that wiped out all short lived sentient beings on the planet and covered the world in magic. So now the world is populated by immortals, magical beings, and mechanicals. Think humans based immortals like vampires, werewolves, and others who have been cursed/blessed with immortality, and magical creatures like fey, gnomes, dwarves, etc., demigods, mechanicals such as androids, droids, robots, and so on. There are smaller fey, drones, and whatnot too. It’s a magic tech world.
Some of the immortals were alive long before The Event like the POV character who’s so old he doesn’t remember where or when he was born (sometime around Ancient Egypt), his fey right hand person who’s just as old but from Northern Europe, and a few others who are not quite so old. Some were created by The Event (which lasted about 30 years), and still others came in the aftermath. Since the population is mostly immortal and long lived, population growth isn’t much of a thing. There’s roughly 500M worldwide and 50K in the city.
So, where does the exploding vampire come in? Well, he “died” in the 1980s in a cloud of dust and it took this long for him to pull himself together. He’s the aforementioned California surfer dude bro. And he’s the POV character’s best bud. The story is basically about his return into this magic tech world with his 1980s worldview. It’s about stagnation, unfiltered chaos — Vern brings chaos with him just by being Vern — and facing immortality. I guess. I’m not good with themes. ^_^ But I’ve rambled long enough. If I’m feeling froggy tomorrow, I might write about the plot. Until then, I’ll chat at you later. Take care.
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