Thoughts on Samalin

I guess I'll try putting down all my thoughts, memories and other musing about my first ever attempt at writing original fiction here on the blog rather than clutter up the actual 'Samalin' page under the Writing tab.

I wrote this thing digitally for the most part on the LC575 Dinosaur Mac, apart from that snippet of graph paper I still have saved. The majority of the Samalin pictures and paper printouts all still pretty much exist in an archive folder at home. I don't really remember doing much stuff on public transport between home and highschool. It was predominately bashed out in my parent's bedroom sitting at the computer desk; with a Britney Spears or similar pop CD playing on the horrendously basic media player and a so-old-it-had-to-be-installed-on-floppy-discs Mac version of Microsoft Word. (Wish I or someone in the family still had that old computer, so many memories and stuff that I neglected to archive when we upgraded to the Dell)

I can safely say in hindsight of all these years that the scant plot and worldbuilding I had at the time was owing to a mix of upbringing and naivety. The prologue reeks of it; introducing an amazing world with no evil, hatred, death or humans; almost Paradise-like, or perhaps more akin to Narnia before Jadis hitches a dimensional-crossing-ride with Digory and Polly and brings evil with her. Pair that concept with the two mythological birds Datora and Ninequa singing day and night into being respectively it's quite embarrassing how much was ripped from the Narnian creation in The Magician's Nephew; still my favourite book in the entire series. (Dawn Treader comes in a close second) The draft even damns humans in a paragraph explaining that if they ever came to Samalin they'd destroy its natural beauty. That particular bit was thankfully cut at some stage in my youth, I guess even then I knew how over the top it was.

The original vision I had of what Samalin looked like was your typical Windows XP desktop scenery (before XP was an operating system of course): lush green treeless hills stretching the entire way, rivers, blue white-clouded skies and mountains. I don't know why I've always been drawn to that sort of pastoral environment in media. Maybe because once I may have felt a lack of it? The place I live is beautiful, but it's a different sort of visual and audible beauty (and one I completely did not appreciate when I was younger). It's wind and tempest and sometimes even fire, then eerie silence and stillness again; it's cerulean blues above, it's reds, ochres, browns, olive-greens and delicate grey-greens below. It's the kookaburras chuckling in the early morn and the distant yet abrasive screech of cockatoos to follow. And whilst we boast mountains, sure, there aren't too many in this particular region. So I felt - and still feel - drawn to those particular vistas of brilliant greens as well as the mountains on the horizon. To my younger self, though, they were superior.

Speaking more about Paradise, I was raised Christian. That being said, religion didn't become a big part of my and my sister's life until we were both well into primary school; and we started attending Sunday services in our big city.

As an aside, we hadn't done the whole scripture classes thing at the primary school owing to what I recall being my father putting his foot down as he'd had bad experiences in his own childhood with that sort of thing. My sister and I were both part of the tiny group of 'non-scripture' kids who would while away the time in a staffroom or on the concrete verandah outside the staff building pulling the chinese checkers and draughts boards and pieces from those battered old game boxes endlessly until a teacher finally came to retrieve us.

But at some point our father found his dedication anew, and this started a new saga in our lives. The services at the church were intrinsically high Anglican; incense, psalms and hymns, a dedicated and high caliber church choir, pipe organ accompaniment from a big name player and builder, robes and cassocks, the lot. Christianity became a bigger thing in my life. I don't exactly remember not believing in God beforehand or anything, but with the new exposure to faith it became more present and everyday. The vague image of a divine being doing his omnipresent thing above us was a reality at that stage in my life. Not so much your bearded elderly gentleman sitting on a cloud benevolently smiling like in the kid's picture books, mind you, as I'd come into it a bit later, but nonetheless. We never were the type of family to say grace at the table before dinner, but we sure as hell did when visiting our Great-Aunt (my father's aunt) for lunch.

All that digression is probably why the evil one and his 'imps' in the story look and the way they do; serpentine and satanic and ever with a tempting line of dialogue:

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The concept of death in Samalin soon became a big part of the story. During one prologue infodump I explained that the only death that exists is natural; once the Samalian is ready to move into the 'next life' (this never got developed any more than a brief mention so I'm assuming it was just me spouting nonsense without thinking about the ramifications of what a Samalian heaven would look like when at the time it was my little slice of heaven) they can pass on, or Sha-Rim. This was originally called First Death, then Wise-Death. I think it was one of my friends at school who suggested I come up with something a little less corny.

So once the evil arrived, so did Kash-Rim (originally Premature Death). Sad to say that my team of heroes doled out their fair share of deaths, with barely any ramifications physical or mental. They practically celebrate Rittagiz's murder at the teeth of Squeek/Squick along with the chukka clan (just because he's a creepy looking serpentine weasel creature from another world working for the enemy) and it never gets mentioned again after a few paragraphs in the next chapter. Xunnacha kills the possessed Riesh a few chapters later after swearing that she'd be the one to hurt the evil next. This time nobody even says anything about it in the dialogue and all we have is a paragraph of Paoli wondering rather distantly if he would be born again. Then, the entire group pretty much show no reaction to Alpha the wolf being burned alive. They do at least grieve in worry when Fuurball goes missing, but that is again forgotten soon. If you're looking for examples of problems that crop up when inexperienced writers try to up the ante and chuck in deaths left right and centre, look no further. If anything, a Samalian that has never seen violent death or felt negative emotions until now should simply not be coping. These Chosen Ones cope far too well, to the extent they are not even two-dimensional cardboard cutouts... they are paper.

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It's pretty funny the things which just stick with you. Our mother woke us up one morning before dawn when my sister and I were just kids, and I can barely recall whether it was a planned venture or just a spontaneous family mystery tour... venture off we went all the same up the coastal track past the residential area and into national parklands. We carried torches, cereal - it was NutriGrain, by the way - and milk in little tupperware cups with lids along.

It's about a fifteen minute walk to hit the rocky coast overlooking the ocean horizon. We parked our bums down on a rock ledge once carved by the seas (now far above it) and waited with the torches off. I can't remember what was said or done, really; but I do remember the dawn rise distinctly.

The clouds sat over the ocean. As the sky lightened, slowly colours came back into play, giving contrast to the silhouettes of my mother and sister; and the darkest blue of night changed into this vivid orange-to-blue gradient. Small birds from the scrub started waking up and chirping away. When the sun actually rose from the ocean it was like watching a cartoon: the visible beams shining through gaps in the clouds somehow lined up perfectly. I'd never seen actual proper sunbeams before, I don't think. I remember being amazed and awed - it looked fake it was so perfect. I guess that's why it remains with me as one of my very early memories.

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I did once try to rewrite the salvageable bits of the story, back in 2008, after feeling re-inspired with Werrets, since that story was set in the same universe and some of its characters had even ended up there and met remastered versions of some of the original characters in the process.

Samalin, itself, had been remastered; since the events of Werrets had taken place after the 'plot' of Samalin, and I'd learned a whole lot as to what the world actually was.

I only got around three chapters. Still, the background information and canon and brainstorming results still appeal to me and, as it happened, gave me inspiration for a much more recent story. I guess it feels pretty neat that even if you do kill your darlings, if you look at them from another direction and with a few more years of experience they can still prove useful in other ways.