The Oerth Journal 31

Oerth Journal #31

Although I'm likely known for my History of Oerth posts, I'm deviating from the norm to announce weird and wonderful news. I'm published!

I've been writing for years, and have completed two novels and a handful of short stories, none of which could be considered Fantasy, or even speculative in any shape or form. I wrote contemporary stories, and turn of the century novels, one set in Timmins, my hometown, in the year of its birth, and the other a faux history of my great grandfather's supposed experiences in the Great War. I say "supposed history" because he never once spoke about his experiences while in uniform.

This is not to say that I'm not acquainted with fantasy or Dungeons and Dragons, because I most certainly am. I read science fiction when I began reading, and then Lord of the Rings in my early years of high school. I picked up Gary Gygax's "Gord" of Greyhawk novels, and the original Dragonlance trilogies as they came out. I must say that I tired of the Forgotten Realms novels rather quickly, even as I continued to buy and read them for many years. I preferred the Black Company series to them. Time passed, my friends who played D&D moved away, and the game slipped into the past. That's likely a similar story to many readers of this blog.

I swapped fantasy for classics and histories and literary novels like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, and a host on Canadiana I won't bore you with since you've likely never heard of Findley and Robertson and so many other Canadian authors, and there I stayed until relatively recently, when the nostalgia bug hit me.

I was "lured" back to D&D by a friend at work. We played for about a year, then not as we had a hard time finding players not on shiftwork, or inclined to play with a couple of middle-aged old farts. But the desire remained. I browsed my old modules, and felt the tingle of nostalgia. 5e was fine, it's good in fact, but it was those old books of my glory years that brought on those feelings of love and longing. I've a reverence for those old books. That's probably the memory of the love of old friends, but there you have it. I got the bug, and began watching YouTube videos of Matt Colville, Seth Skorkowsky, RPGmodsFan, Critical Role, captcorajus, and AJ Pickett. I also watched a few streams too, like Lord Gosumba's game and Return to the Bandit Kingdoms and the like.

And then Legends and Lore, where I was inspired by a number of Greyhawk contributors who'd never lost the love of that old setting. I thought that maybe I could take a stab at contributing to the Greyhawk community, too.

So, I began a blog. But I had to delve deep into all those old sourcebooks to refamiliarize myself with Greyhawk. Did I really know it, back then? Not really. It was intimidating. It seemed so much work to flesh it all out, when I leafed through its pages. So I created my own stuff, doing exactly what Gary Gygax wanted me to do with the Greyhawk setting; the funny thing is that my homebrew world was almost identical to Ratik and the North Kingdom and the Thillonrian Peninsula. Was I having a Freudian moment when I was brewing it? Maybe.

Oerth Journal #31

Long story short, I submitted some of my stuff to Greyhawk Online, and I soon saw my work posted on a website that was not my blog.

Then the unthinkable happened: they asked me to contribute to the Oerth Journal. My deadline? About 2 weeks. I ought to have panicked. I'd never written fantasy before. But I didn't. I had 1400 words of a short story written within a few hours. And a 1st draft a few days later. I rewrote. I refined. I had a few people read it and make suggestions. Actually, only one person made suggestions. I completed the last rewrite and sent it in for rejection.

But they did not reject it. They published it! Wonders never cease. So, here it is! I give to you my first published work of worry (we writers are a particularly self-denigrating sort, always convinced that no one will actually like what we've done). But don't just read my story; there's lots of creative material within. And don't stop there, download all 31 issues if you're a fan of that wonderful old setting.
You must be. You're reading a blog called "Greyhawk Musings," after all.