How (and why) I wrote Flame and Crimson

For those interested in the how and a little behind the why I wrote Flame and Crimson the following is a look behind the curtain.

I started giving serious thought to writing a book about the sword-and-sorcery subgenre in late 2012/early 2013. I love sword-and-sorcery fiction, and wanted to add a chapter of my own. I realized long ago after trying my hand at some short stories that shall never see the light of day that I’m not a fiction writer. I enjoy writing, but had not written anything book length and took that as a personal challenge. I also recognized there was a sizable hole in the critical literature: There hasn’t been any formal, book-length works analyzing or surveying on the genre itself.

I started with a brain-dump on paper of everything I would like to see in a non-fiction study of sword-and-sorcery. I still have this document; it’s basically nine pages of single-spaced list of bullet points. I canned many of these early ideas. For example, initially I thought I would include reviews of some of the best stories in the genre, but I came to realize that I myself don’t enjoy reading plot summaries. There is of course some of this in Flame and Crimson, but I don’t spend much space recapping individual stories. The focus instead is on its principal authors and their individual thematic and stylistic contributions to the genre.

I then began to cluster these ideas into a chronological narrative, then broke this up into a table of contents, with detailed bullet points under each chapter of what I needed to cover. Eventually, I put together a comprehensive but not sprawling outline that I could live with.

Then came the actual butt in seat writing, which started somewhere in late 2014. I had some weeks where I fit in 2-3 one-hour writing sessions or longer, followed by some weeks where I only managed a single pathetic hour, or none at all. But I persisted. I realized that if I wanted to increase my frequency of writing sessions and word count output that sacrifices elsewhere were necessary. So I stopped blogging (hence, the absence of posts on the Silver Key from 2013-2019). I stopped gaming. I stopped reading, for the most part, outside of sword-and-sorcery.

Basically I put on a football helmet and went to work.

As is the case with most middle-aged adults I have many competing obligations that are non-negotiable. I have a family, including two teenage daughters (who were not teens when I started, and needed to be driven to dance classes, soccer games, playdates, you name it. The older now has driver’s license). I have a full-time, 40+ hour a week job that includes some business travel. I lift weights four days a week in the early mornings prior to work. I cover high school football in the fall. In short, my writing time is limited, and for me is mostly an evening activity.

About eight months after I began work on Flame and Crimson we decided to sell our house, and that pretty much put the work on hold for several months. But it had a benefit: We moved across town to a home with a full sized unfinished basement that became my crude man cave, complete with a kick-ass bar I inherited from my sister. My cellar became my writer’s retreat. Typically I worked in one hour writing sessions from 7-8 p.m. or thereabouts. By 8:30 my fatigue was sufficient that thoughtful, creative writing became difficult to manage. I wrote on some weekend mornings, prior to all the usual obligations to home and family.

But yeah, most of the writing was done at a bar. Often standing. Occasionally with a beer.

Some days the writing was great, and flowed like wine at a wedding reception, and on other days it was an utter slog, producing 200 words of drek. Writing at this length was difficult, as most of what I had written prior were essays, white papers, or newspaper articles, ranging anywhere from 800 to perhaps 4,000 words. The chapters I had outlined required double and sometimes triple that latter figure.

Soon I found a helpful tool, which I called the rule of three—three main topics per chapter. Why three? Three has a natural rhythm. So for example in chapter 4, Weird Tales: Howard’s sword-and-sorcery contemporaries, I cover Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, and Henry Kuttner. In chapter 5, I principally cover Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and the Lancer Conan Saga. And so on. Is this rule of three arbitrary? Yeah, a little bit. Did I follow it slavishly? No. But I needed to do something to prevent a sprawling, too long book.

As I wrote, I found myself revising my outline. I collapsed two chapters into one, and removed one chapter altogether. I threw out big chunks of text that weren’t bad but were not the story I wanted to tell.

Here is the final Table of Contents:

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Let me tell you of the days of high adventure...
• Chapter 1: What is sword-and-sorcery?
• Chapter 2: Origins
• Chapter 3: Robert E. Howard and the birth of sword-and-sorcery
• Chapter 4: Weird Tales: Howard's sword-and-sorcery contemporaries
• Chapter 5: A new Saga begins: Sword-and-sorcery's revival
• Chapter 6: Sword-and-sorcery's renaissance
• Chapter 7: The decline and fall of sword-and-sorcery
• Chapter 8: Underground, resurgence, and new directions
• Chapter 9: The cultural impact of sword-and-sorcery
• Chapter 10: Why sword-and-sorcery?
• A probable timeline of sword-and-sorcery
• Works Cited
• About the author and artist

What really slowed down the writing was not a lack of time, or competing responsibilities, or even rewriting (thought this is partially responsible), but the research. I’m not blessed with a great memory, and many books that I had read years ago required re-reading. I re-read most of the Conan and Kull stories. All of Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Moorcock’s principal Elric series, and Jack Vance’s Dying Earth. I re-read the Flashing Swords anthologies, L. Sprague de Camp’s four volume Pyramid sword-and-sorcery anthologies, and many, many other books.

I realized I had numerous holes in my reading, too. I ordered dozens of books missing from my library—various Thongor and Kothar and Brak titles, one-off anthologies, Hippocampus Press publications of letters by H.P. Lovecraft to the likes of Fritz Leiber and C.L. Moore. Lee Breakiron got me access to a digital version of the entire run of Amra, which I skim-read in its entirety and read and re-read many of its letters and essays. Issues of Weird Tales, mainly for access to its invaluable letters column, The Eyrie. I tracked down and watched/rewatched a lot of bad sword-and-sorcery movies. I dug out my old D&D books and Dragon magazines. I listened to sword-and-sorcery inspired heavy metal bands. And so on. During all this time I was not writing, but formulating and taking notes that eventually needed to be turned into prose.

Flame and Crimson’s Works Cited is some 20 pages long.

I then went back and edited the hell out of what I had written. I wound up cutting somewhere around 12,000 words—the length of an entire chapter and then some—from the draft. I found that in places it was too wordy, too pedantic. Cluttered with unclear thoughts and sloppy thinking. Sometimes too much unsupported opinion, sometimes too much bile.

Then came another edit, for polish rather than wholesale revision. This third edit really improved the writing, in my humble opinion. I think it’s got a nice cadence, and is a balance of readability and completeness. I wanted this book to tell a story, and entertain as well as inform. I was not interested in a dry critical study.

When I finally felt like I had a solid draft, I then I had to go back and add the in-text citations and works cited. This took me a couple months to complete, mainly because I made the mistake of not properly documenting my sources as I worked. This was painful and pain-staking to do in reverse, and is a mistake I won’t make again if ever write another book.

Looking back, I’m not in love with chapter 1—it feels a little workmanlike and paint by numbers, and possibly paints a too restrictive frame around sword-and-sorcery. But in the end I decided that the genre is still sufficiently misunderstood that I was obligated to offer a coherent definition, with examples from the literature. I personally believe the book begins to sing in chapter 5, peaking in chapter 7.

Chapter 10 is the most subjective and opinion-based in the work. Should I have included the “why” of sword-and-sorcery? Isn’t its existence enough justification? I’m still not sure, but from a very early stage I knew it was a chapter I deeply wanted to write. It’s the culmination of my years of ruminating on why I like this type of fiction, how it speaks to me, and the important aesthetic it offers fantasy fiction that high fantasy does not.

So, all told more than six years, from conception to completion. That’s a long time, even taking out a couple of months long stretches with little to no progress.

I am told from my publisher at Pulp Hero Press that I will be seeing a proof copy likely by this coming weekend. This will be the first time I’ve read the manuscript in nearly two months, and I’m sure the critical distance will reveal some flaws. I will be able to make a final round of edits at this stage. I’m still awaiting the cover as well, of which I’ve previously revealed the awesome art by Tom Barber. I have not seen the completed image with the superimposed title.

I hope the final product does not suck. It represents a lot of work, and the best I could do in my present circumstances. Flame and Crimson: The rise, fall, and rebirth of sword-and-sorcery should be published next month.