Fantasy authors!

[Liethra]

Hopefully this isn't too niche a thread, but it'd be lovely to get to know other authors who are into the fantasy genre. Personally, I love fantasy but can't stand most of the big-name stuff anymore. So I'm thinking perhaps there are some gems here?

If any fantasy writers browse these boards, I invite you to share a bit about your worlds (no wiki-length stuff, though ) and the stories you write!

Personally, I've started writing a series called Reina the Warlock (2 parts published, 2 parts pending at the moment). In many ways it's a way for me to practice my writing style and just play around with stuff without needing to feel a lot of pressure about it. At the heart of it is a young Warlock who is bonded for life with a Daemon from the so called House of Flesh, one of the many Houses of the Nether - one that is very focused on the carnal and lustful. As you might imagine, this little couple aren't exactly efficient dungeon delvers, especially when cute assistants and other characters get thrown into the mix.

This all takes place in a remote city on the border of an ever expanding desert, resting under the petrified eye of a long dead God. It is a city borne of secrets, ruined and rebuilt a thousand times, with endless catacombs and tunnels delving into the earth below it. In this sandswept place, an order of Wizards are trying to root out any and all Warlocks, in a misguided attempt to keep city safe, and on top of that, tensions are rising between the different races in the city (But really, it's mostly about Daemon sex). Besides the humans, there are the elusive Moonchildren, the ragged Sandscarred and the Shadowtouched, victims of a dying God's curse - all trying to carve out a place in an ever-changing city.

If you decide to check out my stuff, be advised that there's a whole lot of genderbending and stuff like that.

So, any other fantasy buffs here?

 

[oggbashan]

Some of my stories are fantasy but not your kind.

Except, perhaps, this:

https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/the-valkyries

 

[UsuallyPresent]

If you mean elves and dwarves, I've ideas but nothing written yet. Focusing more on a series I'm writing focusing on genie and arabic myth in a modern world full of hidden magic - think "I Dream of Genie" in the Harry Dresden universe, maybe.

 

[RejectReality]

With the exception of the two chains I participated in and my LST3K humor series, everything in my Darkniciad pen name is all part of the same fantasy world.

The main storyline is "Danica" where Danica Ardane finds herself bound to the service of the mad Archmage Zoraster Arias, who has a goal of casting down the gods themselves. Once believing she was an unremarkable wielder of the Art, she is pushed to obtain power beyond her wildest dreams and uncovers lost secrets in the service of Zoraster's twisted aims. He forges her into a weapon of vast power, but a blade has two edges...

The story continues in "Sisters of the Mists" but I'm struggling to complete it, because Danica is based on, originally written for, and tailored to the kinks of my late wife. It's a tossup whether it's a sweet remembrance or an aching longing every time I sit down to bring her to life on the page.

Everything else is building out elements of the world, or the slowly building history web of all my characters who appear in the main storyline, and the new characters that show up in those history stories.

As LesLumens, my "Magic of the Wood" series follows the generations of a family born of the love of a mortal man and a dryad named Xantina. The family must keep the secret of their heritage, protect the natural world that is as much a part of them as it is to the ultimate mother of the line, and find love while straddling two worlds.

Also as Les, my "Ancient Peoples" series follows Aris, who discovers that he is descended from Lamia blood when the Queen of the Lamias draws him into her lair, and asks him to find the others of her kind in a world much changed from the one she knew. Along the way, he will encounter Harpies, Nagas, Minotaurs, Medusae, and a host of the other ancient peoples who once ruled the world before the coming of man.

And also as Les, my "The Fey Folk" stories don't cross over with each other, but are centered on Fairies, Sylphs, Gremlins, and other Fey creatures.

I consider all three of my series as Les to be part of the same world, though they don't ( yet... ) directly cross over with each other.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

My other half, beachbum1958, has been tinkering with a story outline for a couple of years now loosely based around the Fenian Cycle and the worlds of Irish mythology and the pantheon of the Children of Dana and the Sidhe, but set in a modern milieu; lots of intrigue between the 9 Realms, with the White House and the Kremlin taking sides in the power struggles of the Æsir and Jötunheim, Alfheim, and the Danu, Arthurian myth and Christian paladins of the mythical Charlemagne. There's even stuff about pure knights in magical sleep under hills in deep caves in the Pennines in England and the Pyrenees in France, Ragnarök and so on.

He's given the elves and trolls, dwarves and goblins advanced weaponry and superior metallurgy that allows Elven and dwarvish swords and axes that would chop a Japanese Katana into splinters, as well as arming the Vanir, Svartalfar, and the Æsir of Asgard with modern earthly weapons, so Heroes of Valhalla with broadswords and M3 carbines, Kevlar armor, and WP grenades, and Odin negotiating with the White House for access to the US nuclear arsenal while Hel seduces the Kremlin into handing over WMD's.

It's turning into War and Peace, even though he only plays with it as a displacement activity, but I'm hoping he drills down into it, all the elementals and sylphs and magic and cursing and sexy banshees and horny water-fays and elves and licentious Gods reads like a lot of fun!

 

[ElectricBlue]

If by fantasy you mean myths and legends with a bit of a magical spin, my The Dark Chronicles reworks the Arthurian myth. But if you're thinking elves and dwarves and erotic Tolkein, then no.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

My other half, beachbum1958, has been tinkering with a story outline for a couple of years now loosely based around the Fenian Cycle and the worlds of Irish mythology and the pantheon of the Children of Dana and the Sidhe, but set in a modern milieu;
-snip-
It's turning into War and Peace, even though he only plays with it as a displacement activity, but I'm hoping he drills down into it, all the elementals and sylphs and magic and cursing and sexy banshees and horny water-fays and elves and licentious Gods reads like a lot of fun!

It sounds like something I’d love to get my teeth into - please do encourage him!

 

[Bramblethorn]

My "Riddle of the Copper Coin" is Arabian Nights pastiche with magical djinn. (Well, half of it is.)

One of my current works in progress medieval European, mostly low fantasy, about a lawyer-type who specialises in contracts with devils. It's a way off completion though.

 

[Sonatatre]

I have a four part series fantasy story written. It is about a young woman who learns her aunt got a portal to another world in her home. A place where elves with horns on their heads live in a big tree. It allows her to have her own adventure.

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-horny-elves

I am also working on another story about orcs and elves. I imagine it will be up somewhere around February. In that story elves have conquered orcs and made them into their servants, but is that the natural order of things? It will be a mind break story

 

[Blind_Justice]

I mainly write Fantasy. Some of my influences are pen&paper roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer, authors like Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock. My stuff has some high fantasy, but also a lot of grim stuff and charachters who are seldom clearly black or white, morality-wise.

One string of stories (Leo and the Dragon, Shilana's Trial, The Temptation of Gheeran and Tear's Desire) should be read in that order. "The Faceless Executioner" and "Reunion" are stand-alones, but take place in the same setting as the above and "Mud & Magic" is my big current thing. If you want a good idea of what my stuff is about, you could start with "Mud & Magic" and go from there.

 

[RejectReality]

My WIP that's gone up by about 10k words in the last couple of days:

Betty ( a minor character in "Lowborn" ) finally has enough saved from her cut of running Alice's Kip to strike out and open a brothel of her own. She's got the coin, and she's found a place that looks promising. Hard Creek is near an emerging trade route carrying a melon that's becoming highly prized by the rich in larger cities. If she plays her cards right, she can get in and get set up before traffic explodes.

With her friend Alice's blessing, ( also a minor character in "Lowborn" ) she picks out a couple of the girls whose new has worn off, but who haven't yet established a large, regular clientele — Jan and Lana. For protection, they'll take Ghent, a massive, jolly man who Betty's grown a little sweet on over the years he's been working as a bully boy in the brothel. They set out on a two day journey to Hard Creek, to see how stingy the women are with the pussy in town.

There's one major problem with her plan. There's already a prostitute working in the town, and she's got powerful people sucking her tits. It's "One Whore's Town" and it isn't big enough for the both of them.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I write a little bit of fantasy, but it’s a niche I enjoy.

 

[Voboy]

I used to write fantasy commercially. I did a four-novel series, which sold well enough, but I found that I ran out of ideas very quickly. These were all in the genre I call "mercenary magic-users and warriors for hire in a fantasy world that's pretty dystopian."

Which gets wordy as a genre description. But.

My problem is that I REALLY enjoy the world-building. I'm one of those Lord of the Rings fans who gets into the appendices, Unfinished Tales, the Christopher Tolkien publications, etc. I'm fascinated, for example, that apart from coming up with heartwarming tales of loyal, fuzzyfooted midget gardeners helping their friends melt jewelry, Tolkien also spent time ruminating on the length of a Numenorean stride, or the composition of their longbows, or worrying about Elvish diphthongs.

I'm into that shit too. I enjoy the maps and the chronologies in my world, and figuring out all the stuff like in-universe currency rates and that. But, again, plotting the stories got old, fast.

I find SF is a lot more fun. But even that, I can only write in small doses. My readers dislike that, but it's more important to me that things not get stale.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

In a perfect world I'd 'just' be a world-builder too. It's all the fun and very little of the hard work, to me. Oh, sure, there's still work - but nothing like keeping character quirks consistent over thousands of words in their voice, or having a godly overview but having to squeeze things through a single character's point of view....

 

[BiscuitHammer]

I'll chime in...

I've been playing RPGs like D&D, Traveller, Warhammer, Paranoia and the like since the mid-late 70s. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

Anyhoo, one of my early characters was a bard named Amberley Bloodstar. I enjoyed her so much that I wrote extra adventures about her for myself. I decided to eroticize them and publish them in here.

I only have two chapters up so far, since it's an outlying story in terms of importance and demand, but I personally really enjoy writing it. Linky below, if you're the interested sort...

https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/the-tale-of-amberley-bloodstar-ch-01

 

[RejectReality]

My stories as Dark are built up from my homegrown version of D&D. Thakkor, Alicia, Mindblind, Christi, Darkniciad, Devan, Vladamir, Zoraster... they're all my PCs. Many of the other characters such as Meckataur are the PCs of others in the group. A lot of the others are NPCs from the world we played in.

It's a setting that's been in development for 30+ years. LOL

I'll chime in...

I've been playing RPGs like D&D, Traveller, Warhammer, Paranoia and the like since the mid-late 70s. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

Anyhoo, one of my early characters was a bard named Amberley Bloodstar. I enjoyed her so much that I wrote extra adventures about her for myself. I decided to eroticize them and publish them in here.

I only have two chapters up so far, since it's an outlying story in terms of importance and demand, but I personally really enjoy writing it. Linky below, if you're the interested sort...

https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/the-tale-of-amberley-bloodstar-ch-01

 

[RetroFan]

I have written some stories with fantasy/supernatural themes, and my advice to any authors who want to write fantasy, supernatural and science fiction stories is that it is far easier and more likely to be successful if you set your stories in the real world which readers can relate to better.

For example, say there was a sci-fi story in which an alien comes to Earth, specifically America, and assumes the form of a hot, 19-year-old blonde girl, and four college nerds (three male and one female) have to help her assimilate on Earth, saying she is an international student from Australia. The alien has no idea about Earth customs and it shows; she takes food of people's plates while they are eating, steps into the road without looking, and goes to the pool and swims naked in front of everyone, thinking that using a pool is like showering or bathing which is done nude. She likes to talk about 'I Love Lucy', 'The Honeymooners' and 'Leave It To Beaver', as the aliens on their far distant planet have seen these shows and think they are an up to date view of Earth. The alien also encounters a problem when she gets her period when occupying a female human form, and the female nerd has to explain what menstruation is and how to use feminine hygiene products.

Now on the other hand, imagine a science fiction story set over 3 million years in the future in a distant planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, colonised by humans who now have brightly coloured skins (red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple and pink) and occupied by strange animals and plants.

It is much easier for readers to relate to the first science fiction story set on Earth, as the themes and characters are more familiar and easy to imagine. It is much harder to imagine an alien world set millions of years in the future.

 

[Voboy]

In my experience, fans here will quite happily accept SF set in the distant future.

And, more to the point of the thread, well-written FANTASY stories will also find their readership here, though I'll admit most of my fantasy stuff has been commercial. There's a keen market for sword-and-sorcery that also involves lots of fucking.

Either way, be it fantasy or SF, it's on us to ensure that the exposition and world-building occurs in an entertaining and enjoyable way. The story needs to feel organic and believable, and it's our responsibility to make the reader feel that it is.

 

[Liethra]

Nice to hear what people are doing! It's interesting how many fantasy writers are inspired to start by D&D, though I suppose that it's only natural, considering how emotionally involved you can become with the characters and stories.

Followup question:

How do you all balance plot and erotic elements? Or rather, how do you feel the two fit together? At least I feel that with fantasy, a lot of attention needs to be put on worldbuilding for a more complex plot to work, and that erotic parts kind of change the pacing a bit too much for the two to fit together well. Thus, my erotic stuff tends to get more simplified, simply to maintain a nice balance.

Also, what authors are you all influenced by?

 

[Voboy]

How do you all balance plot and erotic elements? Or rather, how do you feel the two fit together? At least I feel that with fantasy, a lot of attention needs to be put on worldbuilding for a more complex plot to work, and that erotic parts kind of change the pacing a bit too much for the two to fit together well. Thus, my erotic stuff tends to get more simplified, simply to maintain a nice balance.

Also, what authors are you all influenced by?

The cardinal rule of writing: nothing should feel forced. Everything ought to feel organic, naturalistic, even realistic... even in a fantasy setting.

My fantasy stories contain less sex, both qualitatively and quantitatively, because sex isn’t the point of my fantasy stories: whatever “the plot” is, is the point. To the extent that graphic sex serves that point? Have at it. In my experience, it’s not that hard to get fantasy fans off (Keep in mind, that experience isn’t lit-based. Though my SF stories are the same way, and they’re well-received here).

Here at lit, otherhandedly, “the plot” often revolves around sex, without apologies. So hot sex scenes shouldn’t affect the pacing; they ARE the pacing.

Obviously I’m a Tolkienist from way back, but a bigger influence on me writing- and plot-wise were Robert Lynn Asprin’s old Thieves’ World anthology books. I enjoy stories of Gondor and shit, but I’d never be able to picture myself living there; Sanctuary? Oh yes. Very realistic.

 

[Liethra]

The cardinal rule of writing: nothing should feel forced. Everything ought to feel organic, naturalistic, even realistic... even in a fantasy setting.

My fantasy stories contain less sex, both qualitatively and quantitatively, because sex isn’t the point of my fantasy stories: whatever “the plot” is, is the point. To the extent that graphic sex serves that point? Have at it. In my experience, it’s not that hard to get fantasy fans off (Keep in mind, that experience isn’t lit-based. Though my SF stories are the same way, and they’re well-received here).

Here at lit, otherhandedly, “the plot” often revolves around sex, without apologies. So hot sex scenes shouldn’t affect the pacing; they ARE the pacing.

Obviously I’m a Tolkienist from way back, but a bigger influence on me writing- and plot-wise were Robert Lynn Asprin’s old Thieves’ World anthology books. I enjoy stories of Gondor and shit, but I’d never be able to picture myself living there; Sanctuary? Oh yes. Very realistic.

I'm actually not familiar with RLA at all, should look into it. Must admit that Tolkien never quite stuck with me, sadly.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've read a fair share of fantasy, but I have yet to write any full-blown fantasy stories. I'm daunted by the world-building that is involved. I'm slowly developing a concept for an epic virtual reality/science fiction/fantasy story in which real people are forced to go on an urgent quest inside an erotic fantasy/virtual reality world. It's still in the early stages, however, and I have many more stories I want to write, so I have no idea when I'll get to it in earnest.

I should add that, unlike some fantasy writers here, I prefer to write stories where the sex is central to the plot, rather than incidental, so I'm still trying to figure out how to do that in the context of an epic fantasy story.

 

[SimonDoom]

Nice to hear what people are doing! It's interesting how many fantasy writers are inspired to start by D&D, though I suppose that it's only natural, considering how emotionally involved you can become with the characters and stories.

Followup question:

How do you all balance plot and erotic elements? Or rather, how do you feel the two fit together? At least I feel that with fantasy, a lot of attention needs to be put on worldbuilding for a more complex plot to work, and that erotic parts kind of change the pacing a bit too much for the two to fit together well. Thus, my erotic stuff tends to get more simplified, simply to maintain a nice balance.

Also, what authors are you all influenced by?

I was the dungeon master for D&D games with my kids, so I expect that will influence my fantasy concept. The main character will have to engage in discrete quests to gain power and knowledge on his/her (probably a her) way toward fulfilling the overall quest.

To tie it in with eroticism, I may make most of the specific tasks and quests of an erotic nature.

The heroine in real life is naturally relatively inexperienced and innocent, giving the tasks more of an edge.

I loved LOTR but I don't think it would influence my story much. Tolkien is about as un-erotic as it gets. I'm thinking about something closer to the tone and style of Zelazny's Amber series, or Stephenson's Snow Crash, which havea more updated and smart-ass style that would work well for contemporary people plunged into a virtual reality fantasy.

Realistically, the only way this is going to happen is if I decide to start publishing chapters before finishing the whole thing. I imagine it will be novel length and would take me forever to write on top of everything else I'm doing and writing.

 

[RejectReality]

The nice thing about the readership is that you don't have to jam in sex. You can let it flow naturally. So long as the story you're telling is engaging, they'll happily accept long stretches of story with no sex.

You see a lot of comments in the category where they skim the sex to get back to the story.

As to influences, the big ones are Weis, Hickman, Feist, Eddings, and Salvatore. Plenty of others, but those are the big ones.

I've never read Tolkien, or even watched the movies. I don't know why, but I've just never had sufficient desire to do so, despite considering it umpteen times over the years while browsing bookshelves, discount movie bins, or flipping through streaming services.

When you're the DM, ( or at least, a good one ) you're already writing while you're running the game. You're creating characters, backstories, locations, plots... It's only a matter of formalizing it into prose to make the leap.

Nice to hear what people are doing! It's interesting how many fantasy writers are inspired to start by D&D, though I suppose that it's only natural, considering how emotionally involved you can become with the characters and stories.

Followup question:

How do you all balance plot and erotic elements? Or rather, how do you feel the two fit together? At least I feel that with fantasy, a lot of attention needs to be put on worldbuilding for a more complex plot to work, and that erotic parts kind of change the pacing a bit too much for the two to fit together well. Thus, my erotic stuff tends to get more simplified, simply to maintain a nice balance.

Also, what authors are you all influenced by?

 

[Voboy]

I'm actually not familiar with RLA at all, should look into it. Must admit that Tolkien never quite stuck with me, sadly.

Thieves’ World was an anthology EDITED BY Asprin. The stuff he wrote, some of which I’ve read out of curiosity, wasn’t the same.

Thieves’ World is a great example of a “used universe,” fantasywise. Nothing feels artificial. My guess is that Asprin did the world building and then recruited some of his author buddies (some quite famous) to invent their own characters within that world. It works better than you’d think.

What I like about it is the authenticity. So when you asked about “influence,” that’s what I took it to mean: I want that sense of authenticity in my work, too.

Interestingly, my publisher once had me take on another author’s fantasy character and had him do mine as a one-off, which sold very well... I did it, but it was hard to make it work for me. I found his character inauthentic. I still haven’t read his take on my character; I find I’m not terribly interested.