Within me there has always been a writer yearning to get out. I
remember writing my first “manuscript” at eleven years old. After
several weeks of writing, I declared to my parents that it was
finished. A friend of the family suggested, rather generously, that I
seek publication. Beyond acknowledging that, yes, that was the
ambition, the manuscript sat on a shelf in my bedroom for a few
years. Eventually, as I grew older, I decided it was juvenile rubbish
and threw it into the bin.
Hopefully, dear reader, you will not feel the same about this!
The desire to write never went away, and I dabbled with
articles and stories while studying at college. English was always
my strongest subject. Give me an essay to write and I was in heaven;
a mathematical conundrum sent me into a personal hell.
Educationally my background was weak, my grammar needed to
improve, and my spelling was poor. But I appeared to have a talent
to turn an idea into a good story. What I needed was time. I was in
need of seasoning and maturity.
I married young, only nineteen, to a beautiful girl called Claire.
We met at college, fell in love, and she has been my lifelong soul
mate. In fact, I will confess, without any intention of sentiment, I
simply could not bear life without her. We had been married only a
few years, struggling to pay the mortgage on a damp, cold cottage and
raise our first child, Jessica, when the writer within me resurfaced.
With the creative desire burning inside my soul, to offset the tedium
of daily work in a local factory (which was cold, wet, and thoroughly
miserable), I decided to write a story for my daughter. Song of the
Unicorn was born.
The original story was produced on a cheap manual typewriter.
Anyone who has used one before, compared to the mighty computer
word processor, will know what a terribly time-consuming process
it is! Anyway, I laboriously thumped away noisily on the typewriter
for several months, writing between my shifts at the factory, until
the manuscript was finished. Was it good enough to be published? I
sent the manuscript to a number of publishers, and the rejection
letters started to come back. It was deemed too short, or an
unsuitable genre for a particular publishing house. Finally a positive
letter came through, and my wife jubilantly declared that they
wanted to publish my work, adding they would be delighted to add
it to their titles. Joy was quickly followed by despair when I discovered
that they wanted an author’s contribution towards the printing costs. I
was flat broke and did not have a spare penny. As far as I was
concerned, the dream of being a published author was over.
Despondent, I placed the manuscript in a cardboard box and
placed it in the attic. When we moved house, the box was simply
transferred to the garage, and there it stayed for years. With the
arrival of our son, Jacob, I always intended to revisit the manuscript,
perhaps to read him the story that I had worked hard to produce on
that manual typewriter. But the daily demands of life—to earn a
living and provide for my family—continued. The manuscript
remained in the cardboard box.
It is very hard to describe the frustration one feels when a
desire to produce something creative goes unfulfilled. But looking
back, I am no longer resentful that Song of the Unicorn was not
published those many years ago. With the passing of years, I have
simply become a better writer. I have experienced life. So when the
day finally came, when the time was right to revisit the manuscript,
it was a moment of true pleasure.
I read the manuscript again while on holiday in the USA. It had
now been over twenty years since I had written it. What did my
older self think of my younger self’s work? It was fine, I decided,
needing little more than some grammatical tweaks and spelling
corrections. Or so I naively thought.
After completing my first science fiction novel called ANDROID:
EARTH, and with that particular manuscript safely in the hands of
my publisher, I set to work in earnest on Song of the Unicorn. This
time with a critical eye, I started typing the surviving hardcopy onto
my computer. In many ways I wanted to keep the wording of the
original manuscript intact. After all, it reflected the younger me, so
why change it? But I realised that the story could be so much more
than the relatively short children’s yarn that I had originally written.
The retelling of the Song of the Unicorn had begun without ever
really being heard.
So what did I change?
In the end, I realised it was almost as if I was going back in time,
visiting my younger self. I was able to broaden the story, add more
depth to the characterisation, and introduce some new players as
well. And I can report that my younger self would have approved of
these changes, happy to be guided by my more seasoned and
experienced older self. But be warned—the original gentle telling of
Song of the Unicorn is now an adult retelling, no longer a bedtime
story for young children!
One final thing before my introduction turns into a novella. I
battle with tradition and originality. I am not a traditionalist (or so I
kid myself), and I strive to come up with ideas that are fresh and
new. The foundation of ideas that formed the original Song of the
Unicorn intended to ensure that this tale was going to be different
from other stories of this genre. How? Well, my unicorns were
unique because they could “sing” through their magnificent golden
horns. I created new species and creatures, such as the da’leth,
glinphs, glissenbaks, and cleavers, and I resolutely refused to yield
to fantasy tradition and have a wizard in the story. But, like I say, I
kid myself. My mind created Mizlock and his temperamental
persona. Yes, I yielded to fantasy tradition. I realised my subconscious
mind had been at work, and Mizlock had formed out of some hybrid
of characters that were lurking in my imagination.
Maybe one day, when I’ve exhausted other projects, I may write
a prequel tale of how Mizlock was rescued by the young legionnaires,
Tergosa and Biserl, from the Analay’Sai Kingdom, and how his final
battle with his treacherous apprentice changed him forever. There
could be other Tales of Landfall, perhaps a book of short stories (a
flavour of these can be found at the end of the story). And it would
be interesting to explore the rise of the Glinph Empire in a sequel
book.
So there we are. What started out as a children’s story evolved
into an adult novel for those who enjoy this genre. But I leave you to
be the judge of that. What started out as a self-indulgent tale, to be
read at bedtime to my children, has, in many ways like them, grown
up.
It has been a long journey to the printed page so it is my
sincerest hope, dear reader, that you enjoy Song of the Unicorn.
Paul J. Ward
