Where stories come from is one of the great mysteries of the writing world. Often the formative idea can come in a flash of inspiration where you see a face, a scene, a battle or even just hear a whisper. The idea never really need come from anything even related to what you’re doing at the moment, but rises from some creative well within. Sometimes it can be impossible for an author to totally track back to the moment of inception for what becomes their finished work, mostly because that finished work may not bear any sort of resemblance to the original inspiration. But for Chamber of Origins, I still remember the drop that was drawn from the well many years ago that first touched the seed that would grow into the story I’m working on now.

This story began with the killing of Grendel’s dog.

High School was a very fertile time for my creative mind, with my writing and drawing and world creating going strong and wild. Most of my efforts were focused on the world of Sauria, but every now and then I would be forced to branch out into different territory, such as the day in English class when we were assigned to re-write the story of Beowulf from a different point of view. Most of my classmates retold the tale from Grendel or his mother’s point of view. I took a slightly different slant.

My story focused on the story of a member of Beowulf’s band, a warrior whose deeds were always out of sight and out of mind, whose boasts were never believed. During the climactic battle with Grendel, this warrior found himself outside the keep face to face with Grendel’s dog, which he slew in a might battle. But the key point here is that Grendel’s dog was an anklyosaur (an armored dinosaur with a club on it’s tail).

This story, combined with my theory that dinosaurs were the spawn of dragon legends and were killed off by medieval man, got me thinking about a new story. The story of a dragon slayer who’s life was consumed by the hunt and slaying of seven “dragons” that had slain his family. But eventually, as always, Sauria eventually came back in and ruled my creative thoughts, leaving this story to grow and mature in the fields at the back of my mind.

Nine or ten years would pass, before the idea would find itself ripening, blooming from single thought and concept to fully fledged world.

But that tale is for next time.

Speaking of which, I won’t be here for next week, as many of us will be taking the week of Christmas off. Look for my next post and the continuation of this story to be on January 2nd.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a rockin’ New Year!