Feb03
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Sep05
As we poise to leap into book 2, I thought it would be worth me explaining a bit more about what you’re reading, how we got to this point, and where we are going.
I first encountered Tom online about 7 years ago. He’d been playing with the Hopeless scenario for some time by then, writing the comic and doing all the art, which was time consuming. I eventually said I’d had a go at writing for him. The only reason I didn’t dive in sooner was my not having written comics before. Tom is an excellent writer and I did not think I could do any better. I’ve since discovered that while Tom is utterly brilliant at setting up scenarios for narratives, he’s less confident about taking them forwards than I am. To my relief, I turn out to be useful after all…
So I wrote him an epic, in the style of manga epics then fashionable. The type of thing where you have many, many books in a series and you linger lovingly over tiny details. We started looking around for a publisher, as a consequence of which, the idea of having a shorter thing or two as an opening gambit started to seem like a good idea. Personal Demons, and the book you get next – Inheritance – were born out of that process, and written as prequels to the original epic.
The main story line is about what happens to Owen and Salamandra when they are adults.
It looks like the days of the vast sprawling manga epic may be coming to a close. There’s also the issue of having one great big script, and needing it in book sized chunks. So at the moment, I’m going through the original epic and re-working it into book shapes, so that each one will have a stand alone story in it, while the big arcs still play out in the background.
Those of you who got on the egroup in the early days – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/copperage (we don’t use it much, but will send you notifications of big events) may recall the backstory about Annamarie. There’s actually a small novel there, and another one based on www.hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com. A Semblance of Truth occupies the same time frame as Personal Demons, plus some time to either side, and gives a much wider perspective of events on the island, as seen through the eyes of reporter Frampton Jones. You’ve seen him briefly in the webcomic, he’s the chap with the bowler hat who found Salamandra in the boat. Frampton is the one man band writing and printing the island’s only newspaper, The Hopeless Vendetta, which we used to put out as a weekly blog, before life got so complicated that we didn’t have time.
It being early days in the realms of publishing for us, we’ve no idea what will come out when after the first two books, but hopefully it all will and you’ll be able to journey with us through the epic plot arc. In sensible pieces.
There is a big story, and we do have it planned, but we are also listening and things people comment on do feed into the process – so we do really appreciate hearing from you. As ever, if you have questions, observations or the like, do pile in, and new book very soon…. (commence the drum roll….)
Aug22
The island of Hopeless, Maine, has been known to native peoples of the area ever since they started messing about in boats. Its several names in their languages translate roughly as ‘The place we go to only when we are young, stupid and trying to prove something.’
In the 13th century, exiled Irish monks who had set out to build an abbey on a Scottish island went hopelessly adrift, crossed the Atlantic, and found themselves cast ashore in this inhospitable spot. Not even aware of the serious navigational mistake, or the existence of the Americas, they set about their intended work, building their abbey and distillery on the island, ruins of which survive to this day. A small number of the sailors on their ship turned out to be women in disguise, enabling this early colony to survive for several generations. Never once did they notice that they were not in Scotland, none of them having travelled that far previously.
In the fifteenth century, Chinese merchant adventurers were shipwrecked on Hopeless, and despite efforts to rebuild their ships, were unable to leave. They did not leave any significant buildings, and it was only with the discovery of their burials that later residents gained some awareness of these predecessors.
In the early nineteenth century, the Founding Fathers arrived at Hopeless. Despite the evidence of previous occupation, they claim a special place in island history, having named it for an initial assessment of its resources, and come in sufficient numbers to make a viable community. The Founding Families were The Jones clan, the Chevins, The Frogs and the O’Stoats. Other families have later come to Hopeless, including the Davieses. Few arrive voluntarily, most are the survivors of shipwrecks.
For about a decade the island thrived thanks to the market for oceanic gnii oil. Oceanic gnii are far larger than their island cousins, and migrate along the coast from pole to pole at regular intervals. They were caught and pressed for their oil, and the silk of their balloons was used extensively. A proper explanation of the gnii will follow, but you see the small ones glowing and afloat in many of the comics’ pages. As the oeanic gnii died out, Hopeless’s brief period of affluence came to an end. Most of the more elaborate buildings date from around this period.
During the intervening periods, there have always been odd shipwrecks, occasional inhabitants, and escapees. Many of them have not lasted long – Hopeless does not offer a great deal of naturally occurring edible flora or fauna, so until deliberate settlement occurred, arrivals either subsisted on aquatic life and seaweed, or starved to death. Attempts at procuring aquatic life to eat would frequently result in individuals instead being eaten by said aquatic life. The waters around Hopeless are densely populated with life forms that are both hostile and unusual.
