I am so super chuffed! Today I found second-hand versions of one of my favourite books - Star Ascendant! - and the others of the trilogy that I have yet to read, that I did not even know existed until a couple years ago. (I know that it says Book One under the title; I wasn't paying attention at the time.)
Star Ascendant is the book that started my journey to aspiring authorhood.
Meet ten-year-old @kaelci. She lived in her own fantasy world to escape reality. Her mother was an alcoholic, her father was schizophrenic, and her grandmother who had custody at the time was an insanely religious Catholic. To the point she honestly believed Mother Mary would speak with her. Now that I'm an adult I believe she was schizophrenic also... which caused me worry for a while. If she had schizophrenia, and my father - her son - had schizophrenia, could I also inherit it?
Anyway! So. Lonely ten-year-old me. I would go to the library every week and indulge in book after book. My grandmother would drop me off in the morning and I would stay there all day, just reading. Closing time was 8-9pm... I don't remember exactly. But I do remember still waiting to be picked up at 11pm. In Penrith of all places. At least the 90's were reasonably safe, I guess.
Star Ascendant by Louise Cooper was one of the books that I borrowed during my last visit to the library before my grandmother stopped taking me... and, being a ten-year-old with no guidance, no structure, and no authority... it was never returned. I loved it. And it was mine. I loved it so much that I wrote my own little caption on the title page, something akin to:
Thank you Louise Cooper for bringing the Chaos Gods to life in my heart.
I wrote my own little fan-fiction of the story. In Star Ascendant we meet First Magus Vordegh... he's supposed to be a dark, obsessive, tyrannical leader whom everyone fears. I wrote a story where a girl - me - from our reality performs a ritual and gets sucked into this alternate reality, where the Chaos Gods task her with trying to ease the pain of the people... only, Vordegh becomes obsessed with her, corrupts her, and she becomes an evil worse than he could ever be.
The story I'm writing right now originated from that first fan-fiction... only, it's been twenty-one years since then and it's evolved a lot since I first began. Over time it has transformed into my own world with my own people, conflicts, laws, Gods... though it's only this most recent iteration of the story where I decided to not bring in someone from our own reality. Though I love the idea of the pathetic sad neglected girl from this world being brought into a fantastical world of magic that she ends up half-ruling over... it seemed too fanciful, and too close to my heart.
I think I will keep that one for myself.
So, anyway, I found these books today! I was going to buy them brand new at some point but I don't like the new covers they've dressed the books with, these old covers are vastly preferable! And I'm so happy to have my own copies at last!
Now I just need some free, silent time so I can actually enjoy these things. :D
