A Certain Predilection For Getting Dragons Drunk

Okay, so recently I’ve noticed that there are certain… similarities between the two series’ I’m writing. Not in story or character but some of the underlying ideas are the same. Fundamentally, this is not surprising. An author’s obsessions tend find their way onto the page somehow. And my doctorate — if it achieved nothing else — helped me to clarify my main writerly obsessions. I know what they look like now. I can spot them in a crowd.

Or I thought I could. But there’s something about writing Wizards that’s clarifying some of the more well hidden themes in Path. Like switching genres and worlds and characters makes the ideas themselves stand out clearer than their context. (And also gives me a whole new way to explore.)

The other day Rick suggested I name my laptop new Bar Drake or Drunk Dragon and I grinned and said, “That’s perfect for… hang on…” Because it works for both in completely different ways. It’s not something I did on purpose. It’s not something I was even aware of until we had that conversation.

Me: The fact that those names apply equally well to both books is a little disturbing.
Rick: Kandace is an author with a predilection for getting dragons drunk.

So I’ve been sitting around look at my writing and thinking, Oh a lot. And being glad I’m working on both series’ together. Because it makes it easier to see what I’m doing. And apparently what I’m doing is taking ideas that exist in a minor way in Path and bringing them front and centre to do something entirely else in Wizards.*

* I wrote a paragraph in my sleep the other day and when I woke up and looked at it I realised I could put the same passage of words in Path or in Wizards and both would make perfect sense, but the words would mean utterly different things.

And if you look at the fourth book of Path and at one of the later parts of Wizards (which you can’t, but go with me on this) they’re about very different things and yet somehow they still have this familiar feeling — this echoing darkness of fear and control and trust and horror. Which sounds horrible now I write it down. So… forget I said that.