Novel · 6:49pm Jan 19th, 2019
Addendum: I was rather hoping to finish Virga with zero downvotes. Ah well. Perhaps it’s one of the serial downvoters who seem determined not to miss any of my stories.
Including the vignettes in the author-notes boxes, which quite reasonably aren’t included in word counts, Virga has crossed the line into novel length—my first. By the time the three epilogues are finished, it likely will reach that threshold even without the vignettes, albeit only just.
A while back I figured out something very interesting about Virga. My goal, as with most of my writing, was to present plausible, if not always realistic, behavior and actions on the part of modern, sophisticated nation-states and their citizens or subjects. Rather than hyperbole or breathless prose, I would rely on simple, straightforward narrative and carefully chosen vocabulary to convey thoughts and events. The so-called technothriller, as pioneered by Tom Clancy, was my primary inspiration.
But what I really did, rather to my own surprise, was put a contemporary spin on the sort of adventure novel one might have seen from Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, and others of that period and inclination. In a way that is entirely appropriate, since Ms. Faust constructed Equestria, and its world, as a setting in the midst of the Industrial Revolution—placing it in precisely the equivalent historical and technological period.
Even Virga’s format as what amounts to a sort of serial is similar to how so many of those exemplar novels began as installments in monthly magazines. Perhaps it reflects what we today believe to be more enlightened and egalitarian attitudes than many of those Victorian gentlemen are accused of holding, but a good yarn is a good yarn, and there are worse literary stars to follow.
Looking forward to seeing it finished! It'll go onto my kindle alongside my ERB, Haggard, and Wells stuff!
Actually Lauren wanted Equestria to be Fantasy Medieval the tech level we got was a compromise between her and her fellow writers who wanted to do a Western and are the ones who came up with Appleoosa. Then Hasbro who wanted to sell the Friendship Express train playset locked it in.
Hey, I'm always a sucker for the 19th century adventure romances (in the older term of the word).