I wrote about 10-11 short stories within the Voidwalker universe after completing two full novels, one mostly complete manuscript and the other at a 170,000 words first draft. As some of you know from that improut AMA on r/fantasy, this potential series has been my baby for the past decade. It originally started as an urban fantasy series in 2005 about Boston politics, demons rebelling against hell, and existing in the real world, alongside the early versions of the magic system, the concepts, the factions, etc. One novel I wrote called the Lord’s Game, about a clandestine battle royale playing out in Boston, 1978 led to the demise of that setting.
At the time, Stephen Meyers Twilight series was immensely popular. Vampires, werewolves, demons, fae, most of what I had was along those lines but very much within my scope. Communist werewolves living in isolated communes in Italy, Germanic vampires owning an underground nightclub while competing against his werewolf rival, the Tuatha de Danu as some elven underground society, and the Drokan aka Satan’s rebels/Seven Lords of Hell. I looked over what I had and there was some good meat, but I knew the setting was too ambitious.
At the core, I knew what I wanted: the magic system, the Drokan, and the pluralistic conspiracies competing against each other. But I wanted to do it removed from Earth and everything else. Thus, the original Fateless project was scrapped and in 2011, Voidwalker was born. Most of the characters, concepts, and even some plotlines were recycled. I started Voidwalker in 2014, finished in 2015, and wrote a sequel/prequel called From Whence We Came in 2015-2016. Each book is standalone but exists within a thematic “trilogy”/plot thread. Each book builds toward an appropriate standalone story that ties together a larger arc.
Static Signals was written between 2015-2016. Two stories were rejected from about 8 major genre magazines. The stories themselves I don’t think are right for stuff like Lightspeed/Clarkseworld, they’re more character pieces/standalone chapters within a loose “story” about a nation burned to the ground by a naturally occurring phenomena within the setting.
There’s still a ton of typos, lore inconsistencies, names not matching, but over the next month, I’ll be revising/heavily editing them. The next batch of stories will focus on a collection called Land of Steel, which is about the often mentioned but unseen Linere/Arkaran continent.
Thanks for reading!
– Allan Bishop
This Life is Hijacked 