I wrote my quartet of fantasy novels, The Omaran Saga, in the 1980s, and at that time I had never heard of Grimdark. I have to come clean and admit that even today I’m not that au fait with this particular brand of fantasy, although it sounds like something I’d have a ball with. My curiosity has been piqued, however, by the fact that I’ve seen several review comments in the last year or so referring to my Omaran quartet as a forerunner of, or an early version of, Grimdark. My gut instinct is that I’m pleased to know this, but did I create a monster? Well, Grimdark may have conquered the world of fantasy, but it didn’t take The Omaran Saga with it, my coffers being the residency of moths rather than doubloons. So maybe it’s time for a relaunch... or a few words about the books at least.

Like a number of other works of mine, The Omaran Saga initially came into being more by accident than design. I had written a young adult novel, Moorstones, which had been published as a hardback in 1982 by a small publisher in North Devon (UK), Spindlewood Press, and we were looking for a paperback publisher. At that time, George, Allen and Unwin (publishers of Lord of the Rings) were launching a new line of fantasy novels and were looking for fresh works for it.

As part of the promotion campaign for Moorstones, my local publisher had arranged for me to go to a large private school for girls in Manchester (some 300 miles away) to talk to a gathering of students about the book and writing in general. It was a very successful event and it turned out that only half the students who’d wanted to attend my talk had been able to fit into the school library (although there were a lot of them packed in there). So I was asked if I’d consider going back the following week, for a fee plus all expenses paid. As I was going through my Starving Artist in a Garret phase so I jumped at the offer. The absolute bonus was that I was then able to attend the annual British Fantasy Convention, held at that time in Birmingham, on my way home from Manchester. My fee and expenses paid for my rail tickets, attendance fee, etc. So I did the gig and went to the Convention, which I wouldn’t have been able to afford if not for the second Manchester booking!

So what? Well, by going to the Convention, I got to meet the fantasy editor at Unwin as well as the celebrated fantasy writer, Joy Chant. It was Joy who read Moorstones, and although Unwin didn’t buy it for their line, it had whetted their appetite and they were keen to have me write an adult fantasy novel. They didn’t have to ask me twice. No sooner had I got back to Devon than I began work on A Place Among the Fallen, the most ambitious book I’d yet undertaken.

I tackled the book the same way as I had my earlier saga, The Dream Lords (a sword and planet trilogy from Zebra Books, US) by drawing a map of my new world, Omara, and then working out chunks of its history, geography and main characters. In a book (or series) of this kind, I find it incredibly helpful to map this kind of detail out. Then I got my plot together, initially for a one-off volume, and began hammering out the work on my trusty manual typewriter. (Word processing? Never heard of it at that time. Not sure if it had even been invented.) Pretty soon I was enjoying myself, and I even wrote some of the draft chapters in longhand, with a pen. (Anyone remember them?) I specifically recall doing one chapter partly on a train, as my job took me 40 miles away for meetings at my HQ, and sitting in a waiting room on the station, scribbling out even more of the saga waiting for the train home. That’s dedication for you.

Anyway it paid off as Unwin bought the book (helped by a very supportive recommendation by Joy Chant) and, with a few revisions and tidying up, it began life, initially, as a hardback, in 1986.

A Place Among the Fallen was influenced as much by Tolkien as anything else, but only up to a point. It very clearly isn’t a LOTR clone, although a whole raft of them was starting to emerge (Brooks, Eddings, Feist, Williams, etc.). Even now it’s obvious to me, looking back through my book, that I poured a lot of imagery and ideas in there that had been sparked off by HPL, REH and a whole posse of Weird Tales type writers! There were warped sf elements and no shortage of horror, as well as typical “high fantasy” moments. Morgan Holmes, who many of you will know well as a champion of Sword & Sorcery, WT and other related fantasy, reviewed the book, saying “it’s as if Tolkien were writing for Weird Tales”, a comment which I’ve treasured to this day.

Is it a forerunner of Grimdark? Well, as I understand things, it could qualify on a number of accounts. One of the main protagonists in the Omaran Saga is Simon Wargallow, the Deliverer, who is a determined, almost fanatical purger of what he sees as evil in the world of Omara. As far as he is concerned, the end justifies the means, and if it takes violence and executions to set things right, then it’s his duty to get on with it. Part of the tension in the books is his conflict with allies whose approach is less aggressive, and over the course of the series he comes to evaluate his attitude and those of his contemporaries. Omara is a dark world indeed, its empires, sorcerers and strange communities steeped in twisted powers. You could call it a dystopian Middle-Earth!

Wargallow evolved from an earlier creation of mine, the Voidal, a wandering warrior, who carries indescribable power in his right hand, though he has no control over it as it belongs to the Dark Gods, shadowy beings who use the Voidal as a pawn in their punishments of recalcitrant gods, demons and others who have brought chaos to the many dimensions of their omniverse. Probably this domain is also worthy of being labeled Grimdark, as the nature of its terrain is intensely bleak, blasphemous and totally dystopian, its inhabitants bizarre and grotesque in the most nightmarish of ways. Its genetic origins are in a mixture of Moorcock, the art of Philip Druillet and HPL mixed with Clark Ashton Smith – so pretty grim and dark.

Wargallow, who, like his fellow Deliverers, bears a right hand cast in metal, in the form of a disemboweling talon, does exercise control of it, but uses it in the name of powers who would see the gods and religions of Omara exorcised. This is a kind of Inquisition, but not in the name of any god, rather it seeks to eliminate them. The extremism of a Grimdark cult for sure.

Taking a step back even further than the Voidal, my first character of any note was Galad Sarian, the narrator and main man in my Dream Lords trilogy. This was a sword and planet saga, much influenced by ERB, but also, because I was a big fan at the time, the black magic works of Dennis Wheatley. Add to that the amazing Dune of Frank Herbert, and you have a bizarre concoction that again has a few early ripples of Grimdark, not least in its twisted settings across a pretty outre solar system in which the main villain seeks to bring Satan from Hell to run things. Galad Sarian is a young, impetuous nobleman, determined, aggressive, utterly wedded to the cause of defeating the dark forces, no matter what. Time and time again his contemporaries warn him against violence, outright aggression and intolerance, but he believes absolutely that the ultimate evil in the Empire has to be brought down, no matter what it costs. This is pure pulp, of course, black or white with very little in between. I’m sure John Carter of Mars would have approved of Galad’s bloodthirsty approach, up to a point, but there would be times when he’d likely have turned away.

So it’s been an interesting, jagged road from the early crusade of the young Dream Lord to the slightly more refined justice of Simon Wargallow. And what about now – and the way ahead?

I have been preparing the 3 Dream Lords books for reprinting in 2021. They needed getting into e-manuscript form, for a start, so I’ve typed them up from the original editions, and I made the decision early on not to do extensive revisions, wanting to retain the spirit of pulp, both in the style and story line. I’ve removed a lot of spelling errors (proofreading pre-electronics was not what it is today!) and have not resisted the urge to revise some passages and expressions, which were either clumsy (hell, I was 19) or a bit too politically incorrect (things were very different in the 1970s). And I’ve added a lengthy intro, plus some historical notes about the overall setting of the series. And later (probably in 2021) there will be a brand new volume, set 100 years after the events of the original series, in which the devastated Earth will be explored by a new batch of characters. Will it be Grimdark? As much and probably more than the originals.

I’ve also been writing new Voidal stories, and there are plans to re-launch the original 3 volumes, with some of these recent tales incorporated into them, and at the moment I have sketched out what would be a new volume, the most bizarre one yet.

As for Omara, well, it’s not out of print, and it’s also available as an e-book and an audio series, but if a suitable opportunity arises and I dream up some new ideas, who knows? A new volume? Now that I’m conscious of Grimdark and its potential, that could be the fuel for the fire. I am currently in the process of putting together a story about a new, very dark, character, not connected to anything I’ve done previously, and it will be my first deliberate attempt to write a Grimdark tale. It’s going to be pretty hairy, so I expect to have a lot of fun with it. Hell, someone might even buy it, and then things will really start to fizz.