Ask the Author: Ty Arthur
Answered Questions (6)
Ty Arthur
I covered this one indepth for an Indie Wednesday feature through Bookwraiths! Here's an excerpt:
For me, grimdark is taking the uncaring nature of reality and injecting it into fantasy. Frodo doesn't always make it to Mount Doom with the ring. Sometimes he gets cancer instead. Giant eagles aren't always there to save the day – sometimes people die trying to do what's right, and there's no resurrection afterward. Suffering is sure to abound, and there aren't any easy answers in grimdark. Sometimes those who seem the most vicious or immoral might be working in the world's best interest. Grimdark subverts the escapism of fantasy, and makes it less clear from the beginning that the heroes will inevitably overcome the villain.
In Light Dawning, I wanted to focus on both aspects: the grim and the dark. Revolving around four people trying to survive an incredibly brutal occupation by an invading army, the outlook for all involved is bleak, and I worked hard to create a sense of claustrophobia. The walls are closing in, and hope of escape or victory is long gone. All that's left is to decide how you are going to conduct yourself with those few days you have remaining.
On the other half of the equation, I went with multiple interpretations of “dark,” some literal and some less so. Not only is one of the characters quite literally possessed by an incomprehensible entity of pure darkness – hailing from some void where light never existed at all and sane human thought has no place – but the entire cast is often “in the dark” so to speak about why the world is in the state its in, cut off from all outside news during three years of occupation.
Like most of my stories, Light Dawning starts with a kernel of truth, taking a real world experience and then translating that into a fictional setting with a horror twist. In this case, my wife and I went through two devastating losses in a row that left me in a despair so deep that I frequently thought of death as a preferable alternative. As a kind of catharsis, I needed to write a story bleak enough to match reality, and so “grimdark” was the only route to go. Much like with real life, the characters in this book are often cut off at the knees without warning by events they had no way of knowing were coming.
Read the full feature at https://bookwraiths.com/2017/05/10/in...
For me, grimdark is taking the uncaring nature of reality and injecting it into fantasy. Frodo doesn't always make it to Mount Doom with the ring. Sometimes he gets cancer instead. Giant eagles aren't always there to save the day – sometimes people die trying to do what's right, and there's no resurrection afterward. Suffering is sure to abound, and there aren't any easy answers in grimdark. Sometimes those who seem the most vicious or immoral might be working in the world's best interest. Grimdark subverts the escapism of fantasy, and makes it less clear from the beginning that the heroes will inevitably overcome the villain.
In Light Dawning, I wanted to focus on both aspects: the grim and the dark. Revolving around four people trying to survive an incredibly brutal occupation by an invading army, the outlook for all involved is bleak, and I worked hard to create a sense of claustrophobia. The walls are closing in, and hope of escape or victory is long gone. All that's left is to decide how you are going to conduct yourself with those few days you have remaining.
On the other half of the equation, I went with multiple interpretations of “dark,” some literal and some less so. Not only is one of the characters quite literally possessed by an incomprehensible entity of pure darkness – hailing from some void where light never existed at all and sane human thought has no place – but the entire cast is often “in the dark” so to speak about why the world is in the state its in, cut off from all outside news during three years of occupation.
Like most of my stories, Light Dawning starts with a kernel of truth, taking a real world experience and then translating that into a fictional setting with a horror twist. In this case, my wife and I went through two devastating losses in a row that left me in a despair so deep that I frequently thought of death as a preferable alternative. As a kind of catharsis, I needed to write a story bleak enough to match reality, and so “grimdark” was the only route to go. Much like with real life, the characters in this book are often cut off at the knees without warning by events they had no way of knowing were coming.
Read the full feature at https://bookwraiths.com/2017/05/10/in...
Ty Arthur
In 2013, when our first child died in the womb, I wrote a story called “The Trade.” It was my way of telling the world that I would have literally killed everyone I knew, and I would have done it with a smile on my face, if it meant we could have got back what we lost. I would have happily murdered every last goddamn one of you with my bare hands.
Two years later, when our next child died before being born, there wasn't a day that went by for months that I didn't think about the specifics of how I was going to kill myself. Every day I had to listen to our neighbors scream horrible things at their children through our kitchen wall. Why live in a world where people who don't even want kids get to have as many as they want, while people who do want children to love can't have them?
Instead of ending it all, I turned to to the written word again.
The problem was that there were no resurrection fantasies left to be had. I had lost all respect for fiction. There's nothing that can match the horror of hearing a doctor tell you that you've been head over heels in love with someone who had been dead and rotting while you had absolutely no fucking idea. In an instant you go from the top of the world to a living hell that words can't express.
You have to deal with that moment, from when there was a living, breathing thing inside your wife one second to a corpse of everything you held dear the next. From there it was waiting for the morning you have to drive to the hospital to have what was left of the joy in your life surgically removed while you uselessly sit in the waiting room, watching the world go on around you, utterly uncaring of your pain.
There's nothing the useless horror genre can provide that comes close to that sensation, when the bottom falls out – yet again – but even further along than before. There was no more catharsis to be had. This went beyond the realization that the universe is nothing but pointless chaos. I was no longer interested in making myself hurt less.
I didn't write “Light Dawning” to make me feel better. I wrote it to make everyone else feel worse.
Two years later, when our next child died before being born, there wasn't a day that went by for months that I didn't think about the specifics of how I was going to kill myself. Every day I had to listen to our neighbors scream horrible things at their children through our kitchen wall. Why live in a world where people who don't even want kids get to have as many as they want, while people who do want children to love can't have them?
Instead of ending it all, I turned to to the written word again.
The problem was that there were no resurrection fantasies left to be had. I had lost all respect for fiction. There's nothing that can match the horror of hearing a doctor tell you that you've been head over heels in love with someone who had been dead and rotting while you had absolutely no fucking idea. In an instant you go from the top of the world to a living hell that words can't express.
You have to deal with that moment, from when there was a living, breathing thing inside your wife one second to a corpse of everything you held dear the next. From there it was waiting for the morning you have to drive to the hospital to have what was left of the joy in your life surgically removed while you uselessly sit in the waiting room, watching the world go on around you, utterly uncaring of your pain.
There's nothing the useless horror genre can provide that comes close to that sensation, when the bottom falls out – yet again – but even further along than before. There was no more catharsis to be had. This went beyond the realization that the universe is nothing but pointless chaos. I was no longer interested in making myself hurt less.
I didn't write “Light Dawning” to make me feel better. I wrote it to make everyone else feel worse.
Ty Arthur
I generally have a rough idea for each individual scene and then just flesh it out as it comes naturally by writing. If its not flowing for a scene, I'll just skip to a new one. I always write with a soundtrack as well, and find that tailoring playlists to the core ideas and themes of the scene helps in tuning out other thoughts so I stay on target. Something futuristic and noire? Gost and Perturbator. Something dark and menacing with an occult bent? Code, Shining, and The House of Capricorn. Something sci-fi and disturbing? Augury, Blacklodge, and Ne Obliviscaris, and so on.
Ty Arthur
The unrelenting horror of real life coupled with a full bottle and an empty shot glass.
Ty Arthur
Been hearing good things about Ghosts Of Tomorrow, and that grim sci-fi cover is killer! Mostly at the moment though I'm looking forward to digging into some new RPG material, primarily the Stranger Things inspired Tales From The Loop and the new Bestiary 6 from Paizo, who rarely fails to deliver on the monster front.
Ty Arthur
Something way, way outside the norm from my previous work! While still nominally in horror, we're moving away from fantasy or sci-fi to sanity-blasting, mythos-laden... erotica! It's going to be a wild ride that will go everywhere from the deep, cold wilderness untouched by man to ancient Rome and even modern day churches. Get ready to be terrifyingly aroused (or arousingly terrified?).
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