D.M. Cain's Blog

Check out this link for an interview I did with the lovely roasted coffee bean:

https://coffeebeanzone.wordpress.com/...

Since early childhood, I've always been blessed with an over-active imagination. Stories and characters rattled around in my mind and I began to write them down in a (relatively) organised manner when I was around ten years old. I still have the stories I wrote as a young child and can vividly remember losing myself in a world of my own creation. I tried my hand at writing a variety of different tales - from short stories about daily, teenage life to horror and science fiction.

As a teenager, my amazing best friend and I created a world of fantasy and wonder. We met every day and created new characters, walked for hours and simply talked through battles and events. It became our own little project, which grew and developed over three or four years into a rich fantasy world. My friend grew up and moved away from dragons and magic, but I never did. So I continued the story and it grew... and grew... and grew. The stories remained inside my head and I didn't write them down for many years.

I began to write in earnest around the age of eighteen, when I came up with the idea for The Phoenix Project. I played around with certain scenes - writing the most exciting parts - until university, friends and relationships stole my attention.

Throughout my university years, I carried on with both of these ideas - the fantasy world and 'The Phoenix Project', dipping in and out of the stories and characters, playing with ideas as and when they occurred to me, writing paragraphs here and chapters there. It wasn't until I graduated and traveled to Japan to teach English that the fantasy world really began to take off.

Japan inspired me in so many ways and my imagination blossomed. The stories in my fantasy world stretched out to both the past and the future, and the timeline began to cover decades, then centuries and finally, millennia. I started to keep notes of the things that happened (it all became too much for my brain to keep track of!), but I rarely wrote anything as actual prose.

In 2008, I returned to England, depressed and dejected at having to leave the place I loved so much. I planned on keeping my head down, getting my teaching qualifications, then running straight back to the country I now called home. I never expected to meet Matt, the love of my life, in my dreary coal mining hometown, but there he was, dancing away with his friends in a dingy bikers pub, and he piqued my interest. He stole my heart when I discovered he was a talented writer and had actually finished two novels, where I had only dreamed of doing so.

That was it. The challenge was on. His support and encouragement gave me the focus to write properly, and I resurrected the old 'Phoenix Project.' We spent every evening writing, sharing chapters and critiquing each others' work. It was one of the happiest times of my life. We dropped everything and traveled across Europe via InterRail - Istanbul, Budapest, Krakow... We visited 14 countries and would spend hours and hours on rickety trains trundling through Carpathian mountains or idly floating along the Rhine Valley. And it was on this journey that I wrote the majority of that novel - inspired by the majesty of the scenery and the freedom of the open road.

We returned to England and settled into jobs. I became a primary school teacher, a job I adored, but which exhausted me daily. In the evenings I continued to write, and in 2011, heavily pregnant with my wonderful son, I finally finished 'The Phoenix Project.' I imagined that a baby would stop me from writing, but strangely I found his little face more inspiring than any of the scenery we'd passed on our travels, and I wrote more following his birth than I did before it.

But I had finished 'The Phoenix Project' - my everything, my passion in life, the book I poured my heart and soul into. I wanted to feel that passion again, that burning desire to delve deep into my character's mind and tell their story.

So I began to write the fantasy world which had existed in my head for so long. And that's how the Light and Shadow Chronicles were born. I picked a point in the centre of the timeline and focused upon Chaos - a character very close to my heart, and began to write his story. Two years later, 'The Chronicle of Chaos' was finished but I had barely scratched the surface of this immense world.

I realised I wanted to tell the entire story, and I chose another character and began to tell their story. 'The Shield of Soren' is still in progress and is likely to be finished in 2015.

As the release date for The Phoenix Project draws near, I am battling with a wide range of emotions about the book. I'm thoroughly excited and thrilled to finally be able to see my years of work go into print. But I'm also pretty terrified. What if nobody reads it? What if the few who do read it, hate it and give it 1/5 stars and it gets slated across the internet?

I'm sure these are issues all new writers deal with, so I can only cross my fingers, hope for the best and enjoy the ride!