Often as writers we start with very primitive stories that evolve. But for me, the Phantammeron seemed to write itself, as if it had come fully formed and perfected in some believable universe who’s history I had simply tuned into. For I felt at times like an antenna tuned into some tale of woe repeating itself over and over through some spiritual air-wave that was broadcast to me by some unearthly signal from afar.
Towards the end of my novel, Phantammeron Book One, the main protagonist – the young girl named Ana – becomes lost in the dark woods of Phantaia. There she falls into a great black pit in the earth and finds herself in a large cavern whose center is filled with the putrid waters of a black pool. From this pool rises up the monstrous form called the Nothingness, who takes shape as a great cloud with many eyes peering down at her. As he transforms himself into many characters in the book (and future ones from new Phantammeron novels yet released) he begins to talk to Ana about the world and her place in it. And he reveals to her the Truth behind her own place in it. For he is introduced earlier in the book as an omnipotent being with vast knowledge of the world, its past, and its doomed future.
In the conversation between the Nothingness and Ana, I originally had that evil being threaten her physically at some point and she defeat its will over her. But as I started thinking about about the mind and motivation of the Nothingness in the Phantammeron I realized he had a much more powerful place in the novels and the history of world’s prior. And yet, as I was writing this narrative, there were new ideas the story revealed to me that went beyond the Nothingness, grander concepts which I had not seen before.
For the strange meaning of what I thought was the purpose of the Phantammeron was going to shock me over and over with what I called the REAL story behind the novel. It is then I remembered what the Nothingness revealed to me. That “cursed being” showed me many new Truths about the world and of Phantaia, writing his own words through me which I simply repeated to Ana and the reader. His words, his vileness, and power over Ana, the world, and the story suddenly made perfect sense to me. And so this section of the book was a pure joy to write.
Everything the Nothingness did earlier in the book to manipulate Ana and her father Agapor, even the Shadow and his father the Endless Night, all fit together like a perfectly completed puzzle, not a single piece of which was missing when I completed that section of the book. Everything after that chapter flowed like water through me and the story just completed itself so beautifully, blending into what would become Book Two later.
As Ana realizes who this giant formless cloud is, the Nothingness had played his genius intelligence against Ana by taking the form of her Mother, a cruel act to pull from her an immediate emotional response. Seeing her mother, An of the Dreaming Seas, Ana realizes it is a trick. But the Nothingness quickly changed tactics to reveal to her that it was his will and powers that saved her life earlier in the book, but also caused her father to sleep with her mother, their union giving birth to her. That then showed Ana how her whole life was but as a pawn to him. And that it was by his will alone that many of the events in the book even took place. This echoed so well with the “deterministic bent” in my novels, where Eastern ideas of Cosmological Fate play against Western ideas of Christian Freewill.
Even that concept surprised me. But what rolled out onto the page next shocked me even more. For the evil Nothingness had more to share. He revealed it was not him but the Evil acts of the people of prior world’s that destroyed them and that he and his flesh-eating brother were but themselves used by powers to further the temptations and doom of the children of the world. Had not Ana destroyed the Sacred Pool, herself? So had the Nothingness portrayed “nothing but the Truth”.
Freeing the Nothingness from being the true instigator of all Evil in the world, it also showed a really sublime form of illusion he portrayed to the reader, to Ana, and to myself. For that suggested some darker connection to our own Modern World and my belief that evil people might destroy it for their own greed if we are not careful. And it revealed the passive nature Evil can take in Humanity when we fail to identify much less defy it in ourselves. So true, I thought, is this idea of self-destruction in our world; the idea of the “shadow” in so many modern people today. Do we not set ourselves on a course for our own doom, at times?
But the Nothingness went on to distort that idea, lying to us all about his own culpability in spreading that Evil. He planted delusion in Ana’s mind further by telling her how her own father sold her life to him so he could destroy Phantaia, which was also a cruel truth. Revealing this horror fit perfectly with that earlier plot of why Agapor had been tricked by the Nothingness to trade his then unborn daughter’s life away to fulfill his own familial rage. And so, through cold facts and truth I realized the power of this dark being in my books, and yet how some darkness in me had forged this web of shadow that now referenced itself before my main protagonist. And so, I grew to both respect and despise the Nothingness after that. And yet like Ana, I would refuse to believe it.
This is what Humanity always does……strive to break free of its own evil nature, I felt, rising high above it to better the world, or collapsing into our selfish nature to destroy it. This idea, that Mankind is essentially “Good” yet filled with others that choose “Evil” – and that the war between them is eternal in the world despite the modern trend today to deny morality and ethics even exist – was my central message. For like her I held hope that Truth, and a sort of naive goodness in her, should prevail in some form in all my novels. Ana was NOT the Nothingness. She would never surrender to “Truth” but fight it.
And yet when the Nothingness told Ana at the end that if she released the waters into the Garden of Abrea the world would suffer some curse, he was being truthful. Yet, even he admitted to Ana he was unsure, frightened of the Sacred Waters she carried inside her. For they had helped doom the prior world’s children to their own demise, and many more worlds before that one.
He then gives her two doomed choices: Be spared and doom the world by surviving to release the cursed Sacred Waters into the world, or die in the black pool before him by drowning herself and spare the world its self-imposed curse. It is through these “layers” of deceit I saw how fantasy fiction can be so much richer than one dimensional tales of love, power, desire, or fame. I saw how books write themselves and yet new discoveries about our own life and its belief systems can be channeled through writing. And that some spiritual meaning comes from these conflicts our minds desperately want to portray on the page, even if some can never be fully comprehended much less resolved.
In the end you will have to read the Phantammeron to find out what Ana does at the end. But it was thrilling to write that narrative between young Ana and the vile beast called the Nothingness. Of course, I left hidden several other layers to the Nothingness’s motivations. I will simply say Agapor confronting the Nothingness earlier in the book with the dark ring is a clue to another dimension to the Nothingness in my books that will evolve very soon. So is the “dark queen” Ana sees in the Black Pool a part of some darker Truth I have not yet revealed, and may not.
In the end, however, the primary force in the World – the Sacred Pool – seemed to retain its commanding power and presence in driving all my characters forward in Book One. And it is that power that amazed me as all the subplots seemed to echo back so well to its mystery at the end of Book One.
But the depth of character I discovered in both Ana and the Nothingness showed me there would be much more coming from these characters and the plot in upcoming books. And having the strange tale of the Phantammeron become so much richer than I ever dreamed has motivated me beyond words to continue with the tangled web of fairy tale I’ve already outlined for the next series of novels.
For an even richer and darker tale takes form in the next book. I’m just curious what thrills and insights it will reveal to me, its hollow transcriber. For it shocked me to realize I wasn’t writing this book alone. Some dark piece of me was tuned into some grander spectacle of meaning in the Phantammeron. And that has now haunted my writing journey and is what motivates me to write the second and third books now, which are deeply plotted and outlined, but which I’m hoping will now become something much grander as the characters reveal to me their own deeper narratives.
– the Author
