Introducing Chateau Clare

 

Chateau Clare Front Elevation

I spent the summer of 2023 daydreaming up and planning this story. As usual, there were many false starts and variations along the way. Still, from the beginning there was going to be one of the characters, and not necessarily the narrator, inheriting a large, long abandoned, house. A house with connections to ancient sorcery in an age where sorcery had long been outlawed and mostly forgotten. The "invisible girl," was always going to be in the story, and a scene in a small restaurant for tea on a spring day. I had decided that the narrator was going to be the assistant art director for the city's metro company. There was going to be a mysterious disappearance in the past that had implications which would play some undefined part in the story. All these elements made their way into the story, in some form or another. 

My intention was, from the beginning, to write a story that would be the polar opposite of the type of fantasy known as grimdark. My manifesto was: 

Have you grown weary of long, dark and grim fantasy epics? Tired of evil priests, ruthless kings, sinister queens, knaves, and scoundrels – intricate palace intrigues and endless wars? Are you jaded by blood-soaked tomes of battle after battle, death after death? Need a break from accounts of disembowelment, torture, rape, and murder? In short, are you looking for a change of pace, a different sort of fantasy? Look no further.

Moreover, I wanted to write a more literary styled story - not literary fiction, but a genre story that dared to tell an ordinary story of ordinary people living an almost ordinary life, that was written in a leisurely, with almost literary, lack of plot, much less action. A fantasy story without adventures, dangers, dragons, elves, or magic. In short, a story that thumbed its nose at the conventions of most fantasy stories. Clearly not a commercial story, but then why not? I have nothing to lose.

Mayfair Square on a summer's day

Now, I said this all before in my tease, so what is the story about? Well, let's start with the current blurb;

Chateau Clare is a leisurely paced, mundane slice of life fantasy novel set in a (mostly) post-magic, everyday Edwardian-era sort of world. The stakes are low, the company pleasant. In it Lan Teya discovers he’s the heir of a once slightly sinister and powerful Great House – a family he never knew he belonged to. With this inheritance comes the long abandoned, Chateau Clare of his sorcerer ancestors. As the new master of Chateau Clare, Lan reluctantly sets out to renovate the chateau, and in the process, uncovers not only its secrets, but a great injustice that had been inflicted on his immediate predecessor by at least some of the other Great Houses – a wrong that he reluctantly finds he must right. But at what cost?

As a slow paced novel of everyday life in a secondary, but semi-familiar world, Chateau Clare is filled with colorful friends, little mysteries and a hint of romance. It is ASMR fantasy at its best. So, if you’re looking for excitement, move along, nothing to see here. But, if you’re looking for a nice, pleasant read, Chateau Clare may be just your cup of tea.

The Gardens Boulevard on a spring evening

I make it clear early in the story that what is described as sorcery is actually advanced technology, much of which has been abandoned or outlawed some 1700 years before the story begins by a revolution of sorts known as the "Second Founding." I can't bring myself to write stories with magic, so my magic is always the Arthur C Clark's sufficiently advance technology that passes for magic type of magic. This world, like the Nine Star Nebula or the planet of Dara of Sailing to Redoubt, has been settled by slower-than-light spaceships from the Solar System of Keiree, Beneath the Lanterns, and The Girl on the Kerb. 

In this story, one of the three ships has, at least so far, failed to arrive, and the lack of its resources perhaps led to the failure of the advanced technological civilization to fully take off. In Sailing to Redoubt it was a great wave that destroyed the main settlement of Dara. In the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories we have our dissenting settlements, and in the Post-Solar Age stories, we have the great plague. By such devices I find a way to arrive at my favorite setting - a 1900-1930-ish world, with motor cars powered by electricity, building powered by solar panels, and, in this case, a city inspired by Paris. I always find a way to set my future stories in the past.

Autumn Avenue, Isle of Autumn

I view my writing as art. Of course writing and publishing is also a business, but at my scale of publishing, I don't really have to concern myself with producing a book with greatest (or any) potential to sell copies. I can produce the book I feel like producing, and that's certainly what I've done here. While I realize that this story is not likely to appeal to some, if not many, of my readers, I'm willing to accept that. Heck, it may appeal to a different set of new readers, or none at all. We'll see. The important thing is that I had fun dreaming it up. And when it came to writing, I had it so well in mind - along with some written notes to go on as well - that I wrote it from beginning to end in less than three months - at an average rate of around 1600 words a day. And, unlike my last two books, I had no lingering doubts about it when I finished it. Oh, sure, at some point you always have doubts about any story you write, but when you first finish it and feel good about it, like I did with Chateau Clare, it's good, no matter what those later creeping doubts. We'll see how other people find it.

I consider this to be my 2025 novel, but I expect to release it this fall, once my beta readers finish going over it. After they reported in, I'll set a firm release date. In my next update on Chateau Clare, I'll have some floor plans, maps, and info about the story, maybe next week. Stay tuned.