Work In Progress

I'm on Pinterest and one really fun thing I've done is create a board for my work-in-progress. The work that is currently in progress is The Mountain King and I've been pinning photos on the board that are related to the story I'm writing.

Some of the things that have influenced the story are the folk tales of The Wild Hunt, specifically the fairy king called Oberon in modern times, known under other names such as Freyr the Elf king, Alberich or Ing, an older name for Freyr, according to Wikipedia. Much of this comes from old German folklore. I'll probably be posting some of these visuals on this blog as well.

I've always been fascinated with The Wild Hunt and the fairy king specifically. We read and hear of fairy queens far more often. High ladies of the Faerie often capture our imaginations but I don't think there is as much information on the fairy king. Perhaps that's my perception. I'm planning a trip to the library for research this weekend so perhaps that notion will be dispelled.

Anyway, the first time I'd read about the fairy king other than in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series (a great series BTW). In this series he is referred to as the Erlking and he leads the Wild Hunt, chasing after Harry Dresden. It would be a long time before I would think to write about this powerful fairy but it seemed to make sense to have this character be a powerful and dangerous hunter.

The Aziza will make a large appearance in the story as well. They are a fairy race from Africa and from the start they have been represented by a character in the series named Zi. Of course, I take liberties with Aziza folklore ( I don't know if Dahomey folklore involves changelings).


I have photos of mountain fortresses, forests and pictures of fairies and such. A nice mix of visuals that echo my ideas as I write. This is the first time I've used a visual technique to help with writing projects and it's a lot of fun. I mostly deal with words on paper - even going so far as to write my first drafts in longhand. These are just some rough thoughts. More will come later in the week.