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Hi! {name},
Welcome, to my May musings. It's month three of these missives and true to form this one is not like the previous two (plus the mid-month updates). But I do want to swing around to what I was up to in March while I also jumped into writing this MUSEletter.
For a couple of years now I've been playing a sort of fan art game with my social media. I call it #MalazanMarch - the rule is simple, post a piece of Malazan themed art for as many days of the month of March as I can. They don't all have to be new pieces, some are revisions to previous works, maybe I'll finish something I started; but nothing beats the feeling of finding a piece to be suddenly inspired about and bring it to completion. Having it liked on various platforms is nice to, but there's something about finding sudden inspiration and seeing it through that I find most nourishing.
So what's Malazan?
According to the fan wiki: The Malazan Book of the Fallen [Ma-laa-zan] is an epic fantasy series written by Canadian author Steven Erikson. It depicts events in the history of the Malazan Empire and other nations that share its world. The series incorporates a vast number of characters (human, immortal & non-human). Unlike most fantasy series, the Malazan sequence mostly consists of single novels with their own self-contained storylines with only subplots and some characters continuing between volumes. The closest thing to a main storyline follows the machinations of an alien deity imprisoned upon the Malazan world and seeking to escape.
True life confession: I've never read the books, but I've listened to each audiobook nearly least a half-dozen times. I discovered audiobook several years back as an effective cure to road-rage during commutes. Soon after, they accompanied Milo and me on our long hunts…. walks. I discovered Malazan after looking for something as "meaty" to read as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Now I originally intended to go into greater detail, but have decided to save that for a related blog post. It's not done cooking so you'll have to let me know if you want to be notified in a mid-month update or would prefer to check back on your own. So instead, let me share with you some of the developmental sketches which lead to this year's main Malazan March piece. |
