On The Subject Of Trolls Archives

A Week in Writing #6 – Finishing the audiobook for On The Subject Of Trolls

I actually completely forgot about this last week – it was about Thursday or Friday before I realised that I hadn’t done it, and by that point I might as well merge it with the next week’s one.

The last two weeks have been absolutely fantastic. I have made fantastic progress on the audiobook for On The Subject Of Trolls.

The third story in OTSOT – Fluncg the Indignant – was, as I’ve said many times, very difficult to get right (both in audio form, and the original text of the story actually). I expected Hluthg the First to be a lot easier, and it was.

I had already recorded all of the audio for Hluthg the First – I did it in two parts – the first many, many months ago, and the second fairly recently. It was an easier story to read than some of the others. So I just had to edit it. I did most of this the weekend before last. I went through all of the audio, and removed all of the takes of lines that I wasn’t going to use. Then I applied the various audio effects. Then I went through and adjusted the timings of all of the lines (an essential step, as when you take out the bad lines, you’re left with completely irregular timings).

I then listened back to it to do a final check. I found that there were a few lines I wanted to re-record – I thought I could do them better – so I did. This pretty much left the audio in a finished state – I just had to do one final listen of the whole thing, then add the music.

And that’s what I did this last weekend. I checked it one last time, added the music, and it was ready to go.

I also did Plolg the Common this last weekend. Well – there wasn’t really much to do. I had already recorded and edited the audio for Plolg the Common. It’s much shorter than the other stories, so it was quite easy to do. I just had to check it and add the music.

So both stories were done. I made both into videos, and they’re both going live on my YouTube channel this week. (Hluthg the First went live yesterday; Plolg the Common is going live tomorrow.)

So finally, after two years, this project is done. I could not have imagined, when I published On The Subject Of Trolls, that the audiobook would take so long. On the one hand, this is quite annoying. On The Subject Of Trolls is not a long book – how could it take two years to create an audiobook for it? On the other hand, there’s been a huge amount of trial and error involved in creating this audiobook. I have tried lots of different things in terms of audio setup, as well as just the process for recording and editing a long piece of audio, and so it makes sense that it would have taken a long time.

In the beginning, of course, I was much more focused on creating videos of these stories – not just videos where I read out the text – videos where the stories are actually performed. This is because I like the idea of the experience of watching or listening to these stories to be as full as possible. The trolls are also very physical creatures. But making these kinds of videos is extremely difficult in itself. They take an extraordinary amount of time to record and to edit, but then there are all the usual difficulties in creating a video on top of that, like lighting and colour grading (which I don’t do yet, but would need to in order for the videos to be really good). And if these videos aren’t perfect, it can really take away from the story.

I still want to do some videos where I perform these stories, but I think this might be better suited to livestreams.

I swapped to focusing on just the audio for the stories. But even this on its own has its complications.

At first, in order to try to get the best audio quality possible, I decided to try to record in a small walk-in wardrobe that I have. The wardrobe is in the middle of the apartment, so it has thick walls around it, but then another layer of thick walls around that. It’s pretty sound-proof in there – you don’t hear anything from outside.

However, the wardrobe is so small that you can’t sit down in it – you have to stand up. It’s pretty difficult to stand and perform an audiobook for more than about half an hour, so I had to record in half-hour blocks. This is quite impractical – it can take many, many hours to record even quite a short story – stopping and starting really slows you down. It’s a lot better if you can sit down while recording.

Ideally, you do also need to be able to see what you’ve recorded on your computer screen immediately. It makes it easier to tell if something’s going wrong. In that small wardrobe, I wasn’t connected directly to my computer.

So after several attempts at recording in the wardrobe, I decided it wasn’t the best way of doing it.

There was also a lot of trial and error involved in using the right microphone. In early attempts, partly because I was in that wardrobe, I used a small Zoom recorder that I have. I bought it a few years ago, and it can produce an excellent audio quality. But I realised, over time, that in order to get that good quality, you have to use the microphone in a very specific way. You have to be extremely close to it, and it has to be angled towards your face just right. If you lean away from it, or turn your head, or change the volume you’re speaking at, the audio quality changes. This is very impractical for On The Subject Of Trolls. (When I read the stories into the microphone – particularly the trolls’ lines – I do take on the ‘big’ physicality of the trolls – I move around a lot. The trolls also shout a lot.)

Eventually I swapped to using my Samson C01U condenser microphone. I’ve had this microphone for about seven years – it’s been very useful over that time. I had previously avoided using it, however (even though it might seem like the obvious choice) because the sound it produced didn’t really sound ‘audiobook-y’. The sound that it produced just sounded like some guy reading into a microphone. (Of course, that’s what an audiobook is, but there’s a certain tone and quality to the sound of an audiobook that that microphone just didn’t produce.)

It was only after a lot more experimentation with audio effects that I figured out how to get the audio from that microphone to sound like what you typically hear in an audiobook. The two key effects are both a bass boost and a treble boost – that’s the magic. I’m not an audio engineer, but I would guess that the microphone itself has its greatest sensitivity to mid-range frequencies, and less sensitivity to higher and lower range frequencies. So these higher and lower ranges needed to be boosted in the editing to compensate. Boosting the lower ranges gives a richness to the audio – it makes it sound like the speaker is in the same room. Boosting the higher ranges gives a clarity to the audio.

So after all of that I knew where I was going to record, and what I was going to record with, but getting the process right took even more trial and error.

When it comes to actually writing stories, my process is pretty well mapped out. First I have the idea, then I write an outline, then a detailed plan, then the actual text of the story, then I just keep doing editing passes until it’s finished. It’s pretty similar to what a lot of people do. But with audiobooks, I had no such process, and it turns out what you do can have a drastic effect on how long it takes.

One thing I’ve worked out is that it is generally A LOT easier to re-record a line than it is to try to record a line perfectly the first time. If you try to get it exactly right the first time, you’ll end up having to make several attempts at it. This then gives you A LOT more stuff to have to sift through when editing to try to find the best attempt, and this is what takes a lot of time. It might seem like going back and re-recording lines would take a lot of time, because you have to slot the audio in place, and maybe re-apply effects, but it is actually less time.

Along with this, every time you have to stop and redo a line, you lose some of the fluidity in your speech – the intonation won’t quite match between that line and the previous one, and the pacing might be off. That, in turn, means you have to make more attempts at the line to get it right. It’s circular. The best thing to do is, even if you make a mistake, just carry on – fix it later.

When it comes to editing, it’s tempting to try to do everything in one pass – to remove the bad takes, record new ones, and adjust the timings. This is quite exhausting. I now split it into several distinct ‘passes’. The first pass is just to remove takes that I definitely won’t be using. Generally after that pass is when I apply the audio effects. On the second pass I go through and adjust the timings, and it’s now when I’ll re-record any lines that I want to re-record. And then any subsequent passes are to check it.

This tends to be a pretty quick way of doing the process. And it means you only have to listen to the whole track a few times. These tracks can be quite long, so you don’t want to have to listen back to them dozens of times if possible.

So, as you can see, there has been a lot of trial and error. And it’s all of this that’s meant this first audiobook has taken two years. The next one should be a lot quicker. I may also put all of this information into a video.

So that’s been the last two weeks: a lot of success with the audiobook. I will, fairly soon, attempt to make these audio tracks into an ‘actual’ audiobook, and have it available on Audible.

Also, Friday is the First of October, and three years since the publication of my first book, Zolantis. The First of October has always been a special date. I am planning to do some livestreams over this weekend to celebrate.

A Week in Writing #5 – Two weeks in writing

I skipped last week’s ‘A Week in Writing’ post (not completely intentionally – I just kept putting it off), so this week’s post is going to be for the last two weeks. And why not? It’s my series, after all.

The last two weeks have been very productive, despite only being able to spend a relatively small amount of time on writing and writing-related projects.

The week before last, I did a good chunk of writing, and I managed to finish the fourth story for OTSOT 3 (which is going in fifth position in the book). This is great – after months of going very slowly with this book (for many reasons, which included getting distracted by other stories), I seem to have sped up again. It feels like I’m getting very close to finishing now.

I did also start on the fifth story for OTSOT 3 (which is going in fourth position in the book) the week before last, and I continued it last week. OTSOT 3 has now passed 20,000 words, and I think this book is going to end up being slightly longer than the other two. I suspect this fifth story is going to be quite long. If I remember correctly, OTSOT 1 is around 22,000, and OTSOT 2 is around 20,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one ends up around 23,000-24,000.

The ‘feel’ of this book is, I think, slightly different to the other two. (Similarly, I think the ‘feel’ of OTSOT 2 was slightly different to OTSOT 1.) I quite like this. To me, this suggests that each book is not just treading the ground of the previous books – they are each introducing something slightly different. I think this is good – I think this expands the world of the stories.

Also over the last two weeks, I’ve had tremendous success with part of the audiobook for OTSOT 1. The week before last, I went through the audio story for Fluncg the Indignant, and cut out all the bad takes. Listening back to what I had recorded, I still liked it – a good sign. Then last week (well, over the weekend just gone), I went through the track and arranged all of the clips – making sure that the timings between them were correct. I also applied all of the audio effects (normalisation, equalisation, et cetera).

I also added the music that goes at the start and end of the story. I was then able to listen back to the story in its complete form for the first time. I REALLY liked it. I thought it had turned out very well – not perfectly, of course – they never do – but really well. The voice, while not absolutely perfect for Fluncg, is funny and annoying – great for a short story like this – it’s entertaining, while also making its point.

And in fact I think this audio story might just be the best one I’ve made so far. It’s difficult to really say, but it might be. (That’s partly helped along by the text of the story itself – Fluncg the Indignant is shorter, with fewer details, than something like Throch the Cunning.) Spending all this time agonising over the audio has paid off, it seems.

The audio story has been exported, made into a video, and uploaded to my main YouTube channel. It’s going live on Wednesday evening at 10:00.

The audio story for Hluthg the First should be a lot easier – I’ve always known what Hluthg’s voice sounds like. I’ve already recorded the whole thing – I’ve just got to finish editing it (which doesn’t take that long, if I make myself do it – I just hate editing audio). With any luck I can get that out in a few weeks’ time (though I’ve said that before).

A Week in Writing #2

It’s been a slow week. Many things have interrupted my writing.

I did write some more in Project 201811 – only a few hundred words, but they were good words. What I wrote almost certainly won’t change much between now and the final draft.

This is something that I find often now. I can often write something just the way I want it the first time. Many of the stories in OTSOT 2 and some in OTSOT 1 were like that, as well as many of the off-series short stories. This is different to Zolantis, and all of the stuff that I was writing before that, where the text changed drastically between the first and last drafts.

On the one hand, I quite like that this happens now – that I can get things right the first time. It saves a lot of time. Editing single lines to make the language better is a pretty quick thing to do, but changing the structure of a story once it’s been written, or adjusting the emphasis of a plot point or character trait, can add a huge amount of time to editing, because there are just so many things that need to be changed if you do that.

On the other hand, sometimes I try to aim to get something right the first time, and this is not ideal. When something just happens to turn out right the first time, great, but when you aim for it, you can end up spending a lot of time trying to anticipate every problem you’re going to encounter trying to write the story, and this is not so great.

Despite not writing very many words in the last week, I did do something else that was very important.

I have been trying to do the audiobook for On The Subject Of Trolls for two years. I thought it would take a matter of weeks, but it has taken years. That’s in large part because I keep getting distracted from the project – it’s more fun to write new stories than to record old ones. But it’s also partly because making an audiobook is not as easy as it seems.

Getting the right audio setup to begin with is quite difficult. Microphones can differ quite drastically in the quality of the sound that they produce – it’s only recently that I bought a new microphone that produces a really nice sound. The room that you’re in has a big effect on the sound. I do have a small, walk-in wardrobe that blocks all of the sound from outside, and which has almost no echo to it, and I did try using that when I first started trying to make the audiobook for OTSOT. However, you need to be able to sit down when recording an audiobook – it takes hours and hours to record, even for a short book like OTSOT – you can’t stand the entire time – and that room was too small to sit down in. So now I record audio at my desk (that you see in the videos). That’s in quite a large, echoey room, but with a certain arrangement of foam shields, the echo is mostly blocked.

There are many other technical hurdles to recording an audiobook, but on top of all of these, I had a creative hurdle too. I knew what the voices of Throch, Gogog, Hluthg, and Plolg sounded like long before I published OTSOT. (In fact, I knew what Throch’s voice sounded like the moment I started writing the first sentence of the book.) But with Fluncg, the voice that I used in my head when writing the story is not a ‘performable’ one – it’s entirely abstract – a voice that cannot exist in the real, physical world. So I needed to choose a real one.

I have been trying to come up with a real voice for Fluncg for two years, and none of them have been right. But this week, finally, I think I might have done it. I had an idea for a new voice, and I spent a while analysing it, to see if it really contained the essence of Fluncg. (That sounds like a rather disgusting perfume.) Fluncg has a very specific personality: Fluncg is easily offended, Fluncg is overly dramatic and self-centred, and Fluncg is infinitely spiteful. The voice must match that, but it must also be a fun voice – these stories are intended to be fun. I think this latest voice finally gets the balance between all of those things.

I recorded Fluncg’s lines with this new voice in just a few minutes. All I need to do now is edit the audio. I hate editing video and audio, so I always put it off, even though it never takes as long as I think it’s going to. But I’m going to try to drive towards finishing this audio story over the next week or two – it has languished for far too long.

A Week in Writing #1

The start.

This post is the first in a new series on this blog. Starting a new series is a dangerous thing for me. When it comes to blog posts and videos, I tend to start series’ and then not finish them. Hopefully this one will be different, and I think the format will help with that.

The idea for this series is just that, every week, I will write about what writing and writing-related things I’ve gotten up to in the last week. It will be quite similar to a journal. (I do in fact write a journal too – I write in that every day, and have done for (almost) eight years – I was doing it before it was cool.)

The reason for doing this series is partly so that I have more stuff on this blog. I don’t do very much with this blog – I want to do more with it. But it’s also because, every week, there are lots of things that I’m thinking about with regards to writing, and making videos, and all of the other stuff, that no-one ever knows about, and I think this can make it seem like what I’m doing is quite erratic and disconnected. These blog posts should hopefully connect together the various things I do.

They’ll also end up giving a look behind the scenes of the stuff I do. In the past I’ve tended to mention this sort of thing at the start of videos on my YouTube channel. However, I realised that it tends to stop the video dead if I start out with a long and rambly explanation of how the video came to be and why I wanted to make it, so I don’t do that now. I think that kind of information is better on here.

So that’s the introduction to the series. Will I make it to week two? Who knows.

Now to the actual point of the blog post: what have I been doing over the last week?

The last week has been a mixture of zero productivity and maximum productivity. During the week last week, I didn’t do any writing. Over the weekend, however – specifically, on Saturday – I did loads. I wrote over 2500 words in one story idea.

It wasn’t in OTSOT 3, however – it was in a different project. It was actually a project that I had the idea for more than three years ago. I couldn’t believe the date on Draft 1 when I came back to the project this weekend. I was sure I’d had this idea maybe only one year ago. This idea’s been swimming around in my head for three years.

I have tonnes of new story ideas at the moment. Everything about my stories stays completely secret until they are published, of course, so I can’t tell you anything at all about this one, or any of the others – I can’t even tell you the possible title or the genre. But I’ve got so many story ideas now that I’ve done something on, and may continue with, that I’ve realised that I need some codenames so that I can refer to them. The codename for this project is simply going to be Project 201811 – a name from which absolutely nothing about the story can be determined.

But as I say, Project 201811 is one that I had the idea for more than three years ago, and started writing almost three years ago. All I’d written so far was the opening to the first chapter. On Saturday, I wrote the remainder of chapter one, and started on chapter two.

This story’s just been sitting in my head for three years, and in that time, I’ve thought about it a lot – developed a very clear idea of what happens in that first chapter. So when I started adding more to it on Saturday, the words just flowed onto the page. I’m very pleased with how it’s turning out so far.

While I can’t tell you the exact genre of Project 201811, I can tell you that it is slightly comedic in tone. I seem to have ended up doing a lot of slightly funny stories in recent years – OTSOT has a slightly funny edge to it, as do many of the off-series short stories. I didn’t intend to do this at all – it’s just by accident that a lot of what I’m writing at the moment is more humorous. At some point in the near future I will pivot to more serious stories again.

As for writing-related things that have happened this week, I have continued trying to do more on the audiobook for OTSOT 1. This project has hung around for ages, and I could rant for ages about it. The first two stories for OTSOT 1 have been recorded and edited – they’re on my YouTube channel – and the fifth story has been recorded and edited too, but it’s not online yet – I’m putting them online in order. I’d previously recorded about half of the fourth story too, and that had gone well. But the third story – Fluncg the Indignant – has been a massive problem.

I have not been able to get the voice for Fluncg right. I have tried many, many times to get it right – done loads of recordings of Fluncg’s lines. But whenever I get something that I at first like, when I listen back to it a few days later, I don’t like it. It’s never quite right.

I’ve been trying to get this story right in audio form for months, and it just isn’t working. It’s this story that’s been holding up the audiobook for OTSOT 1, and consequently the audiobook for OTSOT 2. I think I’d’ve finished both of them a while ago if it weren’t for this story. (The story of Fluncg was always a difficult one to get right – even in its written form, it took longer than the others to get right.) I’m tempted to just say that it’s good enough with the last voice I’ve used. At some point you just have to stop spending time on something.

So on Sunday, instead of trying to do more on Fluncg the Indignant, I just recorded more of Hluthg the First. That went astonishingly well – I just have to edit that one now, and it’ll be done.

So that’s been the last week in writing: productive, but nowhere near as productive as I have sometimes been.

About Magnathor the Forgetful and On The Subject Of Dragons

I’ve just published a new short story on my website, titled Magnathor the Forgetful. You can read it here.

This story is the first in a series of short stories called On The Subject Of Dragons, a spin-off series of On The Subject Of Trolls.

I’ve mentioned before in videos that I had plans for two spin-off series’ of On The Subject Of Trolls. This is one of them. (The other one has a title, which I won’t reveal yet, but it is highly guessable.) I’d normally make a video to announce a new series like this, but I find making videos rather tedious these days.

The stories in On The Subject Of Dragons will be a bit different to those in On The Subject Of Trolls. They will probably all be shorter, and they are lighter – unlike the trolls stories, they are not trying to depict an extremely unpleasant phenomenon on the internet (though they are still metaphorical). Because of this, I’ve decided that I’m going to release them one at a time on my website, rather than waiting to have lots of them and putting them in a book. (They’re so short, and I plan to do them so infrequently, that it’ll take a long time for me to have enough to make a book out of them.) Once I’ve got enough for an OTSOT-length book, I will put them into a book, which will of course just be called On The Subject Of Dragons.

Magnathor the Forgetful

from
On The Subject Of Dragons

a sequel to
On The Subject Of Trolls

as told by
Aelfraed of Cirneceaster

Dragons. People always ask me about dragons. They always seem to be far more interested in dragons than they are in trolls, but I think dragons are the much less interesting beings. Dragons are very annoying, of course – not annoying in the various ways that trolls can be, but still annoying.

Most of the dragons that are found in Wessex or Mercia are smaller. They can still breathe fire, of course, and their teeth and claws are deadly, but their strength does not come from their size. These are, of course, meadow-dragons. A meadow-dragon can be brought down with just one well-thrown spear.

Much more of a problem are the dragons that live in the west. These are mountain-dragons – far bigger, far deadlier, and far harder to kill. Thrulgor the Bothersome was a mountain-dragon – the biggest I’ve ever heard of (at least, in Albion – I’ve heard that there are dragons even greater than him beyond the seas). These dragons stay in the mountains most of the time, but every now and then one will fly east – they are learning that that is where men and women live, with cows and sheep and horses – and silver, which they prize above all else.

But of course, dragons are not annoying just because of what they eat. Dragons are perplexing beings, subject to whims that men and women may never understand.

This is a story about a dragon, whose name was Magnathor. Magnathor was a truly ferocious dragon – twelve yards high at the wing-shoulder. His scales were as hard as diamond – the largest four hands across. His claws were long and yellow. His tail was barbed. His breath could melt a steel blade in a second, and his roar could cut down a great oak.

But he was also rather daft.

One day, Magnathor came down from the mountains, and he saw a river that he liked. It was, in fact, the Tames, near Oxford. There was a stone bridge over the river – wide enough and sturdy enough for the dragon to sit on. The dragon landed on it, and he stared down into the water, his tail swishing from side to side. (The river near this bridge is quite shallow and wide, and there are many small rocks beneath the surface. In bright sunlight, the water glitters and glimmers, and I believe it was this that drew the dragon to the ground – they like shiny things, I think (which is, I think, also why they like silver, though it’s difficult to know – the minds of dragons are ever-impenetrable).)

The dragon sat there for hours, watching the river. After some time, a man, whose name was Aethelstan, and who travelled over the bridge most days, came to it this day.

Upon seeing the dragon, Aethelstan froze, for it was far bigger than any dragon he had seen or heard of before. He tried to creep away from it, further into the woods, but dragons have excellent senses of smell and hearing (and sight, for that matter). The dragon turned its great head, so that its large, golden eyes stared straight at Aethelstan.

‘Hello’ the dragon said.

Aethelstan felt as though he had turned to stone. ‘… Hi.’ he said.

‘What are you doing?’ the dragon said.

‘Err … I was … err … hoping to cross the bridge.’

The dragon blinked at him. ‘Why?’

‘Well … ‘cause … that’s where I’m going.’

The dragon blinked at him again.

Aethelstan blinked back.

‘Aren’t you going to cross then?’ the dragon said.

Aethelstan looked at the hulking, shimmering mass of dragon that sat on the bridge before him. ‘Well … you’re sort of in the way.’

The dragon looked back at the rest of its body and its tail. ‘Oh yes, so I am.’ And he lifted his tail off the far side of the bridge, and coiled it neatly around him. Then he looked back at Aethelstan expectantly.

‘Right …’ Aethelstan said, and he began to shuffle forwards again. He walked across the bridge slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements – dragons are easily startled.

The dragon watched him the entire time. ‘What’s your name?’ the dragon boomed when Aethelstan was right behind it.

Aethelstan nearly shat himself. ‘Aethelstan’, he said. ‘What’s yours?’

‘I am Magnathor. If you need to cross this bridge again, and I am still here, just tell me your name – I will remember who you are, and I shall let you pass at once.’

‘Oh …’ Aethelstan said, not relishing the thought that the dragon might still be there the next day. ‘Okay.’

Aethelstan continued walking slowly across the bridge, and the dragon continued watching him with big eyes, blinking every now and then. Aethelstan reached the other side, and walked backwards along the road into the woods.

‘Bye!’ the dragon said, and he turned back to look at the river.

‘… Bye …’ Aethelstan said, still half expecting the dragon to turn back towards him and pounce on him.

But the dragon didn’t.

The next day, in the morning, Aethelstan came to the bridge again. The dragon was still there. It looked like it had hardly moved – except for the swishing of its long tail. It still hung its head over the side of the bridge, so that it could stare down into the shimmering water.

Once again, the dragon sensed Aethelstan before he even reached the edge of the wood, and turned to look at him. Aethelstan felt much more confident in approaching the dragon today.

‘Hello, Great Dragon.’ he said as he strode onto the stone of the bridge. ‘It is I, Aethelstan.’

‘Who?’ Magnathor said, not moving his tail from across the bridge.

‘Aethelstan.’

The dragon pondered for a moment. ‘No I don’t know who that is.’

‘It’s me – I walked across this bridge yesterday – you asked me what my name was.’

‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’ the dragon said.

‘I walked across this bridge yesterday! You asked me what my name was, and you said you’d remember it if I came to the bridge again, and let me cross!’ Aethelstan said. Was this dragon trying to trick him or something?

‘Well that doesn’t sound right.’ the dragon said. ‘I think I’d remember if I said something like that. Are you sure you’ve got the right bridge? Perhaps it was a different bridge that you crossed?’

‘I think I’d remember which bridge it was!’

‘Well how can you be sure?’

‘Because it was the one with a great big dragon on it!’

‘Alright, there’s no need to shout!’ the dragon said. ‘Tell me your name and I’ll let you cross. I’ll remember what your name is and if you come to this bridge again and I’m still on it, I’ll let you cross straight away.’

‘It’s Aethelstan!’ Aethelstan said, exasperated.

‘Aethelstan, Aethelstan …’ the dragon thought out loud. ‘That’s quite an unusual name, isn’t it?’

‘No, not really.’

‘No, I think I’ve got it – I’ll remember – it sounds like “tree”.’

‘It really doesn’t.’

The dragon pondered for a few more moments. ‘Very well – you may cross.’

The dragon moved its tail out of the way, and Aethelstan was able to cross the bridge. The dragon stared at him the entire time.

‘Bye!’ the dragon said as Aethelstan walked onto the road on the other side of the bridge.

‘Bye.’

Aethelstan walked away down the road.

The dragon continued to sit on the bridge and stare down into the water. It may have seen some fish – dragons like fish – they can watch them for hours and hours.

In the late afternoon, Aethelstan came back.

‘Hello, Great Dragon! It’s me again.’

The dragon turned and stared at him.

‘… It’s me! Aethelstan!’ Aethelstan said.

‘… Who?’

‘Oh my god! You saw me this morning!’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘YES YOU DID!’

‘Alright! There’s no need to shout!’ the dragon said. ‘Are you sure you didn’t meet a different dragon?’

‘Yes! It was you! On this bridge!’

‘Well how can you be sure?’

‘How many dragons do you think I meet?!’

‘Well I’m sure I don’t know.’

‘It was you! I met you! Here! On this bridge! This morning! And yesterday!’

‘Yesterday?’

‘YES!’

‘Well I have no recollection of this at all.’

‘Look, both times you asked me my name, and you said you’d remember it, and if I came back to the bridge and you were still on it, you’d remember who I was and let me cross straight away!’

‘Oh that’s a good idea!’ the dragon said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘AETHELSTAN!’

‘Is that a name? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.’

‘You heard it about a minute ago!’

‘Well I will remember it, and if you should ever come this way again-‘

‘I go across the bridge twice a day.’

‘-just tell me your name and I’ll let you cross straight away.’ the dragon said.

The dragon moved its tail out of the way again, and Aethelstan crossed the bridge.

‘Nice meeting you for the first time!’ the dragon called out.

‘That was the third time!’

Aethelstan walked away down the road, and the dragon went back to staring at the water.

The next day, Aethelstan returned. He was hoping that the dragon had gone, so that he wouldn’t have to explain to it again how they’d already met. But he saw that the dragon was, in fact, still there – its blue scales gleaming in the sunlight, and its tail swishing from side to side as it looked down into the rushing water of the river.

‘Hello, Great Dragon. It’s me, Aethelstan … again.’

The dragon turned to look at him and blinked.

‘… It’s me … Aethelstan … do you remember? From yesterday … and the day before.’

‘Have we met?’

‘Oh my god! Yes, we have met! Three times! Twice yesterday and once the day before!’

‘Oh I didn’t meet anyone yesterday. Or the day before.’

‘Oh my god! Yes you did! You met me! Do you remember?!’

‘Well I’m pretty sure I didn’t.’ the dragon said indignantly. ‘I haven’t met anyone since I came here.’

‘THIS IS A VERY BUSY ROAD! I’VE PASSED ABOUT TWENTY PEOPLE ON IT IN THE LAST HOUR! HOW HAVE YOU NOT MET ANY OF THEM?!’

‘Such a quiet part of the country – untouched by human hands.’

‘You are sitting on a bridge that humans built!’

‘Oh gosh – I’m in your way, aren’t I?’

‘Yes! Yes you are!’

The dragon coiled its tail around itself again, and Aethelstan crossed the bridge.

‘Oh I’ve just had a thought!’

‘Let me guess …’

‘Next time you come to the bridge, if I’m still on it, tell me your name. I’ll remember you and let you cross.’

‘What a great idea.’

The dragon looked at him expectantly. ‘… What’s your name then?’

‘AETHELSTAN! IT’S AETHELSTAN!’

‘Got it. “Uhtric”.’

‘WHAT?!’

‘“Uhtric”. That’s your name.’

‘NO IT ISN’T!!!’

‘Gosh, where’s Uhtric then? He normally comes by here twice a day!’

‘So you have met other people then.’

‘Oh hello! Who are you?’

‘Oh my god.’

‘Do you want to cross the bridge?’

‘No!’

‘Sure?’

‘I just did!’

‘No you didn’t.’

Aethelstan just walked away.

‘Well it was nice meeting you, whoever you are!’ the dragon called out.

The dragon remained on the bridge for many weeks. He never remembered who Aethelstan was. Aethelstan became more and more frustrated. Eventually the dragon left of his own volition.

And so this is how dragons can be annoying. It’s altogether a different kind of annoying to the way that trolls are annoying.

An original story by Benjamin T. Milnes

New Project: A Dictionary of British Place Names

I have started a new project today. In short, it is a small web-app giving information on the etymology of British place names. I’ve made it a sub-site of my main website – you can view it here: http://benjamintmilnes.com/dictionary-of-british-place-names/#/.

I decided to do this project quite spontaneously this morning. The idea’s been floating around in my head for a few days or so. I’m normally quite reluctant to start new projects of this kind nowadays – I have a lot of projects – too many, really – and each new project takes time away from the others. However, this project is quite valuable for the world-building for On The Subject Of Trolls, and it is relatively simple to do, so I decided to start it.

Amazingly, I’ve managed to get it to a ‘finished’ state in just a few hours. Now, when I say ‘finished’ here, I don’t necessarily mean absolutely complete in all ways. I find it useful to distinguish between different kinds of ‘finished’. A part of this project is actually researching and writing out the etymology for all or lots of British place names. (I may not do absolutely all British place names – I may only do a few hundred or a few thousand in total.) This is something that is very difficult to do all in one go – this is something that’s better to do gradually over time, so I don’t include this in what I mean by ‘finished’. Similarly, with any web-app, there are often hundreds of features that you could program into it – I don’t include these in ‘finished’ either. With projects like this, I generally consider them finished when I have something that I can put online, that works (even if it only has a limited number of features), that looks polished, and that contains well-formed data (even if it’s only a small amount of data). In the case of this project, I have managed to create 11 data files for place names, create the compiler (which takes those data files and outputs a JSON file that the web-app effectively uses as its database), and create a polished front-end.

So the web-app is now online and available. It describes the etymology of various British place names. In future you will be able to search for place names that have a particular suffix or that have a particular element in them. There are other fun features that it could have too – like rendering a map of Britain using the names that places had in a given century. It only contains a few entries so far, but I will add to that over time.

This is a very fun project to do. I have liked etymology for a long time – I can’t remember when it was that I started looking things up on etymonline.com several times a day – probably about seven or eight years ago – but it has been a fascination of mine for a long time. Place names is an area of etymology that is somewhat lacking online – it’s fun being able to create something new that’s useful.

Troll Portrait: The Golden Goose

Not quite a ‘troll’ portrait, but you get the idea.

Troll Portrait: Clund the Obstructive

New Book Release

The sequel to On The Subject Of Trolls is finally done – it’s finally here.

And the title of the book (which has been going by the codename of On The Subject Of Trolls 2 for the last few months) is simply: More On The Subject Of Trolls.

Like the last book, this book is a collection of short stories, and there are five stories again in this book (this will probably be the format for all of the books in the series). The five stories in this book are: