Greetings

[Varamyrr]

Greetings to all,
My name is Varamyrr. I have been 'lurking' this forum for quite some time now and finally decided to register myself.
Long story short. In comparison to most of you guys I'm not a native english speaking person. I come from the cloudy & rainy land filled with chocolate and french fries with mayonaise we call Belgium. I work in IT as Linux system administrator at one of the mayor banks. Quite a stressfull job to be honest...
On a more personal note, I'm 27 years old and my hobbies are football, archery, films, games and ofcourse reading. The funny thing is, I used to dislike reading. I was one of those guys that went on the internet in order to find a decent synopsis of a book. Nowadays I'm reading books till there's no end. I only read fantasy though. I consider reading like 'a way out'. My favorites so far are: A song of Ice and Fire(hence the nickname), The Dark tower, Wheel of Time, LOTR + The Hobbit(Children of Hurin and Sil.. were a bit slowpaced) and Blood of Elves(+ The Last Wish) aka The Witcher. Personally, I even find it hard to 'outwrite' these great works. Someone told me "you read what you are and you are what you read" and while this is through, I hope I don't become a copycat of these authors. *fingers crossed*

The goal is pretty simple: write a fantasy novel(series) with a dark & gritty atmosphere set in a medieval world. Which I think is pretty standard stuff, but I'm a sucker for the genre. Hopefully I can get people to really like/dislike some of the characters that I have in mind. My project is in its early stages. At the moment I'm writing down "all the cool stuff" that comes into mind while at the same time I'm experimenting with Photoshop in order to make a decent map.
Being European, I have quite a big pool of information that I can access in the local libraries or just by visitting certain locations, but I'm mainly inspired by the whole William, duke of Normandy and the Hundred Years of War. That combined with some good old Norse mythology, religion, The Huns and Genghis Khan.

Voila, so far my intro and see you on the boards!

Kind regards,
Varamyrr

 

[dragonangel517]

Welcome Varamyrr. I like the sound of what you write. Hope to see you in the forums.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Welcome. I hope you find the support you need here to realize your dreams.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

Ah, I was wondering who was lurking, actually we have a few other people here who aren't native English-speakers. Welcome to the Scribes, settle in as you will. Oh wasn't Blood of Elves fantastic?! Characterisation was just spot on, I loved that book. Still waiting for the sequel to be translated.

 

[Chilari]

Welcome to the Scriptorium, Varamyrr. It sounds like you're pretty passionate about fantasy. I assume you mean real football (involving players interacting with a spherical object only with their feet) rather than rugby-with-armour, as I think American "football" should be called. I'm sure by now you'll have spotted the archery thread in the research forum, if you want to check that out.

Are there any good castles in Belgium then? I'm not that up to speed on medieval history on the mainland. Barely know it in Britain, come to that. Know of one French Chateau due to having been there several times when visiting my grandparents, who live in Brittany.

While fantasy is certainly fantastic, it's a good idea to read outside the genre a little as a writer because of the different themes and approaches presented in them. Historical fiction, I find, is the closest to what I write outside of fantasy, so I tend to read a lot of that. If you want gritty, Simon Scarrow's novels about centurions in Roman Britain are pretty good, for example.

 

[Endymion]

Bienvenu chez Mythic Scribes. J'espér que vous allez passer un bon temps ici.
Damn my french is rusty!

 

[Varamyrr]

Football in my region is the one with a round ball. (eg: Real Madrid, Manchester United,...)
There aren't really a lot of castles in Belgium still standing. There are a few renaissance castles but when I talk about a castle I want to see a moat, fortified walls with a gatehouse and a donjon(=not a keep).

Haven't noticed the archery thread so far, work and worldbuilding/notepad-ing kept me of it. But I'll check it out!
Thx for the tip though

 

[Varamyrr]

Endy,

Your french is quite good, without a doubt that you can make yourself comprehensible. Which is in my honest opinion the most important thing of all. Unfortunately for you, I speak dutch

 

[Rikilamaro]

Welcome to the Scribes!

We're glad to have you with us, no matter what language you started out in.

Let us know how we can help.