Story Teasers

 

Eagled-eyed visitors to the Undelund Tales website may have already spotted the ‘Story Teasers’ section where each day a crop of short videos (hosted on YouTube to reduce latency) give insight into some of the characters featured in various tales.

The 'Story Teasers' replace the 'Voices of Undelund' section that once populated the homepage for roughly six months last year. The old "Voices" graphics were silent and static, and looked like this:

A video 'teaser' of Cora Winstanley from the story Bristlewurm, is as follows:

There are 93 videos being deployed over the coming weeks and six are displayed each day throughout any given month.

Tales with teasers include:

- The Oakmere Grynfang

- Tingle Toes

- The Crossing of Crocklemell

- Bristlewurm

- Meet Chompy

- The Duskwood Ribticklers

- Rogue Kitty

- The Bushgreave

These videos have been great fun to create allowing me to visualise and ‘hear’ the character’s voice in preparation for writing more stories.

I may incorporate additional characters and stories in the future; however, writing more stories is my priority. Whilst on the subject of writing, I'm putting the finishing touches to Don't Feed The Ferrets, Rogue Kitty, and advancing the draft of Cherry Pie.

Although it should be self-evident; the characters, places, people, magic, and monsters portrayed in the videos are entirely fictitious...

The teasers will be visible on the website until the end of August 2026.

My Story Cup Overfloweth...

Currently, I’ve 26 solid story ideas in the writing pipeline and sometimes one of the hardest tasks is choosing which story to write next. Some stories are more straightforward than others; however, the ultimate plan is to write all the tales in the pipeline regardless of their complexity.

Some ideas develop slowly, in isolation, or, as an off shoot from other stories, but some concepts land out of the blue, a case in point is the story Cherry Pie, a heart-warming tale, which is scheduled for release in late spring.

The idea manifested in my mind roughly a week ago when I woke at around 2 AM, and from ‘somewhere’ the details crystalised as I made notes on my phone; sleep had to wait as the idea poured in from some ‘other’ dimension.

Cherry Pie involves a character I’ve already written about, Myrsa Summersby, who is the main protagonist in: A Girl Named Latchford. The tale itself is very straightforward to write and so it’ll be the final piece of fiction I compose before I take a hiatus from publishing during summer and autumn this year.

The point I’m getting at (albeit in a long-winded manner) is that my creative process doesn’t necessarily involve sitting in a locked room with a blank piece of paper and not leaving until an idea forms; in my experience, creative ideas often spawn randomly ‘out of the ether’.

My own (completely unsubstantiated) theory is that maintaining an open mind without exerting pressure on oneself allows ‘raw’ ideas to ‘arrive’ in the mind without effort. Some ideas will at first appear weak or incomplete while others appear strong—and it’s up to us storytellers to then exert effort to develop the idea further.

Roughly 48-hours after Cherry Pie entered my mind, another idea landed (also arriving during the twilight hours) with the working title ‘Lucid Blues’ and involves mushrooms; now my pipeline is 27 stories long.

Although getting a good night’s sleep is always enjoyable, I’m eternally grateful when these ideas keep me awake at night; in my opinion it’s better to have an overflowing cup than an empty one.