Bestiaries are the Best!

Bestiary... let me copy-pasta this first...

bes·ti·ar·y

ˈbesCHēˌerē,ˈbēsCHēˌerē/

noun

noun: bestiary; plural noun: bestiaries

1. a descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone.

I do this because a friend of mine almost immediately asked me what a bestiary was when I said I was doing one for my ever-growing list of magical abominations. Can't assume this is common knowledge if even my nerds/geeks aren't all on board here.

If you told me a decade ago that I would ever care to do one, I'd have cocked an eyebrow at you and told you you couldn't pay me to do one. I'm an artist, sure, but I had this odd niche in my twenties where almost everything I drew was a female and possibly a fairy. Still, animals were not my thing. I couldn't draw them from memory, but I'm pretty decent at drawing based off a picture. When I say this, I don't mean the exact picture even; I could discern how to draw it from other angles based off of the anatomy. I just didn't have the exact form locked in without seeing it.

The first time I had to cave in was for a college project in character design. The task? Create a mythological creature based on two or more actual creatures. Source pics, an anatomical skeleton and at least three natural habitats it might reside in. I... was not happy. Like most things I was not happy about drawing, I did it anyway. Mostly as some snide decision to prove I sucked at it, even though I was always wrong and it was always pretty damn good.

Not bad, right? I'm glad nature doesn't actually make these horror combinations of alligators and pelicans, but I realized I didn't hate working with animal anatomy. Certainly knew I always loved human anatomy and I even loved the hell out of AP Science classes in high school, but I'd never really wrapped my head around enjoying the two in combination.

I didn't exactly unlock Pandora's box just because of that though. In fact, until I was making my senior portfolio years later, I didn't think to do it again. This time, it was an axolotl/hummingbird.

Again, years passed before I thought about it again. I can at least be consistent in forgetting things. This time, it's for UnQuadrilogy. I didn't start off intending it to be like this either. I love using polytheistic mythologies as a theme, so I set out looking to write a single novel about a man once more shaking away the perfection of gods by revealing their mistakes. Somewhere along the way, I woke a dragon, in the multi-layered literal sense. I also woke a four-book plan to align with the mishaps of the Four Gods in question. It didn't stop with dragons (in fact it didn't actually start there. Heh. There was a giant snake before that one, to be technical). UnSung came along and the little bastards started cropping up everywhere. And like most plans run wild, I realized that a new stage of planning was inevitable.

So along came the bestiary. I could say my years as a gamer was actually where this became a thing I was aware of. It wasn't fantasy books. I still remember my mom introducing me to my first fantasy book while we were sitting at Pizza Hut and I was clutching the Dragon Warrior manual for the Nintendo and going on and on about the story of the Dragon Lord. She told me I should read The Hobbit. Although I enjoyed the riddles between Gollum and Bilbo, it wasn't an immediate favorite. In fact, I started delving into fantasies and developed a love for Russian fairy tales. Bartek the Doctor and Finn the Keen Falcon were favorite short stories of mine. When I started expanding, it was actually Anne Rice that came into my view first. Beyond the Vampire Chronicles, I fell in love with Garth Nix's Sabriel and Sara Douglass's everything-else. I always loved dark tales with improbable romance and deep lessons.

I just wasn't into the sort of fantasy books where bestiaries were used. Tolkien was just okay for me and I still have yet to pick up a book by names I see often-- Brent Weeks, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson. I won't go into the fact that somehow female writers are often pushed into romance subgenres (even though men have proven to be just as sensitive/romantic/sexual as writers). I've done it to death and have nothing new to add, but needless to say, I've just never been into fantasy purely for the world-building, creature roster and sword swinging. I'm told that Sanderson heavily plans magic systems in his tomes and, after trudging through the House filler of George R. R. Martin, it sounds about as exciting as a dentistry manual. 

Don't get me wrong; I love planning the logic as much as the next geek, but I've become conscious that it makes for tedious reading. Everything needs a solid base. Houses also have impressive foundations, but their beauty doesn't lie in seeing what went into it.

Bestiaries are my new fun project, but it's not something I think anyone will actually share in the enthusiasm with. Who knows; I might have those kinds of fans that do. In that case, I'd love to share my post-publishing notes and side projects here and there. For most people, even the most devoted, nope. When I love a book, I don't even assume I'll like anything else they've done. It might be worth looking for the next in a series, but I don't wade through half a dozen 'bad' books before I give up-- I'll give it about .2-2 entire books before I'm done. I can appreciate different fans and fandoms and I don't begrudge anyone their success, but I honestly just develop the books that I would want to read.I used to love the thrill of discovery, but my level of patience started wearing thin.

Writing was largely about creating what I wanted to see. It wasn't some lofty decision that everything was crap. I was looking for an instant fix and I was getting a lot of great ideas. Like everything else, I labored to be good at it, but ultimately, I set out not just to enjoy something but to see if there's some overlooked aspect that I might enjoy more than I expected I might. Even if you think I'm really good at a lot of the things I do (and I'm not so falsely humble or lacking in self confidence as to disagree), my tastes are tricky to pin down. Nothing wrong with that-- Stephen King became more prolific over time. You can argue that success afforded that, but self-publishing has removed that as a luxury a writer has to earn. Now, we can publish what we want AND be poor... (yeah, it's not really an advantage, but I still love it.)

Maybe I should talk about what's involved in a bestiary. In short, whatever the hell you want. Does size matter? Eye color? Species names? Strengths and weaknesses? Essentially, it's just a character dossier for the creatures. In this case, there will also be humanoid creatures. Many of them can communicate intelligently with humans, so it would be a much shorter bestiary if I limited it only to the sentient, hostile, or purely animal sort. The ones that are main characters in those categories get their own profile considerations, but again-- this be on a needs basis, yo.

I might post a sample page once I have one complete. I've organized them loosely at the moment in the order they appear in the books. This might change. As a designer, flexible elements are part of the job, so I've made everything in convenient drag and drop pieces.

When it comes to my books, I'm a writer first and foremost. I don't actually have a set way of looking at my characters and creatures. Aside from the details actually pulled into the book, I have no actual 'canon' and those other details are flexible, sometimes changing. Very different from how I view floor plans in a previous post. I do floor plans to lock things in, but I do character sheets and bestiaries to play around with possibilities.

Up until NaNoWriMo, I'm throwing open my creative doors again and doing things on impulse and need. I'll put out a more detailed bestiary post later once I've fleshed that out. I'm spreading out the scheduled posts since they'll continue to be more scarce as I focus on other things. Even if they trickle to 1-3 a week, I'll still make an attempt to keep it up.

Onto the creative now!