The Author's Autobiography

Introduction

My entry into the world of writing was not a planned affair. Growing up as a child, books were something I would quite happily avoid, but that was mostly because I was heavily into thinking and theorising.

I was born in Hertfordshire, UK in the 1970s, but because of the nature of my dad’s work, we rarely stayed in the same place for more than a few years (I went to school in Scotland). He worked in the defence industry, specifically with the electronics of various fighter jets, missiles and helicopters. Being a brilliant scientist and engineer, he was heavily in demand, all over the place.

But his passion for electronics also surmounted in an interest in computers. Ever since I was three years old, I have used computers. By age six, I was programming them. To this day, I still do that, but in a professional capacity. Computer programming is greatly about theorising problems – you need to think about everything that it does.

As I discovered in my early 20s, there is so much more out there away from the computer screen. I have great passion for music and aspects of nature, especially forests. I also love to hear people’s opinions on life being heavily into theology.

Inspiration for Writing

I have always been a fan for rock music. But, that is such a generic categorisation. Learning to play the drums in my teens, I was inspired by many of the rock giants of the 90s. As my yearning for drumming grew, I sought more complicated percussion and moved towards much heavier metal. Today, all of my favourite bands would go largely unrecognised.

However, the music – especially the lyrical composition – made by some of these bands was a great source of fantasy or even religious inspiration. I can pick genres out like doom metal, death metal and black metal. But these descriptions do not give credit to the level of underlying detail that some bands put into their art, behind the loud guitars and shrieking vocalisms.

I have always wanted to compose my own music. I wanted to do something that told a story. This was my inspiration for writing: in order to tell a story, you need to write one. Around 2005, I started to consider what I had to do, and that was to write a story for the music. Forming some basic ideas, I came up with a simple plan, but upsets in my programming career shelved these for some time.

The Reboot

In 2008, I once again had the musical writing itch, but I remembered that I needed that story. Finding some really awful notes I jotted down before, I picked them apart and thought I could write something that sounded coherent. But the ideas didn’t really work, after writing and rewriting what I had.

But then, a burst of inspiration came in 2009 – the idea that a sun could be intelligent. It was this thought that started the musical story properly. I considered a short story of 5,000 words – originally titled The Lightbringers – would be enough material for the music. The problem was I couldn’t stop. 5,000 words became 20,000. 20K became 40K. By the end of 2011, I was over 110K words. It was no longer a story for music.

As you can see from the website, Changeable Worlds has become a monster, and I am happy for it. I hope you find inspiration from it and are able to think as much as I have about the entire project. I don’t write something unless it seems plausible.

Maybe one day I’ll write that music!

— Bart