World Fantasy Convention comes to Brighton

Richard's next fantasy novel New Rock New Rules will be launched at the event. More details on richardsparks.com and worldfantasy2025.co.uk

The London-born opera librettist published his debut novel New Rock New Role to great acclaim in 2023, the natural progression after years as a hard-core RPG gamer. As he says, the idea for the books just fell out of the sky. Sequels have followed New Rock New Realm and New Rock New Rules. The fourth book will be New Rock New Roads.

The fact that the convention is happening in Brighton is a big coup for the city, Richard says. Plus the fact these conventions are always great fun: “It is a convention for people that are into fantasy and you get costumes and designs and books and fans. Star Trek will have its own particular following, but you get the great and the good and the useless and the unimportant from all over the world who all come together to have a really good time. I've been to these conventions before and loved them.”

As for why fantasy is so popular, Richard believes it was T S Eliot who explained it all when he said humankind cannot bear very much reality: “It's the excitement. It is the unknown. You don't know what is going to happen but with fantasy, if it is well written, then you have a beginning and a middle and an end and you learn something. In the end fantasy is a way to explain this world. The stories are fantasy but there is always a cross-over, just as there is with so much literature. You think of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and there is an element of fantasy in there, what they call magical realism. And then you think of Beowulf and you've got a dragon with the horde of gold and you've got a monster. How Tolkien is that! How Wagner is that!

“Fantasy holds up a fantastic mirror to ourselves just as horror holds up a distorting mirror to ourselves. You put your hero through the mangle but actually in my books there is a lot of comedy. I am a recovering comedy writer and when funny things happen, you can't help but let them happen and come through in the book. Actually the comedy is the point of difference with my books because a lot of fantasy writers don't approve of comedy. When I finished the first book I sent it to my agent and she said this is what people are looking for and let's take it to market. She gave the usual pitch, that it was entertaining fantasy but there was a pause at the end of the line and the response was but ‘We take fantasy very seriously!”

For Richard, however, the comedy is a key part: “I started writing these books in 2019. It fell from the sky and hit me on the head like an anvil. I felt I had to write it. The first book took me a month to write. I couldn't believe it. The second book took me five months.

“I had always loved computer games and I was a massive multiplayer online role playing gamer. I was in a group of 24 people. This was player versus player. You go out there and go to the other side. And I was galloping around with all these people from all around the world in my earphones and I was thinking what would it be like to be this guy for real and to go off into the unknown. The answer was that I would be completely useless. I've never held a sword but that's how I started.

“It was a natural progression. I've done 40 years of screen writing. I have learned the rules of structure and that has helped me very much. When I had finished it I hired an editor to help me make it better and then once the publisher accepted it, they did a developmental edit with their own editor and so the series began. There are four books but really it is one massive adventure but each book has a beginning, a middle and an end. I'd always wanted to write fiction but I didn't know what to write but then I found this idea. I hadn't known whether it would happen but now I have got my own universe play to with. But really my job is all about entertainment. Entertainment is what I need to do.”