Dear Reader,
Firstly I would like to say thank you for visiting my website. For making it here, because you stumbled upon it by chance, or by being introduced to you by others.
Allow me to introduce myself, my name is J. M. Matheis. (or at least that is what I go by)
I am happily based in Melbourne, Australia.
And depending how you look at it, I have been been either blessed or cursed with having an entire world/universe stuck in my head since I was young enough to realise it was there. People, places, forests, rivers, oceans, continents… Good, evil and every shade in between, playing out their lives and battling to survive.
I am sure some of you are wondering why I am posting my writing on my own website, the simple answer: Because I want to.
Some very few others may be asking: Why did it take so long? My answer: Because it did.
This question leads to another: What prompted you to finally do so?
For me it is complicated, but also very simple. I was asked a question that has not left my head since it was uttered.
‘Where is the rest?’
A few years ago, a language student of mine asked me in a forceful, frustrated and yet curious tone of voice: ‘Where is the rest?’
For a learning activity, I had raided my hard drive and pulled out a ridiculously rough draft. It was truthfully nothing more than notes. I presented it to my student to edit for spelling, punctuation and general grammar, as it had very little to none. It was a remnant, a first rough draft of a project for a degree I had studied years before.
I tell my student: ‘What rest? That’s it.’ (What was left of it)
I frankly was not ready for her response. She looks at me, rolls her eyes and slaps her hand with the two pages of stapled A4 sheet and tells me with an exasperated voice: ‘WHERE IS THE REST?!’
She was not happy with me.
In fact, for a very brief moment, I swear she seemed livid.
Approximately 5000 words of ridiculously rough-cut draft, caused such a response in a reader who devoured the literary greats of the fantasy genre and anything else I threw her way for breakfast.
To some degree, I was flattered.
But from then on, every quiet moment I had, those words came to me, echoing over a great distance, torturing me for not putting fingers to keyboard.
Finally, during an extended COVID-19 lock down, I thought to myself: Let’s see what I can do. So I tested myself and my long dormant writing capacity in the last four months of 2020. I walked the trails of the worlds that I had created again. I dipped into the lives of the characters I had breathed life into many years ago.
Those four months and 140,000 words demonstrated to me that I was finally ready to be serious about my writing. At the end of the year I put that test story down. On the 1st of January I opened up that 5000 word draft that I wrote on one afternoon in 2005 and spent a month of planning, note-taking and scene writing. At the start of February, 3 to 4 novel length stories were fleshed out.
Here is the first from the Tales of the Foxsyn Arcanum:
The Twins of the Aletere – Shadow of the Eclipse.
So here it starts, I will not let it die unseen as a regret. (Believe me, not getting properly started earlier is already a regret.)
Who knows where it will go?
Just know, I aim to satisfy myself and anyone else who decides to come along for the ride.
Sincerely,
J. M. Matheis
P.S. If you are reading this, you know who you are. And yes, I did embellish, just a little. Thank you for asking me the question and lighting a fire.
P.S.S. There are others I wish to thank, but I feel it best to leave that to a dedication.