The Nashashi and the Evil Terrible Suroknoshnin!

In the sixth grade, I went with my family to see a new fantasy movie recently released in theaters. We sat down in the semi-comfortable chairs at my small-town theater. This was back in the day before reserved seats and my mother was always adamant on showing up at least half an hour early to the movies. Then the movie began. Trailers came and went, but no advertisements, this was before even those days, and soon the production studios' titles were flashing their logos while a sweeping orchestra set the mood with ominous music.

I sunk into a fantasy world the likes of which I never knew existed. A great dark lord in black, horned armor sweeps a massive mace through men and elves alike. Orcs throwing their bodies towards spears and swords. A measly man cutting the fingers off the all-powerful evil only to later fall into the temptation of the evil’s power. I had never been sucked into cinema in my life as strongly as I did there. I didn’t know such cinematography and costumes and computer graphics could exist and seamlessly flow into a movie. I was terrified, suspended, thrilled, and moved as I watched a band of mixed-race men cross fields, fight black-cloaked fiends, pass through under dark and over snow-capped mountains, and traverse mystical forests. The Lord of the Rings changed my life.

Then I discovered this was a book written by some stuffy old linguist from the ‘40s. I listened to a book on tape and read along at the same time, unable to fully comprehend what weird old, flowery language the guy used. But I was enraptured. I saw the movie twelve times in theaters.

It was only a matter of time until I wanted to create a story myself. And with the powers of my sixth-grade creative self and my hyper-consumption of anime (from Pokemon to Cowboy Bebop, to anything my best friend could feed me) I was ready to jump in and write, write, write!

The story was amazing, undeniably unique, and even won an award among my circle of friends for the best villain name ever. Here’s the pitch, bask in its glory:

Ishami, a young farm boy living in a peaceful village gets his life turned upside down when he’s magically teleported to a distant island and obtains the Nashashi, a magical crystal forged by the ancient, locked-away dark lord of shadows, Suroknoshnin. Upon return, he finds his village has been destroyed and he is forced to flee into the forest to be pursued by black-cloaked Shadowors, evil dog monsters, and eventually teams up with a forest hermit friend, Nathai, and perfect female elf love interest (forgot the flat character’s name, my bad) to discover his lineage, access elemental magic, and dodge the assassination attempts from a random assassin tribe dude (for some reason) to face off the resurrected dark lord, Suroknoshnin, with awakened control of the elemental magics.

I filled three notebooks which read at a 3rd-grade reading level with the spelling and grammar skills of a squirrel on cocaine, but boy did I think I was a great writer. I went from someone who hated reading–you could count the number of books I’d read from cover to cover on less than two hands. I was the literary challenge of each teacher. The Lord of the Rings turned me into someone who only wanted to write. From there, I filled notebooks with fan fiction and my own creations–each one as unique as the first. Yet, my eyes were opened, I found books that carried my fancy and started reading more and more and writing alongside them, little by little, my writing improved.

I’m by no means a literary genius like JRR Tolkien. Through my creative writing classes, I always fell on the lower half of the bell curve, but I never gave up, and now, here on Vocal, amidst my friends and writing groups, and even to the queries I send out now, I consider myself a decent enough writer to hopefully garnish publishing. I’ve come a long way from The Nashashi and still have a good ways to go.

I doubt, however, that I will ever come up with a name as classic and ominous and evil as the dark lord Suroknoshnin ever again.