Beyond The Horizon is a story based around the Dungeons and Dragons campaign I have been creating and playing with my friends for almost five years now. Everything from the world to the people in it I have largely designed by myself, and I'm really happy with how it's turning out (even if it's taking a long while to get there.)
So I decided to go from homebrew home-game to book (something that actually exists in-universe, or at least to a certain point.) But the journey hasn't been intuitive, and it certainly hasn't been as simple as I'd like it to be.
Believe it or not, this monstrosity started as a school project back in late 2019, early 2020. We were given two weeks to do a presentation on whatever we wanted as a break from college applications. I sat down and wrote a twelve page story about the uncle of one of my NPCs going on a weird quest. This was about two months after I'd read Dracula for the first time, and it showed in the writing style. While I got a good grade on it, I quickly grew dissatisfied with the final product. The structure of the diary entries was unrealistic (sorry Stoker), and it quickly grew a lot of plot holes in motivations and characterizations. Not to mention I fleshed out the world a lot more during the beginning of quaarantine, so I felt like there was a lot more I could add that would make it feel grounded.
So I seriously rewrote it two years later. The entries are shorter, the characterizations are thought out a lot more, and the impact my players have had on the world has changed the way the story responds to the universe it's set in and visa versa. I won't say what exactly they did, that'll have to be discovered by connecting the pieces in the story, but it's changed a lot about how information gets filtered down to the reader.
This story is... odd to explain to say the least, especially in how much it's grown since my first draft. The main bit is quite easy- we follow a doctor named William Havenathy as he gets hired for a job that ends up being more than it appears. The framing, however, I have yet to explain succintly. I'll give it another attempt.
This story has had three publications in-universe, and as such has had three documented publishers. Scotland Farland, William Havenathy himself, and Eric Havenathy, William's nephew. Eric is our main voice of reason through the story, seeing as he's collected both other accounts to try and make sense of what's happening (they contradict each other a lot, and both are quite of the opinon that what happened in the story isn't real. Eric has memories of otherwise, even if evidence to prove his stance is very slim. There are a lot of inconsistencies here, and that's on purpose.)
So alongside a story of family, mystery, and adventure we have a story of family, mystery, and adventure. Eric's journey is an exploration of truth and an honoring what he sees to be his uncle's legacy. His uncle is of the opinion that this story is a funny coincidence and that Eric is distancing himself for nothing seeing as the story isn't real. Scotland Farland is nowhere to be found outside of his misinformation in the footnotes.
The footnotes around the story have the air of a tired academic conference mixed with a murder mystery, and it's something I'm really proud of. There are arguably too many of these notes, but I'm hoping to get the balance to calm down a lot more the more I get written. I'm only twenty or so pages in and we haven't even gotten to the plot yet, so I reckon I have time.