My return to writing
I did not meet my wife by the leopard cage at the zoo, as in The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks, my favourite author. Our fateful meeting happened instead in a now-abandoned tea shop in Prague on my birthday in 2019.
It was not a longing for a new relationship that led me there, notwithstanding I was about to end the unworkable one I was in for four years. At the time, my life had become a narrow corridor of survival, culminating in a six-month wait for surgery. My only desire was for change, and I thought perhaps I could find some happiness in a hobby, such as returning to playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Growing up in the Czech Republic, in a challenging environment without opportunities for personal growth, I encountered many things later in life that most people discover in childhood. I first played D&D—or rather, the Czech equivalent Dragon’s Den, created by ALTAR in 1990 as a D&D adaptation—during high school. Ten years later, I tried the original D&D through an online chat. Both experiences were rather short, but they sparked brief moments of happiness, moments I found myself seeking for years afterward.
After returning to my home country from Japan in 2013, I found fleeting joy in subtitling and translating anime and manga, though I had to abandon it because of changes in copyright law. Soon after, I also had to give up penpaling, as shipping costs grew expensive. Stripped of these outlets, I was left surrounded by difficulties. I pushed through, eventually finding a D&D group in Prague while working in a sex shop.
So, that evening, I was not heading to a date but to a gaming session led by my future wife, Raine Stonewall. We met as fellow players, united by a shared passion for fantasy, psychology and the mediaeval era, and quickly became friends. There was no spark of attraction between us; we started as friends and grew closer, almost like brothers.
To explain, I am a trans man (FtM) and never presented as female at our gatherings, just as Raine, a trans woman (MtF), never disclosed her identity. She attended the sessions as a large, bearded man.
About three months into our acquaintance, I received a surprising question. We used to play out secondary quests and solo lines through chat to save time, and while writing had always been my preferred mode of communication, I had not written stories for nearly a decade. I did not realise how distinct my written expression was from my speech. So, one day, Raine asked,
“Is there something you haven’t told me? Are you a writer?”
Once I explained my background, Raine began suggesting that I turn our game story into a book series. I was firmly against it; I had no desire to return to writing. But Raine, being herself, continued to prod and cajole until I reluctantly agreed to try a single chapter, confident she would not like it and would leave me be.
The story was to begin with a character named Pepin, a dwarf raised in an elven village—a character I had no fondness for, played by the least popular member of our group. Writing the chapter was a reluctant task, and I named the elven village Lexaurrin after the anti-anxiety drug bromazepam, a reference to my low opinion of Pepin’s character.
To my shock, Raine read the chapter eagerly in the car beside me, laughing out loud. She then revealed that Lexaurrin had a long tradition of use in her family and that her grandmother had overdosed on it. Thus began our collaboration on the book series and my return to writing.
We completed the first volume in October 2019, though it took another half a year to publish it, owing to numerous challenges, which I will share in the next article.
Has a single meeting ever changed the course of your life in unexpected ways?
Do you believe in fate, or do you think we create our own paths?
Share your stories with me.
This is the fourth in a series of articles Writing journey, and I will post them regularly to slowly uncover the path of my journey as a writer. You can continue reading with the next one: Thorny Path of Book Debuting
Author
nathanielwonderful@gmail.com
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