Author's Commentary: This Bright Lie

This Bright Lie

Names are always a strange thing when you're writing fiction. Sometimes the right name just pops into your head as you type; when you reach that point in the sentence it's there, waiting to fall into place. Other times it just won't come, every name you think of seems too mundane, too common or just wrong. I like the name Billy, I don't know why, I think I've used it more than once (if not yet on Xeroverse, then probably soon). That's probably a cardinal sin for a writer, to use the same name again.

I say that tongue in cheek, of course; there are only so many names, and especially if you write a lot of shorter fiction you will keep needing to come up with new characters. All of whose names need to be right...

This Bright Lie is about angels. It says so, right there in the third paragraph. I could have described them and not named them and people would have worked it out, but why make it harder on myself? I am kind of obsessed with winged things, specifically supernatural winged things, and angels are one of the big ones. There are so many interpretations, from a biblical warrior or messenger to a modern day spiritual guardian/ caretaker. They have so much resonance, human-like but different, winged, powerful, bright and yet when they fall they become the darkest of the dark, Lucifer himself was once one of the greatest of their kind.

They have such scope as a fictional thing. They come loaded with meaning but recontextualise them and you can play with that meaning, take it new places.

This Bright Lie really fulfils the mandate I set with the Xeroverse. All you need is there. That's the story. But it makes me wonder, I hope it makes you wonder too.