Peek behind the curtains and take a look at the behind the scenes of Sanctuary-on-Severn ...
The year was 2015. I was in the third year of my undergraduate Creative Writing degree and enjoying a day off from lectures.
Really, I should have been thinking of an idea for my dissertation - a short creative fiction piece alongside an accompanying 'responsive critical understanding' (essentially an essay exploring how everything I had learned during my degree influenced the fictional piece).
But I had absolutely no intention of thinking about any of that on my day off.
I had been fascinated with post-apocalyptic fiction ever since The Walking Dead first aired in the UK five years earlier. So, instead of doing anything remotely productive, I decided to spend my morning reading a post-apocalyptic novel I had bought a few days before: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
It ended up being one of the best books I think I've ever read.
It was thought provoking, eerie, human, and heartbreaking all at once. I devoured the book in just a few hours and came away feeling deeply inspired ... although I wasn't entirely sure what for yet.
After grabbing some food, I settled in to play one of my favourite games: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
For those unfamiliar with it, Skyrim is an open-world fantasy role-playing game inspired by medieval and Viking-esque cultures, complete with magic, monsters, and dragons.
For some reason, the combination of The Road and Skyrim set the subsconscious wheels of my creativity turning.
As I wandered through Skyrim's countryside with my character, enjoying the scenery rather than following any particular quest, a question popped into my head:
What would a post-apocalypse look like if it wasn't set in the modern world?
Most post-apocalyptic stories take place in contemporary or futuristic settings. But what about a fantasy world?
Then, my long-standing love of history joined the conversation.
I stared thinking about different historical periods and how people living in those eras might survive various kinds of apocalypses - environmental distasters, extreme weather, disease outbreaks, even zombie viruses.
Eventually, my thoughts landed on one of my favourites: the medieval period. More specifically, on the Black Death plague during the 1300s.
Europe came frighteningly close to catastrophe during the plague years, and I began playing with the idea of an alternative historical timeline where the Black Death plague didn't merely devastate society, but pushed the world fully ino a post-apocalyptic state.
What would happen then?
How would people adapt?
How would communities survive?
And just like that, despite having absolutely no intention of thinking about my dissertation, I had stumbled across the question that eventually become the foundation of my novel:
How would people survive in a post-apocalyptic world during the Medieval era when things like canned food, electricity, and cars didn’t exist?
Now you know what inspired Sanctuary on Severn. Did anything surprise you? Let me know below 🙂
Keep your eyes peeled for more news on my writing here and on my Instagram!
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