My First Fan Interaction
My Writing Journey Vol. 8
Welcome, welcome. We’re back again continuing this journey. Last week I went through the process of writing my first playscript, and putting on the first scene, at age fourteen. This week, I’m back covering my self-published universe of stories. By now, I hope you know their origins. (If not, check back back through My Writing Journey posts. I’m going to start today with the anecdote of how I met my first fan.
It was a normal day at school; sometime in the afternoon we were having a sort of reading comprehensions lesson where we’d read through a story as a class, taking turns every however-many pages. I was saved from the rest of that lesson when a girl came in from the parallel class saying there was somebody that wanted to see me. Uh oh. But she explained and my teacher let me go.
It was such a coincidence really. I suppose maybe a thousand children around the world had read my books, but that one of them would start at a new school, would find out (through the school newsletter I suppose, or his teachers) that I, author of the books about his favourite Minecraft YouTuber, went to the same school, still seems pretty slim. So I, as the slightly gobsmacked awkward fourteen-year-old I was, went to talk with this boy I think four years younger. It was maybe a five-minute conversation. He didn’t know what to say. I certainly didn’t.
But it was extraordinary. This must’ve been around the time I released The Diamond Dimensions Origins: The Watcher, which I talked about two weeks ago. I say that, as I named a character after him. I think he left after maybe two years at the school, but it was humbling, every time I’d see him on the playground.
In August of 2017 I released Volume 4 of the main Diamond Dimensions series. I look back fondly on this book. After Origins, it felt different, more mature maybe, like I’d settled into the tapestry I was weaving across these books. I put in easter eggs to some of the long ago events in Origins, including characters only in that book. I tied in much more about The Watchers and how they work. It was cohesive, it was something now of my own, yes based on the videos still but novelised in a new way, with my complete own story, order of events, the beginning of Dan’s real journey to get home in a magical world known as The Twilight Forest.
In Origins I’d laid out the universe’s real big villain, and now I was bringing her story to the present, and working all these threads lead me to write the next book, my first short story collection, each dedicated to a different character and each spanning the timeline of this universe, filling in the gaps in backstory and telling new stories, like going back and bringing colour to the earlier threads of the tapestry. They were all, apart from two, prequel stories.
Those two stories were the real Volume 4.5 as they took place between Dan’s main adventures in those two volumes, whereas the rest brought everything up to speed. I gave origin stories of sorts to the characters back on Dan’s homeworld, and to all the friends he’d made since being stranded in foreign dimensions. The longest one was dedicated to the villain of Origins, picking up clues from Volume 4 and working back. Without realising I was really creating a lived history to this universe, with original characters not in the videos with big story connotations and impacts. (I think I sowed the seeds for her to actually be a villain who makes an appearance in Season 3 of Dan’s series. But there were many more stories to tell before I ever caught up there!)
This came out in October 2017, so, I must’ve written the stories quickly that Summer. Three or four of them I wrote on an end of year school trip. I have a fond memory of writing them early in the morning sunlight of the Spanish coast near Gibraltar, and of one of my classmates reading one or two out loud in our circle of camping chairs.
One of the stories I wrote there was kind of like a backdoor pilot to the third main series in this universe. Because of Mara The Watcher’s interference with Dan’s plight, she’d been banished, and the Order was changing under new leadership. I settled on eight names and brief descriptions for new recruits - but I won’t get too ahead of myself there. The story ends caught up to the end of Volume 4, with Mara leaving some final gifts for Dan.
When the print copies arrived sometime into the start of my year 10, I gave the only signed copy in existence to my fan, and watched with amazement as he went off to show it to his friends, then spent the rest of lunch break reading it on a bench. That was certainly a big motivator, I think, to finally put a face to my readers, and see that the stories I was writing, that I was now putting much more care and thought and planning into, actually affected people.
It was the only book I’d given someone other than relatives, my teacher and Dan himself at that time. Which brings me to something that’s been lacking. Above I included a picture of the last time I met Dan, over 6 years ago now. But between those first two times and that last one I met him three other times, and each time gave him the books I’d released. Dan was always so kind in talking to me about the stories, would always take them and flip through them with reverence. I think he learnt to recognise me, though who knows if he ever read them. Below’s a section dedicated to those times. Even if you would never watch a YouTuber play Minecraft, if you’ve got kids who’d like a fun stage show or graphic novel, definitely check out Dan’s projects I’ll link below (as well as my my books based on his projects, eh?)
We’re going back a bit now in my journey but 2016 was a big year for the man I based my books on. He started a world tour (maybe only the UK leg that year), and I was at the first show. Thanks to my parents for buying the VIP tickets which meant I got a goody bag, T-shirt and a chance to chat with Dan before the show. I went up in the queue and met him, gave him the gifts, took the photo and said goodbye.
But I hadn’t asked the story questions I’d wanted, hadn’t really talked to this man I suppose I idolised or had at least got to know as much as possible in an almost parasocial online way. For some reason, they let me go up and see him again. That was when I asked my question about The Watcher I think, which I talked about two weeks ago. And Dan had said in his vlogs the weeks before how nervous he was for this first show, so I actually asked him about that, and tried my best to reassure him that it would be a great show, that we were all here to see him, that he’d smash it out of the park or something. It was the most human conversation we’ve had. And he did smash it, and the tour was a global success. They sold out the Sidney Opera House!
A link to the tour film here.
It was a fun show involving gaming and Dan’s life story, with characters from his videos, and new ones created for the show including a real-life co-star. Of course my books were still set in 2013, but I did eventually make reference to the show and Dan’s graphic novel.
Dan’s graphic novel, released in October of 2016, had much more impact on my stories as it directly involved characters from Dan’s homeworld, in their world, with no restrictions even of the sandbox that is Minecraft.
It was great to see Dan himself expand his storytelling, and the character decisions and designs and lore of that book worked their way a little - in costumes and locations anyway - into the Back at the Lab sections I was writing. The actual events of the story (a fun sci-fi, evil scientist and magical crystal tale - with talking pigs!) are mentioned in my last story chronologically - but let’s try and keep on track.
A link to the graphic novel here.
Okay, back to my stuff. Volume 5 of The Diamond Dimensions came out in February of 2018, and its ending changed the universe, and the stories I was writing forever. It was a way to change the status quo, to explore the events of the rest of Dan’s first season that go in different directions. It led to the rest of the spinoff stories and was really the big climax of Dan’s quest to get home, before the final volume in the series anyway. If we carry on with the MCU Avengers analogy, this was my Infinity War. Unlike the MCU post Infinity War though, from that moment forward I had everything planned out… almost. I at least had the ending of the main series in mind, the final three volumes of The Diamond Dimensions, plus the spinoff series I’ll talk about next time.
In fact, both the second Volume of my dad’s Cave series, and Volume 6 of Diamond Dimensions came out that April. I must not have had much homework. Volume 2 of The Cave is perhaps my favourite, with the children on a quest from Saskia their Watcher to stop a machine in a pocket dimension that is distorting the flow of time. They see ice age predators, automatons, a medieval siege, and end up fighting their way through a modern city (what is a crazy futurescape for them).
Volume 6 of The Diamond Dimensions was a funny one. After the major multiverse-affecting event at the end of Volume 5, Volume 6 sees Dan cut off from his new allies and everything he’d built in those new worlds. He’s left in a dimension with talking animals. At this point he’s become a hero of sorts, so he helps them, and is rewarded in the end when they find a way to at least set him on the way of getting home, or at least, back to the world he’s been calling home for the past five volumes.
The thing is, these talking animals are the cast of The Lion King, and the villains he has to defeat are a resurrected Scar and an invading force of Outlanders (the Outlands being another dimension). It’s all based on the modification Dan added to his game for these videos, but with my own story tweaks to fit it to my multiverse and the story I was telling with Dan. It could almost be a stand-alone story, a Lion King retelling in a world where Simba died with his father and Scar, and where a human comes and with Rafiki’s guidance finds peace and brings the lion cub back to life, restoring balance. It was a lot of fun to write those characters, to insert my character of Dan into that world based on animation I grew up loving and quoting.
So, now we’re all caught up. I’d met Dan six times. I’d written six books with him as the protagonist, plus an Origins book, a book of short stories, and co-authored two other books in that universe. Then it was time to start a wholly original series, a story that had been brewing for awhile, and one that I’m still working on in some form this week! We’ll go over The Watchers next week…
Thank you so much for reading! Once again I’ll link the omnibus volumes that collect all 22 books in the universe that sprouted from Dan’s videos, if you fancy checking them out in any form. (The Cave and the prequel stories mentioned in this post are in the first omnibus, The Diamond Dimensions goes up to Volume 5 in the second omnibus while Volume 6 is in the third.)
Cheers,
Harvey