Most people who intend to seriously write have a burst of six months and then never mention it again. The ambition becomes a passing fad as the reality of proof reading, editing and the like removes all appeal. Having to write a book involves a mountain of work as focusing on one singular story from conception to refinement is an endurance test. And then there is Darien Meredith.

Anyone who knows Darien knows of his eccentricity. I don’t mean to imply that he is the kind of man with a shopping trolley full of left shoes and attempts to wear stray cat as a hat. This guy has an imagination the size of an obese elephant. I fondly remember a mock film poster he created based on the old children’s TV show Fun House. Anyone who can whirl up such a cavalcade of brilliance is a genius in my book.

With an extensive passion in the unique, Darien created Phantasia and decided on web serialisation as its vehicle. Moving away from the traditional publishing route he’s always had his mind set on a certain writing model that enjoys absolute freedom. That said, I don’t normally read web fiction; in fact I usually keep well away from them as the minority that isn’t graphic cross-series sexual encounters are most are hastily rushed pieces that are frankly boring. Phantasia has convinced me that web publishing can be a viable medium and with a story so engrossing you can expect it to hear more of it in the near future.

I sat down and asked Darien a few questions on how things are going and his general outlook on the industry in general.

Cheers for joining me today Darien. Firstly, I guess the burning question I want to ask is how did it all begin for you?

I’m not sure if there was a point when I considered I could make a career out of if it, but I’m also not sure if there was a time when I thought I couldn’t. When I was twelve I wanted to be an astronomer, when I was fifteen I contemplated video game design . Actually I might have thought about game design earlier than that but I turned from that route before I finished my GCSEs

Whereas some traditionalists opt for the process of write the story, find the agent then get published and into Waterstones you seem to taken an alternative approach. Your web serial Phantasia is doing well. It’s enjoying a high number of regular readers and rightly so. The most striking thing about your creation is that your movement into the digital medium has become quite the focus. It’s a very open and approachable site that you operate where you publically detail things that you’re working on, updates when a new chapter has become written and viewing illustrations that accompany the tale. Most writers a lot more secretive about their creations. What made you move into that direction rather than the traditional route?

Musicians do it, artists do it, so why shouldn’t writers? No one bats an eyelid when an unsigned band gets together, puts some tracks on MySpace, rents a recording studio out their own pocket, then releases their own album via iTunes and print-on-demand physical copies. When a writer does it, though, they’re accused of being amateur. Publishing your own work is regarded as the means of the desperate. Not going through the standard route of agents and publishers is frowned upon. It doesn’t make any logical sense, does it?

Absolutely. A writer who self publishes is seen almost as a cheat and is unrecognised by their peers because they’ve got the end result with little effort and zero criticism. So it could be argued that to be a success that you need to be chewed out by those who have been in ‘the biz’ for a while and tell you that ‘section a’ won’t work or ‘plotline b’ is a waste, remove it.

The publishing industry is horribly elitist but then again writing always has been. The printing press was regarded as a bad thing because the upper classes saw it as giving their esteemed texts to the commoner. Before that books had to be written by hand. It was a controlled industry. Only the social elite had access to it.

It’s interesting when you stated that random bands can put music up on a Myspace page and nobody notices, but when writers do it amateurish. Maybe there is a set bar for what is classed as success or big time. And I think that’s what refreshing in your instance as you are getting the success without any of this external influence. Your vision is your vision but when someone who deems themselves ‘more important’ and can get your foot in the door requires you to butcher your creation, would you say it’s a fair assumption to say that it can sacrifice the original vision?

I could never deal with someone else telling me “that won’t work” or “change that” etc. Give advice, yes, but not the sort of control that you see with publishers. Now I think about it terms with the music metaphor, the way the publishing industry currently works isn’t really that far removed from The X-Factor, is it? Hundreds of applications get filtered through ‘agents’, who pass the ‘best’ on to the next set of auditions, and so on. All that’s missing is the public vote! Instead you’ve got your literary Simon Cowell saying what will work and what won’t. And what decent musician listens to him? Either that or I’m just not very good at doing what I’m told.

You mention on your site that you have an interest in making hard copies of collected volumes of Phantasia available in the future. Would it be a safe assumption to expect that to translate to an e-book format?

I’ll release e-book versions alongside the revised collections. Possibly. I’ve got to investigate how e-readers handle images and the like first. I think e-books demonstrate how little the actual content of a physical book is worth. That’s not to say they’re a bad thing, mind, it just goes to show the state of the creative industry (just like how digital albums cost a lot less than physical copies). Whether e-books and e-readers will take off is another argument entirely, though. I’ve seen lots of gushing hype for the iPad but most people fail to pick up on the price, which is an issue with all e-readers (despite the iPad not exclusively an e-reader). The average person out there might buy a few books a year so why would they want to spend a three-figure sum to read them digitally? Until e-readers are dirt cheap, like mp3 players now are, I can’t see them becoming mainstream.

Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, recently stated that his advice to new writers would be to “live somewhere cheap”. The logic behind it was that if you spend all your time working to pay the rent then you’re not spending time writing. For those of you who do follow you and want to get into the web serialisation arena, what nugget of advice would you impart?

Ha! That’s pretty much how I plan to live my life, oddly enough! I don’t want to get stuck in a nine to five routine. I know it would kill my creative work. I mean I do about forty to fifty hours a week on Phantasia, I couldn’t fit a career in with that and stay sane! The luxuries of life will come if I earn them. I won’t work to earn them…I mean, if I earn them, they will come. Much like Aerosmith in Wayne’s World. As for advice for anyone wanting to get into web serial shenanigans, I would say “Don’t follow the rest of the crowd”. I tried that for six months, following their advice and mixing with their communities and it got me nothing. Maybe four or five readers. After then I started advertising on webcomics, and I get from that forty to sixty new readers a week. So advertise on webcomics too. As for the actual writing, a web serial is different to a novel. Writing a novel then serialising that is probably easier and more profitable than making a web serial. It’s the difference between writing a long-running TV show and writing a film. From my observations most people write novels and serialise them. They also usually involve vampires. Vampires and lots of sex because that’s what gets the readers these days, allegedly.

Well with any luck your words will have convinced someone to think twice about making another teenage vampire brooding sex drama such a thing and thus make the world a better place! Thank you for your time and I wish you all the success for the future.

If you want to see what the fuss is about (and let’s face it, who wouldn’t), have a wander over to http://www.phantasiaonline.com to catch up with Phantasia and the crew.