Portal Fantasy

“I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit hole – and yet – and yet – it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The six-month mark has come and gone, dear reader, and we’re now firmly counting down to the release of my second novel, The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner. March is only a few months away, so I’d better start telling you about this book! Otherwise, you’ll have no idea what I’m rambling about. 

Over the coming months, I’ll do my best to explain to you about Gillion (the world of this novel), its antagonists (which some of you should already be familiar with), Sobriety (which is very important to me and this story), and Portal fantasy.

So, just what is ‘Portal fantasy’? Well, let me explain!

You see, here’s the thing: all of you already know what it is! You may not have heard the term before, but I’m sure many of you have come across it. Portal fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy fiction where a character or characters travel from their own world, often a modern-day world like ours, to a fantastical world, through a magical (or occasionally sci-fi) portal/gateway/doorway/passage, etc.

The most obvious examples of this are Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Wizard of Oz. There are many more modern examples, Neverwhere, Piranesi, and Palimpsest, to name a few, but I chose these famous stories because we all know them: Alice going down the rabbit hole, those annoying children going through the wardrobe to Narnia, and Dorothy flying away in a hurricane.

Of course, I’ve read some of the stranger and darker portal fantasy books. I had the idea for The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner after reading The Hike by Drew Magary. In that book, the protagonist, Ben, gets lost on an outdoor hike and finds himself in a bizarre world. It’s a very weird story with lots of odd characters, including a talking crab… so, as you can imagine, I loved it! I realised I could write something similar and quickly set to work developing the idea. The story came to me almost fully formed, so much so that I actually wrote the first paragraph in my phone Notes during a plane journey!

When I write a novel, I usually read something in a similar genre. This is the point where another major influence on this book, the one that shaped the writing style, came unexpectedly to my attention. I’ve always loved the film Hellraiser. It’s a wonderfully dark and twisted tale, created and directed by the master of horror, Clive Barker. It was only years after watching that film that I found out that Barker was also a writer of books. This led me to discover Hellbound Heart, the novella that inspired Hellraiser.

From there, I explored his other works, which led me to Weaveworld. Now, this is an incredible piece of fiction! Barker elevates portal fantasy to a truly weird level. The world is actually inside a carpet!! Barker writes such beautiful, lyrical prose, and I instantly fell in love with the story, along with all its dark and macabre elements. Although my novel doesn’t contain many dark elements (there are a few), Barker’s style has heavily influenced my writing and continues to do so.

Those two novels significantly influenced The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner. The story follows the unlucky Cecil as he strives to return to Westhallow for his conference. With his past nipping at his heels, an unplanned stop and change of trains thrusts Cecil into a series of strange adventures, where he steps out of the modern world of Gillion (a departure from the near-future setting of New Gillion Street, I might add) and into the fantastical and the strange via the stations on the route… Portal fantasy, baby! 

For my next blog, I’ll talk about the world of Gillion and how this novel relates to the others. The eagle-eyed among you might recognise the name Tabiner for a start…

The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner is available for preorder NOW!

Thanks for reading.

Elliot J Harper

Author of quirky SF novel, New Gillion Street, published by Fly on the Wall Press, the independently published weird horror short story collection, The Strange Tales of Gillion, and upcoming novel, The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner, to be published by Northodox Press.