Interview with Karl Forshaw ~ Author of 'Dreams of the Sky'

Karl Forshaw is the latest invited writer of Unearthed Stories, and the author of our latest acquisition—Dreams of the Sky, a fantasy/horror short-story set in his world Luna Ruinam.

In this post, our lead writer (and editor of invited stories) Livia J. Elliot interviews Karl about his writing, his novels (for the series Luna Ruinam), and his experience writing an interactive story for the first time.

Livia: It’s great to finally bring one of Luna Ruinam’s tales into Unearthed Stories, but before we dive into writing, would you introduce yourself?

Karl: Hi, I’m Karl Forshaw, author of Renia (Luna Ruinam Volume 1) which was released in March of 2023, and of the newly released interactive short story, Dreams of the Sky. I’m a dad, a husband, my dog’s favorite human, a lover of music, and—of course—books.

L: When we spoke before, on your interview in my podcast, you mentioned that your inspiration for Luna Ruinam came both from books and games. Would you share which ones in particular and why?

K: I had a great time speaking with you on Books Undone! Thank you for having me, and yes, the world of Luna Ruinam was inspired by games from my childhood. In particular, Final Fantasy 9 and Ocarina Of Time.

During the Covid lockdowns, I started to think about all the things I had wanted to achieve during my life and, as a computer programmer, coding a game from scratch was one of them. I started working on a game engine during 2020 with a small team of artists, adamant that I wanted to create a love letter to the Final Fantasy games of the late 90’s—you know, the ones with the hand drawn backgrounds, where only the character sprites were in 3D? Luna Ruinam was the product of imagining what that world should be like, and Renia was the result of seeing a particular piece of character concept art. A bit of backstory became a short story, then a novella, then a novel, then an even bigger one. Lucky for me, writing a book was also a bucket list item, so I’m calling it a win.

L: There are many elements in your series that are just spectacular, but something that captivates me is how you balance the grimness of the plot with a narrative that is seldom explicit—which makes Renia and Dreams of the Sky so heartbreaking. How do you go about reaching this balance?

K: Thank you… I’ll take your word for it. It’s not something I try to balance intentionally. I think, when I’m writing anything, I’m striving for something that feels honest and genuine, so it’s not as if I would shy from the explicit if I feel the scene requires it—Luna Ruinam 2 has some pretty explicit stuff in it as the draft stands now. I take care with my writing not to force-feed the reader’s imagination, which is more of a reading preference of my own. I think, often it’s more powerful to be less descriptive and more suggestive, and let the imagination do what it’s good at, which is filling in the gaps. I’d like to think that this makes for more memorable moments.

L: Your books often discuss many themes around childhood trauma, loneliness and abandonment. Why did you choose this focus?

K: They are universal themes that affect us all. Childhood is arguably the most traumatic period in the human lifespan, we’re weak, dependent, ignorant, innocent… growing up is—and has to be—painful. Likewise, loneliness affects us all, and we rarely split hairs over the difference between abandonment and loss. For the most part, it seems to me that we all crave the same things, but fail each other whilst reaching for them. Some of us fail harder than others, some of us learn from our mistakes, but most can relate.

L: Writing for Unearthed Stories was your first dive into interactive fiction, right? What did you find challenging and what did you enjoy the most?

K: It was. Where do I begin? Not only was it my first foray into interactive fiction, it was my first short story, which was a challenge in itself. Selecting a story that was small enough to fit the brief, but also didn’t feel frivolous or unnecessary, was the first hurdle. I wanted to touch on themes that were important to the world building of Luna Ruinam as a whole, and offer keen readers something they could later use to put the pieces together, but ensure that the choices presented in the story would work with the mainline series of novels regardless of the outcome. I totally blew my word count goal many times, and had to revise my ambitions a handful of others.

Secondly, thinking of the project as a short story made me ignorant of a lot of the tools that interactive fiction can present. It wasn’t until I read your work on Reflections (also in Unearthed Stories) that I really grasped the potential for interactivity as a story-telling device.

In terms of what I enjoyed the most: being able to return to thinking about Luna Ruinam as a game, or an interactive experience, felt a lot like coming home. Mapping out different endings and thinking about the consequences of choices was a lot of fun. I also had a lot of fun experimenting with an evolving narrative voice that is affected by the readers' choices.

Writing interactive really changes the way you think about story. I consider it a real privilege to have been invited to write for Unearthed Stories, and hope you’ll have me back again if my brain spits out something worth writing.

L: Thank you, Karl! Can you share your socials (so everyone can find you), and any news on upcoming releases?

k: Thanks for having me. You can find my website at http://karlforshaw.co.uk/, I’m on X (Twitter) @lunaruinam, and likewise on Instagram under the same handle. I’m proving to be a slow writer, but I do have a draft of Luna Ruinam 2, which I’m hoping to release in 2025, and I’m doing a November write of a shorter novel right now, so there are things happening (I promise).

If you want to read/play Dreams of the Sky (and you should definitely be keen on doing so), you can install Unearthed Stories for free on any Android or iPhone/iPad devices, and read!