New England Online > About This Site > Preface
Preface
New England Online is a website dedicated to the fictious Kingdom of New England. The site is the life's work of Chris Reardon, a public servant and writer from Canberra, Australia. With a history tracing back to 2001, New England Online has grown over the years to become an encyclopedia, a news site and multimedia presentation of New England and the ideas that drive it. Today, the website has over 400 pages on topics ranging from history, geography, politics and economics.
This is a very detailed piece in some places, and to the novice, it may seem like a massively over complicated work for what was originally set out as a fairly easy task. But without much of the detail that I have put in, the world that you are reading would not come to life. To me reality is about the details, and to make fantasy seem real or at least realistic, it has to be multi layered and extremely well detailed. I hope that what I put down here will give the reader the idea that what they are seeing is somehow real. I owe this particular fascination to detail to authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Neal Stephenson, whose works I simply adore.
- History
- Why
- Structuring
- Future Plans
History
New England Online first came to life back in 2001. At the time, I was a poorly performing student at the University of New England in Armidale. Instead of studying, I devoted much of my time to the internet and roleplaying. The local roleplaying club asked me to put together a series of "influences" for their World of Darkness
setting. At the time I chose to focus most of my time on the transport settings for the region, and this is where the New England Rail Authority came into existence.
After I stopped roleplaying in 2002, I thought very little of the idea for about eighteen months. When I did come back to writing, I began to think about creating an entire nation and from that other parts of the puzzle like the government and the history of New England came into being. Unfortunatly, it appears that the original version of the website has been lost, as I have had no luck finding the disk. Starting from scratch over the last three years, I have poured my heart and soul into creating this work. At times this has been a hard slog, for the real world often intervenes on me when I would much prefer to remain in my own imagined world. This, I have suspect, is the lot of many a fiction writer.
In the real world, much of the history of New England is about missed opportunities and unrealised potential. New England in 2007 is nothing compared to days past when the potential of great opportunity was sucked away by internal and external forces playing out their own agendas. Despite the rather bleak outlook that we are living with, when it came to composing the website there is so much information to use that much of what is written here is either based on real proposals or actual events that took place. I always have believed in a "reality check" even when composing fanciful fiction such as this is. If you are prepared to suspend belief for a few minutes, this site will provide you with an escape to a world which might have been but for the strange turns of history.
Why
At regular intervals people cannot help but ask "why?". I can apprciate why a person would question why I would devote so much time to such an obtuse piece of fiction that seems to have no financial outcome at the end, or any outcome except it's own existance. An explanatgion may lay in my own personality. I see the site as my place to vent, channel frustrations, ponder ideas and theorise. It is where I can build scenareos, catalouge the best and worst in humanity and spread my own very special gospel.
But if it is nothing else, New England Online is a tribute to my ancestral homeland which is a part of my deepest being. I love the rolling hills with sheep grazing among the rocks, with the fresh spring leaves on the trees under a warm November sun. I love the towns of brick and weatherboard, and I love the people, with their easy going manner.
Structuring
Putting together a site like this has involved a large amount of time and resources. I have devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours to get what you see up and running. As time has gone by, the site has also required a financial boost to make it look the way I want it.
Getting the information together has been a challenge, and is the greatest time consumer in making the website. Hours, days and weeks have been devoted at a stretch just to research and write out a couple of pages of content.
Future Plans
The future of New England Online is bright. In the coming months and years the site will continue grow, with new mediums explored to produce a site that is more engaging and more life-like. I want to bring into the story a whole range of different mediums, each of which I will need to learn and perfect before I can publish them. Some ideas might include video, audio, interactive graphics, short stories and maybe more.
Without further ado, I give you version 3.1 of New England Online.
