Dedicated to Otzi

I’m not really sure when I first got the idea to write a book about a man who tattooed magical symbols on his skin, but when I first started work on the Painted Man, my friend Neil sent me an article about Otzi the Iceman.

Otzi is the original Painted Man. He was a man who lived in about 3300 BC (the copper age), and died on a glacier in the Ötztal Alps, near the border between Austria and Italy. The glacier froze and preserved him as a mummy that was discovered in 1991.

Otzi is interesting for a lot of reasons, but what struck me most profoundly was that he not only had tattoos (57 of them), but that they may have been shamanic (ie magical) in nature.

It was really moving to me, discovering that while I was working on something I thought was a (relatively) original idea, it was in fact something that had been going on for at least 53 centuries. People have been tattooing their flesh since we discovered carbon, and many of those symbols over the year have had spiritual, magical, or religious significance.

Rather than being put off that my idea was nothing new, I was inspired further. This brought a kind of realism to the story and world that were forming in my mind, helping me ground the magic system in a way that was familiar without retreading all the old fantasy tropes. There are no bearded wizards in my world, no magic swords, no spellcasting priests. Magic is a raw force, like electricity, and only these funny little symbols can channel it into useful effect.

And so, I’ve decided to dedicate my first published book to Otzi, a man who touched my life across 5300 years.

Is there any greater immortality than to be remembered?

Posted on April 4, 2008 at 1:26 pm by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Musings, Writing
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