There is a lot in my universe, interconnected worlds, shifting timelines, and overarching celestial chess matches with the lives of mortals. I had always had various ideas, but I really started to take those ideas and patch them together in 2015. I sat down after an inspired afternoon of watching movies and felt the urge to combine all the things I liked about various magic systems into one. I was often left wanting more of the magic in an anime or movie, wanting to see how it worked and what else could be done. Ever since it has been a constant work in progress and has spanned over seven years of me chipping away at it with little pieces here and there.
As I wrote the magic system down and started to define it, trimming off various things and adding others, I started to ask a question. “Why do the magics magic?” It was a profound question that sent me on a deep-diving quest to learn about various cultural myths about creation, the world, and the entire universe. Conflict seemed to take center stage as, let’s face it, conflict is great for driving stories. So, I began to build my own creation myth complete with a broken god and other lesser celestial entities. I drew inspiration from many real-world faiths, including the top hits that everyone knows, as well as much lesser known or occult belief systems. Right now I have a living breathing creation, though I tweak it a bit and perhaps those variations will appear in some of my core stories one day.
The next thing I began to focus on was the world: where does my story take place, and the time: when does my story take place? This has gotten a bit out of hand, with Earth, Amissan, Paradesia, The Boatel, and so many other places spread across time. I did not want to be derivative with my worlds and the creatures within them but, seeing as how my creativity is the sum culmination of what I have consumed from other imaginations and stretched within my own, it was hard not to. This, also, has become an active living work in which I constantly build various pieces trying to make them unique, and there are infinite pieces when you think of it. Multiple planets, multiple planes of existence, and an infinite number of struggles.
Finally, the stories. I had started to write small stories, things I could use to make sense of the characters, structure, and events I had written down in bullet point form. I used these small stories to fill in the pieces of my world like placing paper mache over a wire frame. I recall sitting on the porch of my childhood home and explaining a conflict of celestial beings in my universe and how that reverberated through many of the planets that existed there. I was explaining my plans to my mother to write several series of books based on this universe when my she stopped me. She said, ‘why don’t you just write a mystery book and see if that works out? Everybody loves mystery books, they sell all the time.’ So I paused my high fantasy non-human centered book project and swapped over to writing a mystery book.
I won’t lie to you and say I wrote a decent mystery book, in fact, I wrote a horrible mystery book. It was filled with dream sequences and unexplained gut feelings with a failed attempt to mirror some of the after-death emotions and interactions from ‘The Lovely Bones.’ I was not proud of it, but I learned a lot about the writing process through that exercise. I also learned that I am not a mystery writer. However, I did take the original premise of that book, trim the edges of the mystery, and catapulted the characters through two other horrible re-writes in which I tried to cling to a quasi-mystery/spiritual fantasy idea. In the end, those two rewrites were bad and the project sat while I worked on short stories and continued building my universe and sharpening my writing skills.
To sharpen my skills I started to watch youtube videos. Hello Future Me was a constant for a while as the creator of the channel broke down complex fantasy topics and discussed how I might build the pieces of my own universe. Shadiversity went over many historical high fantasy details and weaponry while HistoryMarche taught me about battle tactics in the ancient world. Alyssa Matesic and Alexa Donne gave great advice about writing and the publishing industry. I even found panels and classes with Patrick Rothfuss, George RR Martin, Brandon Sanderson (full class taught on Youtube), Stephen King, and so many more. I took online master classes from Neil Gaiman, N.K. Jemisin, Margaret Atwood, James Patterson, LeVar Burton, and still more. I took inspiration from watching streamers BazzaGazza, Crayator (I’ve always been envious of this handle, lol), DisguisedToast, LoserFruit, Sykunno, Fuslie, Muselk, Boogie2988, AnthonyZ, Ludwig, Ash, Cyr, Reckful, Critical Role, Felicia Day, Whippy, LordKebun, and so many more. All of them inspired a short story or a variety of ideas, some from role-playing others from just being creative on stream. All of this along with the other media I consumed left me buzzing with concepts, ideas, strategies, and inspiration. However, writing was still no easy feat.
Just the other day, my English-teaching wife had to explain to me Passive and Active voice. It was so simple after she did. But can you imagine, some guy who wants to be a top fantasy author one-day having forgotten the concept of Passive and Active until he is on the second self-edit of his current book project? I let it deter me only slightly, but I knew I had to keep an eye on the basics. Despite that setback, and after my journey to this point, I am near to having a rough book done.
With that book comes some lore, magic, and various entities of unique kinds. I hope to one day release it, and if I do, you can check back here to this section of my website for more details about the world and the powers within that world. In the meantime, I will keep writing and I ask that you keep reading.
Check back for updated content!
Nathaniel Writes 