I’m a lover of fantasy; I’ve been a devoted reader for many years. I’ve read the classics, of course. The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Taryn Wanderer, and dozens more, and I’ve loved them all. My list of beloved authors runs from Robin Hobb to Juliet Marillier to Faith Hunter. I enjoy Jeff Wheeler and Patricia Briggs equally. Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, and Robert Heinlein shared and brightened my childhood. As I grew more sophisticated in my taste, I added C. S. Lewis and Tolkien. I claim paranormal romance writers like Christine Feehan and Lynsay Sands as a part on my present day reading list right alongside George R. R. Martin. I read it all. So do you; the genre is amazingly successful because we like it so much.
I’ve noticed that a lot of works of fantasy use medieval Europe as their model, particularly the countries of Great Britain. They call on the mythologies of those cultures, mainly because it’s clearly an incredibly rich source of inspiration. The War of the Roses and the legend of King Arthur show up repeatedly as the basis of some really great stories. That’s all well and good, but it does tend to brand the story inevitably with an Irish, Welsh, Scotch, and English cultural flavor. That’s my heritage, too, and I certainly enjoy it. Some of my stories, particularly the first ones I’m working on, also have that Eurocentric bias. But I wanted to create something new, something a little different. Creating Pelandicia as a parallel universe and allowing characters to move from one universe to the next gives me a lot of options for storytelling, but you’ll still find a lot of ideas in there that I borrowed from other writers you love.
But Pelandicia is a bigger place than that, and I’ve deliberately chosen to insert human cultural groups from as many cultures and time frames as possible into the mix. It is my stated intention to write tales of Pelandicia that spring from as many cultures as I can manage. Perhaps I’ll find partner authors to help me with this incredible task, but my goal is to make sure that my readers can find heroes and heroines they can identify with among the cast of characters that I create.
I’ll be telling stories that have a foot in each world, or stories based mainly in one world or another. Developing the back story for how Pelandicia and earth became entangled allows me to bring in elements from any culture and any timeframe. The idea of the Transpositions allows me to transport chunks of Earth culture into Pelandicia wholesale, but I also have the freedom to modify the culture as I wish.
I’m not limited to story types either. I can write romance as well as adventure and I can choose whether or not to involve magic or the paranormal. I can redesign familiar fantasy races and give them a unique stamp as denizens of Pelandicia. It is also a strong desire of mine to bridge the age ranges. I hope to write stories of Pelandicia that target different age groups. I’ve already sketched out a few stories aimed at preteens, and I have notes on stories for adult audiences as well. I don’t know that the Universe of Pelandicia will ever be finished, but I wanted to contain something for everyone, regardless of age, race, gender, or culture.
Once I decided to write seriously, I knew that I would create my own fantasy world eventually. After all, the stories I like to read the most are my own. That’s weird, I know, but if I can write a story that I get lost in, makes me forget I wrote it, if I can really get lost in it, I’m doing something right. It is my fervent wish that you share my journey as I explore this place that mostly lives in my mind while I try to capture it and bring it to you.
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