Looking back at Founders

One of my biggest and most soulful writing projects was Founders.  The idea for Founders first came from The Legend of Draconite series, as the Founders of the Draconite clan were mentioned in the series.  I started doing more conceptualizing in Summer 2008 during a college tour in California, where I took notes on the world and characters.  I even printed out a map of our world's environs to get a better idea of what Libera's environs as a whole could be like, as it was the first time I was exploring the whole world rather than the smaller world of Den'verden, in inner Libera.



One of the biggest challenges of Founders was working with the amount of characters.  There were several main characters: the Founders, Ayaka Di'rutia, and Skandar Theral.  That's 9 main characters!  Along with them was a large cast of minor characters -- heroes, villains, and those in between.

I always intended Founders to be one book.  At the time, I was publishing on Lulu.com, and because of the size of Part 1: Libera and Lulu's page count restrictions, I was forced to write Part 2 as a separate book.  However, it worked out that way, and Part 2: Den'verden managed to become its own story while still connecting to Part 1.

It was a blast exploring new cultures and concepts for Libera in its earlier time period.  Most of the world was still fairly primitive, with lots of medieval technology, and less and more advanced technologies interspersed throughout the world.  Of course, you have your magic and magic-makers, although knowledge of magic, such as in Ramirra, wasn't broad.  Two of the main Molouk characters, Swift and Wind-Rider, had little clue as to what magic is, much less as to how it's used, before they're called to their destinies.

The main elven characters were also wonderful to explore.  Skandar and Ayaka were meant to serve as
parallels to Aaron and Sabra later in Libera's history, especially as Skandar and Ayaka are their ancestors.  Though "parallels," these characters are quite a bit different from their descendants due to their upbringing and stories.   Skandar and Ayaka are married, the latter a reluctantly married spouse, and are soldiers working together to end a bloody war that has split their land in two.  Over time they learn to love each other, and in so doing work even harder to end war.

One of the fun things about Founders was working on art too.  I did an interior map of the world, hand drawing it and then scanning it to edit in GIMP.  I did a lot of hand-drawn stuff too.  I actually started a series of graphite illustrations that I intended to put in each chapter, but I never finished the series and most of the illustrations didn't make it to the final printing.

Both Parts of Founders turned out to be massive manuscripts.  Founders, if considered as one book, is the largest manuscript I've ever written to date.  I don't know if In Chaos Forged will be as long, as complicated as it's getting, but Founders still ranks as my longest book.

Magnum Opus?  No, not quite.  I'm not sure if I'll ever write my opus, or at least write something I consider my magnum opus.  Maybe other readers will consider Founders or Legacy Incarnate or other books to be my opus.  For me, my writing gets better and better with each story I write.  And that's just writing.  When I go back to do editing and revision, my stories continue to get better and better.  It never ends, and I think I quite like it that way.