When Lisa invited me to write a guest post for her website, I was eager to accept her offer, but then I spent weeks agonizing over what to write about.
I recently released my first fantasy novel, Echoes of Dragons, and I would love to share how this book came to be. It has been a long journey for this first novel in the Awakening series, but so many aspects of my culture, my personal life, and my journey as a writer have come into play so that Echoes of Dragons really feels like an appendage of myself.
Not long after I was married, my mother sent me artwork that my great-grandfather, an immigrant from Germany just after WWII, had created. He was a craftsman and an artist, and was best known in my family for the beautiful wooden boxes he made out of scraps of wood. He was less known in our family for his artwork that incorporated Scripture or prayers transcribed in German. I was honored and thrilled to receive nine of his pictures that had been kept safe in a three-ring binder. I wasted no time matting and framing them. As they hung on the wall in my office, I found myself drawn into the images, and my imagination began asking questions and coursing down unknown roads. Three years later, after years of ghostwriting for other authors, I jotted down ideas for a fantasy world for a book of my own.
My first draft of that novel was under a different title. I had written over 75k words and had an outline that would have pushed that book to well over 100k words. But I had a problem. I was not invested in the main character. In fact, I disliked her. A lot. I preferred the characters I had placed around her a lot more.
Thus, Mythnium was born.
While ghostwriting for other authors, I discovered that I am a pantser – a person who, in the world of writing, simply starts writing without the aid of an outline. I know how to make outlines and work within the confines of outlines given to me. When my clients gave me clear outlines, I turned out beautiful chapters, novellas, and even novels for them. However, as the site I was working through took on more and more writers who were willing to work for much less money with much less direction from their clients, I found myself forced to take on jobs where I was given an idea and expected to turn out a novel. This meant I was writing entire novels that I had no outlines for, no character sketches, nothing. I had to create all those things for myself. However, those things are time-consuming, so I began writing “off the cuff” and discovered that I write much better that way. Sadly, the more I took on those kinds of projects, the more invested I was in the stories I ghostwrote, and the more frustrated I felt because once I turned them over to the client, it was like turning over my child. They were no longer mine. I would never gain royalties or credit for them. I’d never know how they did once they hit the market place. I’d never know if readers liked them or not. I lost all satisfaction writing just for someone else to put their name on it. So I decided to stop ghostwriting and moved on to working on my Mythnium novel exclusively.
For one of the ghostwriting projects I had worked on, my client had given me numerous files on characters. These complete character sketches made that project so much fun to write because I felt like I knew the characters and was writing more of a biography about them rather than a fictional novella. Using the idea of character sketches as a baseline, I created some for those Mythnium characters that I really enjoyed getting to know in that first draft. I created short stories. With the help of those short stories, I got to know my favorite characters even better. Since publishing Short Stories of Mythnium in 2019, I often referred to those short stories to help me keep my characters consistent in Echoes of Dragons.
Then came NaNoWriMo 2020.
I was in the middle of three different project. The Mythnium novel stayed at the forefront of my mind and was the center of my frustration because I just could not seem to push forward with it. The harder I tried, the more I hated it. Once again, family offered ideas and encouragement, one of those ideas being to use NaNoWriMo to write something different about Mythnium as though the first draft didn’t exist. I did. I sat down with my favorite characters and just wrote. No outline. No clear idea of what I wanted the characters to do or how the plot should play out. I just sat down with one of the characters and wrote what turned out to be the prologue for Echoes of Dragons. By the end of the month, I had written over 50K words.
I created Echoes of Dragons.
I spent the beginning of 2021 writing the first draft before sending it out to friends, family, and beta readers. That first draft was really rough, and thanks to the feedback from everyone who read it, I was able to add some needed elements and take out excessive narratives. A lot was learned a lot about my style of writing. After four drafts, I finally got the book ready for editing and formatting. Once that was complete, it was ready for launch at the beginning of this month.
This journey in creating Mythnium itself over the past decade has been incredible and thought-provoking. One of Lisa’s recent guests here wrote a fantastic post about world building, and I agree with everything shared there. In creating this world for Echoes of Dragons, I was able to remain a pantser, but I am also called on to be a planner. I was able to be both while creating Mythnium and telling its stories.
You can read more about Mythnium in these two books:
Short Stories from Mythnium – Enter the world of Mythnium through these tales of heroism, discovery, and realization. Meet elves, dwarves, and humans who play significant roles in the continual battle between good and evil. Each of these short stories introduces you to Mythnium’s races, creatures, magic, and hints at something dark on the horizon. These snapshots into the world of Mythnium open the door to places of magic, danger, intrigue, romance, and adventure.
Echoes of Dragons – When suns collide…. When paths converge…
A decade after the suns of Mythnium eclipse each other,
strangers on different paths converge as though by fate.
But what fate drives the danger from the southern continent?
What fate deals such harsh blows, unimaginable loss, and shocking revelations?
Are the newfound friendships, unlikely bonds, and unexpected partnerships able to survive what is to come?
You can also learn more about Mythnium by adding www.mythnium.com to your bookmarks and signing up for the World of Mythnium newsletter.
Thank you, Lisa, for hosting me and allowing me to share a little about my writing process.
A little about me:
My life history is something I love to talk about – mainly how my lineage and culture have played huge roles in who I am today. However, to keep it simple, I was born in the Ohio, raised in Florida, and then moved around a lot as a member of the US Air Force (USAF) and then as a USAF Spouse. I currently live in a place that inspires me on a daily basis.
I have always been an avid reader. Because my parents and extended family were all fans of all kinds of books, I developed a voracious appetite for books of nearly every genre with my favorites being fantasy, science fiction, Christian fiction, and historical fiction.
I am a Bible-believing Christian, and because my faith is central to my life and how I choose to live it, I try to reflect elements of my faith in my writing. When I am not writing or world building, I am playing with my camera, exploring the area I live, or hanging out with my family and fur babies.
Amazon Links:
Recommended Articles:
The Capitalization of Species and Races in Fantasy & Science Fiction
Mirabel the Aes Sedai (or How to Build Worlds) – Guest Post by R. Collins
