Welcome to the World of Ayrelon!

For those of you who’ve known me for a while, this website and my writings are a long time coming. For the rest of you, welcome to the adventure!

Yes, this post signifies the beginnings of my internet presence as an author. No, I’m not published yet… but that’s not going to deter me. Publishing will come with time, and I’ve a lot of writing to do before I worry about it.

I’ve wanted to be an author since I was eleven years old. At the time of this article, I’ve reached the ripe old age of forty-five. Not a big deal, I know… but it’s a long time to put your dreams on hold.

I grew up poor. So, when I became an adult I focused on my career rather than my dreams. I wanted to make sure I could provide for myself, and my eventual family. It was a decision born of necessity and a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility.

That may seem disheartening to some. I mean, following one’s dreams is supposed to be the way isn’t it? In reality it gave me time to grow as an individual and strengthen my world building and writing skills.

What many of you don’t know is that I spent many of those years honing my world, its factions and its people through pen & paper role-playing games. I started with a general concept, constructed a fictional world and then… played them.

Dozens of players experienced what I now refer to as the ‘Third Era of Man’ on the fictional world of Ayrelon all throughout the 1990’s. Through those adventures, I was forced, as the dungeon master, to craft backstories for everything and everyone my players encountered.

In the years since my gaming sessions, I’ve developed those concepts even further. The end result is a world that I can live inside of whenever I close my eyes. It feels whole. It feels alive. At any point I can imagine what any one of my characters would be doing, and let their voice carry out a scene for me to indulge.

So… here I sit amidst piles of notes, with a laptop full of world building and character development documents, grinding away at my passion. A passion that is almost ready to share!

As of right now, I’ve written over 180,000 words of my first novel. Bathed in the Blood of Ravens is the first of five books in A Destiny of Blood & Magic, which is the first of three series I plan to write in the world of Ayrelon.

All three series have been named and roughly outlined. Each book in each series has been named and outlined further. People, places and things have been documented, categorized and fleshed out. In fact, my notes and documentation behind the scenes are nearly as large as the first book.

I know who is doing what, when it happens, and the outcomes of every single major event in the entire saga. This level of preparation has allowed me to write at break-neck speeds, considering those one-hundred-and-eighty-thousand words were produced in just under two months. Shocking, right?

As amazing as that might sound to some of you, it’s just the tip of an unrealistically large iceberg in my mind. Not only do I have so much left to do that the prospect of it all seems daunting, but the editing effort promises to be the death of my sanity.

I have to give a shout-out to both Scrivener and Pro Writing Aid. I’m only writing because these programs exist. My OCD requires a level of organization that products like Word and Google Docs just don’t provide. Trust me… I tried to use both of them several times over the past decade, and ended up so frustrated with the process that I had to walk away.

So, what now? How long until I’m done? Why am I starting this website so prematurely?

My plan is to blog my writing process, my frustrations, any tips & tricks I come up with, and perhaps even snippets of my work. I make no assumptions that any of this is going to blow peoples’ minds. However, I need to get some of these things out of me. So, rather than venting to my lovely, patient and oft-exhausted wife… I’ll post them here.

Hopefully some of my articles will help my fellow aspiring authors. Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t… either way, this should be entertaining!

So, grab a drink and stay a while… let’s go through this process together.

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