Well to be honest, this story started several years ago. I was commuting about two hours per day to work and I had plenty of time to daydream and to listen to audio books. And that was how the idea of The Battlemage Trilogy started. I had an idea for this character and on my way to work I would think about all the different adventures he would go on.
Over the years, the story changed and drifted, as all stories do. But, as the story grew, I could no longer contain it all in my head. I had to write it down. I was working night shift so many of my nights at home, I would stay up long after my family had gone to bed. So, I grabbed my trusty laptop and started to write out the story. I was a pantser at first. For those of you that don’t know what that means, I wrote the story by the seat of my pants. There was no plotting or outlining. It was just me and my daydreams being spilled over onto paper…or Microsoft Word rather.
Life happened. I changed jobs to a day shift job. I went back to graduate school. I had another child. All the things that happen as you grow up. But my imagination never changed. The story was still inside of me, begging to be shared. So, after I finished school and life seemed to settle down a little, I got that old laptop out again, except this time, I decided to study how to write.
I mean, I knew a little, right? I did have a Masters degree at this point in my life. I had written tons of research papers. Writing novels couldn’t be that much different, right? Wrong. It was way different. I listened to so many Brandon Sanderson lectures that I could hear him in my sleep. I listened to every podcast and Youtube video on writing fantasy that I could find. I downloaded writing books on my kindle.
And after all of it, I found out that back when I first started that story, I knew nothing about being an author. But, the story was still there. I learned to plot and outline and the structure began to fall in place. I started writing heavily about six months ago and sometimes, when I thought the story would go a certain way, the characters would direct me in another path altogether.
That is the amazing thing about creating characters. They develop a personality of their own, and before long, it’s no longer your story but theirs. This particular story changed several times during this process. Tamm, the main character, was adventurous, destined to breakout of the barriers that his small town life had corralled him in. The ending of the story was always essentially the same, as was the beginning, but oh, the journey in between. Tamm’s life changed drastically, but it is yet to be seen whether for good or ill.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing this book and I hope that you will enjoy reading it. It will be self-published through Amazon, hopefully in March. Revisions should be finished soon.
