One of my favorite parts about writing is seeing different worlds. Sometimes it's just the environment and sometimes its the people who share a planet but belong to different "worlds". With The Shadow Dragon the world has an Earthy feel to it, but you know by the end of Chapter One that it is not. There are creatures and realms that my mind invented, and as I continued the story I created more - I'm blown away by what I come up with. And it's totally awesome how vividly I see everything. I think that's one of the most challenging pieces for me - to see it so vividly and forget the reader isn't there with me. Although that is why I have three people read the stories before I publish it.
Now I know I don't go into great detail, but that's only because as a reader I don't appreciate a lot of detail. I love reading stories that give me information without making me feel as though I don't have an imagination of my own. Unfortunately sometimes I think I err too much on the assumption that everyone has a wild imagination. (I'm a work in progress and I know it.)
With Taken, I move between two worlds one that is mine and one that we all know - Earth. In Not Human I stay on Earth. A friend asked me if I ever wrote stories on Earth and so I thought sure I can do that, but of course the scenery in that story isn't crucial to the story. It's not that I don't write with Earth as the backdrop because I don't like our planet. I very much love this planet we live on, nature never ceases to amaze me. However, I love the ability to see things differently and so I write new worlds to allow my imagination run wild. I loved writing the planet the Langiro (from Taken) lived on. It was the first time doing that since I was in 7th grade. And writing Solace was great because although the story starts on Earth, it was just the beginning. The Middle of Nowhere, as Karissa called it, created itself as I wrote it. I had no vision of it beforehand. It simply evolved as I created events for Karissa and Creature/Jack to survive. It would have been simple for either of them to survive, but to do it together I knew I had to get creative or the reader would get bored. And then creating the Zarran world in the second book created itself from Karissa's capabilities. It was spawned from the first couple of chapters in book one where she sees the military men on the cliffs and knows that the cliffs of the Stronghold wouldn't slow her down because of her agility and that her body was built for that terrain. In Heart of the Emperor, the story starts on a world that is beautiful, but I didn't want it to be just a place that everyone would want to live. It needed to be both beautiful and dangerous. And here is the world the Heart of the Emperor begins:
"X5401 had a beautiful landscape. There were tall mountains that were forested in the tall, thick plant-life which amazingly enough was able to grow in the rock-hard soil. Gentle, rolling hills led to the edges of steep valleys, giving the planet a tranquil ambiance between the mountains. From space the planet appeared a soft lavender because of the soil. However on the planet, everything varied in color from pastels to deep vibrant colors. The patches of green grass were the exact opposite of the soil and covered the ground sporadically over the planet, except on the mountains.
The air stung your nose and lungs, but it didn’t kill you, well not right away. A person’s body would adapt within ten minutes. With that being said, a person could be out in the open air for a day or two, three at the most. It was common within the first day to suffer from nose bleeds, headaches, and/or severe dry skin. By day two, most would lose their sense of direction, some became sterile, others lost their inhibitions, and a few have gone crazy. If a person was found by the end of day three, they were dead. Everyone who lived here has pushed their limits with the air at one point or another. I had suffered the nose bleeds, headaches, and lost my wits and inhibitions. Luckily though, that was only temporary - for some people it has been permanent."
From there Matix is taken to a world that, to all outsiders, is just as horrid to look at as the environment is. As stated in the description for the book it is a world where the sun never shines. I loved writing this world of rock and lava and how beauty really is all perspective.
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