I had a friend recently ask me my world-building process and the answer is simple: the world blooms around the main character's journey. Everything in the journey (for the most part) should serve the MC and their growth. 

For example, in The Wild Sky Legacy, Arden's on a journey of personal agency. Her journey takes her from being a subservient people-pleaser to making her own decisions. So, nearly everything in the world orbits around that journey. I created a controlling government that shapes the world (the Coterie). I created a group of supporting characters who all have rebelled against a form of oppression and discovered their own agency (Sky Crew). I have another MC who encourages free-thinking and asking questions (Bato). We see how systems of control highly benefit some people (Falalla) and severely hurt others (Azincourt). 

The further you peer behind the Wild Sky curtain, the more you see how it all relates back to Arden's journey. Her relationship with Subra are the tests that allow her to make decisions based on where she is on her journey. 

Even Arden herself is a great character for the journey. When we first meet her, she's literally living under a rock (working in the mines). She's in darkness, unaware of the reality of the larger world (and her own). She's a people-pleaser, anxious, and accepts things for the way they are without looking any deeper because she doesn't want to ruffle any feathers or cause any conflict. But then Subra is abducted and she meets Sky Crew. She learns to ask questions, to see the bigger picture, to recognize the power she has in her decisions. And, by the end of the story, we see an enlightened individual who makes decisions based on what they believe to be true, not on what anyone else thinks or because someone told her to choose something specific. 

I also like how she goes from underground to living in the skies. Her ascendance is clear. 

So for me, my world building procedure is:
1. Decide what the journey will be.
2. Create the perfect character for that specific journey
3. Develop plot points that facilitate that journey will challenges and lessons learned
4. Create the world and characters to support that journey, the MC, and the plot points. 

It all serves the main character's journey. Or, it should. Some things are just fun to add in there.

The Wild Sky Legacy has officially been published and is out there for the world. And, as expected, it was a pretty quiet day. Not many know about this yet. And that's what I anticipated. I'm building something here, a whole world, and that takes time. But it was still a great day because it was my day. I've dreamed about publishing a book for 17 years, been a serious writer for 8 years, and have been working on WSL for nearly 7 years. It felt good to finally accomplish the goal and get my story out into the world.

So far, feedback has been positive. There's no telling how far WSL will fly, but the fact that people are reading it and enjoying it is everything to me. I don't need it to be a massive success. My goal was to write a story that people liked - a story that connected with them and brought them excitement and adventure. By all observations and reviews, it is doing just that. 

But there isn't much time to celebrate. There's still work to be done. We've moved into Beta reviews for WSL2 and I've begun drafting the rest of the series. The more I draft now, the better continuity, and set-up/payoff there can be between books. And, I'm excited about what's to come. I learned so much with the first one that I now feel like I have a good idea of how to optimize the process moving forward. 

And forward is our heading. 

This is it. Launch week.
While I've always loved stories and wrote a few small things here and there, I really began my writing journey my second year of High School. I wrote a 365-page story I called "The Mighty Oak has Fallen" (lol - I got the title from a Strongbad song via Homestar Runner) and it was a dystopian military fiction about my friends and I becoming a guerrilla faction in WW3 United States, very much like Red Dawn. I still have that manuscript somewhere but I think I'd die of cringe if I ever read it. Regardless, I was proud that I'd written a full book and proclaimed to all my friends we'd be rich when I sold the movie rights. I started a sequel to it but never finished. Still, I found a lot of enjoyment hunched over the computer in our basement or on my dad's laptop in our gazebo, writing for hours and dreaming up my little world. 
Writing stagnated for a while after that as I transitioned from High School to college. Just didn't have a lot of time. However, I still found myself writing little snippets of stories here and there. In 2015, after graduating college, I put those pieces together into a sprawling story with many POVs. I made it all the way to the climax when all the characters were finally in the same room together and... just left it there. There's a fantasy dimension in my mind where all those characters still linger, wondering what will become of them. I'd like to say I'll go back someday, but I likely won't. 
In 2016, my real writing journey began with a story called "Along Came a Courier." I remember being so excited to write it. It stemmed from the idea of the audience believing the MC was the hero until the climax when their perspective would shift enough to see the consequences of the MC's actions and it would be revealed he was actually the villain the whole time. Cool idea, hard to do.
Between 2016 and now, there were around 10-12 manuscripts I wrote, likely totally between 0.5-1 million words. Some of these were better than others, but they were all a step in the journey to this point. I learned something new with each book I wrote and that was the important thing. I never would be where I am now without each of those manuscripts and all the problems they had. 
I've worked on Wild Sky for years now, 4-7 depending on what you consider the story to actually be (it's been through so many iterations). 
It finally debuts this Wednesday, September 25, 2024. Wild to consider. Hard to part with something I've worked on for so long. No more tinkering. No more imagining and improving. It is done. It is as ready as it can be. And whether or not it'll be a hit or people will read it or not, it is mine and it is finished. I am proud of what I created. I believe in it. And, I'm excited to share it with the world. Not only because I think it's a fun story with a lot to offer, but because it fulfills my life-long dream of publishing. 

I’ve always liked the idea of telling one story from two different perspectives. The idea to have the cat-and-mouse element between Bato and Vera was there from the beginning, though it took many different forms before settling on what it is today.
 
Originally, Vera’s organization was known as the Huntrix Coterie – a small band of hunters and assassins that sought dangerous individuals. The Coterie element of it obvious expanded to take the form of a world government. This change was mostly driven through my studies of systematic oppression and the moral ambiguity of large governments. I thought it was an especially interesting concept and so decided to include it in the story.
 
But I needed it to have its own twist. I needed it to be something unique. I didn’t want the bounty hunters/assassins to be called Hunters. And that’s when a little bit of history/latin history became VERY useful. In English, we have suffix for words that can add gender to it. From the base of latin (okay, I’m 70% sure this is right, if not, I apologize – I’m not English degree holder) comes -tor and -trix for male and female. GladiaTOR, DominaTRIX. Of course, -tor has become -ter in many cases, including HunTER. But I wanted to be different. I wanted this Second Age world to be as much shaped by women as the First Age had been shaped by men. So, Hunter became Huntrix.

Sky Crew and the Wild Sky story has been in development for over six years. It all started when I had the idea for a skyship with a quirky crew back in 2018 while in Sedalia, MO. I was working a sheep show with my wife's family and had plenty of time to think and dream while wetting down the show ring and paint branding rams (two things I never expected to do in my life but, hey, the journey is full of surprises). I remember coming back to the hotel one night and sketching out the first version of Kodiak Rogue. At that point, it was called Sojourner. And then it became Kodiak Templar. I finally settled on Kodiak Rogue years later, feeling it better reflected the spirit of its crew.

Some of the crew was there from the start. Den and Axel haven't changed much at all. Rowan used to be a big investor and was originally a large source of funding for Azincourt and Sky Crew specifically. However, when I realized I wanted to make the story more whimsical, he became an actor because it added more dramatic flares and fun. Keyes has changed little, but her backstory really didn't come to full realization until a year or two ago when Arden's character solidified. In an earlier version of WSL, Arden was a Huntrix who embedded with Sky Crew because she was after a notoriously evasive pirate and saw Kodiak Rogue as an undercover opportunity.

Over the course of that story, Bato works his magic and Arden's allegiance changes from Coterie to Sky Crew. While this was a much bigger and more dramatic shift than current-Arden's journey, the story was also MUCH darker. One of my beta-readers likes to remind me of how (in that version) Arden kills a man in cold blood in front of his daughter after mistaking him for the pirate she's after. Super dark. But, effective because it was the moment Arden realized the Coterie had made her into a monster and that she needed to change. Naturally, I wanted lighter tones so much of that was scrapped. It allowed me more breathing room for fun and a much more gradual introduction to the world of WSL. 

Arden's character has also gone through several revisions (including her era as a Huntrix). She used to be a boy named Rayden who worked security in Orengard. So many of these drafts were clunky and full of holes. But it taught me the very important lesson that writing is a process of discovery. Occasionally, it will take multiple drafts to truly understand who a character is, what the world is actually like, and what story you want to tell. 

I learned to trust in the process and it's paid dividends ever since. 

The march to publishing the first book of The Wild Sky Legacy series is growing short. Right now Advanced Review Copies are out and random people in the world are peering into my imagination for the first time.

The paperback proof copies of the book also came in. What a moment. If you're an aspiring author and struggling with the fear and anxiety and worry that you'll never see your work in print, PLEASE KEEP GOING. I worked on this book for six years and there were so many moments that I thought I should move on or do something else. So many times I stared at the shelves in Barnes and Nobles at all the published and beloved stories and thought "Who am I to think that could be me one day?" While I still don't know if I will be, to see my work in print, to be able to hold it in my hands, was worth all the pain and struggle and hopeless wondering over the past years. It is so worth it.

And soon it will be here and available for the entire world. I'm working on marketing and quickly realizing it will be a slow climb to the summit. But there's comfort in that realization. I long ago learned I'm capable of making just about any climb. The secret is to sink into the adventure mindset, focus on your endurance, manage your expectations, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Envisioning what you'll find at the top helps, too.

And for me, that's simply sharing a fun story with people who need an escape right now. The world can be tough enough. I just want to give people a chance to get lost in a fun world with characters they love, action and thrills to quicken the heart, introspection to get the brain thinking, and an adventure that they feel like they're a part of. 

​So here we are. On the brink of publishing. It’s a weird thing preparing to unleash your imagination into the world to be picked-apart, enjoyed, and hated by persons unknown. But I really think I’m ready. I’ve been developing this world for eight years. EIGHT. I started my writing journey in January of 2016 (I wrote plenty before that, but that winter was when I really got serious about it).
 
Between then and now, I wrote close to ten full stories and made countless large and small revisions to many of them. With each one, I wrote with the intention of publishing. But, also with each one, I realized it simply wasn’t the one. It wasn’t useless or a waste of time, though. Each new story helped teach me something. I improved my writing craft. I improved my character arcs. I learned. I watched as many YouTube videos on the subject of writing and storytelling as possible. I’d watch them as I brushed my teeth, made dinner, and as I worked out. All. The. Time. For years, I was a beggar after knowledge. Some lessons took longer to learn than others.
 
But all of those stories and lessons helped build the world as it is today. It took some interesting turns here and there. The idea of isolated city-states was there from the very first story. I liked the feel of a high-tech civilization surrounded by unknown wilderness. A few of the stories took place in what I consider the “Discovery Era” when the Seed Cities had no idea that there might be others out there. (I’ll return to that era later in the series in a stand-alone book called Pathfinder  – get pumped). I made countless sketches of the cities and how they should work. For a while, they had massive walls with defensive installations. In one story, there was a lethal virus that occupied all the waterways outside of the cities.

Skyships were always present, though. They played larger roles in some stories and small roles in others. Characters came and went. Some stuck around and evolved. Bato used to be called Mykanos and was an underground militia leader with a conscious. He spoke a language called “Sewer Slang” and hijacked a skyship to fight the power. Den has also been there for a long time, but he used to be called Yukon. Arden’s character has been through a lot but was there from the early stages, too. At one point, she had the Huntrix Link that Vera has. But that was back when the world was different.
 
So many people have contributed ideas and feedback that helped me mold the world like a block of clay. It took time. It took mistakes. It took a lot of staring into the void and letting my mind run the imagination routines until it spit out something that I liked. But through it all, I wanted the world to feel as close to real as possible. That’s a loaded statement and I know that no world with Skyships will ever be too close to real, but I tried to add as many real elements as possible.
I write all this to say, this world has been my playground, my sandbox, for the past eight years. And, for most of that time, it’s been only me. I’ve invited a few other people to play, but now the sand will soon turn to stone and the world will come to join me.
 
I just hope you like it.

f funI've always loved stories and story-telling. It's one of the things I'm meant to do in this life, I think. Or, at the very least, a passion of mine. There are just so many fun and exciting stories out there. Some even change the lives of the readers.

That's why I wanted to take an invested interest in writing. I began writing seriously in 2016 and did so with the mentality of a dry sponge. I wanted to absorb EVERYTHING. I read so many books about writing stories (which I think is both ironic and silly). I watched so many YouTube videos by authors and critics alike about what good stories possess and why bad stories fail. Seriously. I can remember making dinners in my apartment and having the videos running, washing my hands quickly so I could jot down notes. 

But I didn't want to just write any story. While reading so many best-sellers and BookTok favorites, I really started to get worn out by all the GrimDark and anti-heros. I wanted to write fun stories, stories that were exciting and whimsical. I remember reading Harry Potter for the first time and just feeling transported. I lost myself in those books, in the adventures. I wanted to write like that. Not that my stories would lack more serious moments or real struggle and challenges, but that they would be enjoyable to read and even, maybe re-read even with those elements. I wanted my readers to feel the thrill and excitement and whimsy. 

Call it HopePunk or NobleBright or whatever you'd like. But that's the core of my stories. Fun. Exciting. Whimsical. Stories of real triumphs and big laughs. True adventures that whisk the reader away to another world that they'll enjoy going back to time and time again. 

Hello everyone!

This website will be where I'll be posting updates regarding the Wild Sky Legacy and other books. I hope for it to be a central hub to connect readers, building community, and help paint the full picture of the world I've been developing. 

Currently, it's early and no one even knows this website exists. But infrastructure must be built so here I am. This is a real "If you build it, they will come" kind of situation. I guess we'll see.

If you've combed the depths of this website and found this post, thank you for your interest, commitment, and (hopefully) enjoyment of my writing.