Welcome to My Worlds

The space in the attic is a little cramped sometimes, so I have to build an addition or two.

Imagine the Burrow from Harry Potter, or Count Olaf's place from A Series of Unfortunate Events. Everything seems somehow ominous or precarious from the outside, but ordered (in its own way) on the inside. Now, I'm not saying that every writer has a mind like this, but I am certain these are fair representatives of my mind.

Each world that I have created is in some way tied to my experiences and my views of our own, whether that's through some imaginative future endeavor or through the lens of what our world could have been under different circumstances. The world of the Dark Salvation trilogy introduces us to a future America that is broken and empty, a last beacon among a world that has been shattered by war. The Aurum Cluster sees spacefaring humans that have traveled at nearly the speed of light for 17 years, departing the same Earth of Dark Salvation but prior to the events depicted there. The land of Telveriand is built in a fashion based on my personal idol, J.R.R. Tolkien, and borrows thoughts and ideas from the master of world-building for a low-magic epic. But the attic has extra rooms, and those rooms are ripe to build upon.

My Process

I am first a world-builder. The world becomes something real and tangible to me, something I can feel and smell and listen to if I retreat to the back of my mind. I create the settings that become the stage. Once the stage is set, I find the players. The reality of a character is that they must fit within the setting. As such, I have part of myself embedded within each character. (At some point, I read that Shakespeare had about 20 characters, each molded and twisted in various ways to form the players within his various settings. I believe I have around 12 variations or segmentations.) With time, the players I have are able to interact in the worlds they inhabit. From there, the plots erupt and the stories begin to weave together, like a tapestry of chaos.

Writing releases that chaos from the attic, takes the ominous and the precarious and places it neatly into a little package. The first package is set to be delivered in mid-October, 2023. It is equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.

In Closing

For now, I'll leave with this: I am excited to share my worlds with others. I am determined to weave together stories that will pull you out of our world and into a new one. As another idol, Stephen King, once said, "Books are a uniquely portable magic." As a reader, I concur. As a writer, the magic is all around us, as long as we keep our eyes open.

Please, enjoy. If you like what you see so far, I encourage you to subscribe.

Be well,

D. James Reed