How it all began...

I am writing a series of fantasy novels that I am currently trying to get published?!
Yeah... I am
But how did it come to be? Why did I begin writing? Howcome? Where did I get the idea/inspiration?
I'll tell you...
Fantasy has always been an interest of mine ever since I picked up my first Dungeons and Dragons rulebook. I love the genre. Am I a nerd? Possibly though I don't look like one. I am no fan or Star Trek but there is something about fantasy that gets me going. I consider myself a good writer for the age I am and am able to devote large swathes of time to writing.
The series I am writing got started in a very surprising place: at work. I hate the work I do and know I will one day leave it. As I work I ususally pass time by thinking about stuff to keep my mind off what I am doing. There are times (such as after seeing a movie when my imagination is running) when I tell myself queer little stories in my skull while at work. During those long idle hours at my job I let my mind race while my body endured the crushing boredom. There was one funny little day when I was working and I conceived this idea of two planets, side by side, completely unaware of life on the other. Although the story had no resemblance to what it would one day be, the basic idea had started then: two fantasy worlds side by side.
By the end of the day I had devised a whole little cast of species which would live in the worlds and interact with each other. I decided that, for the most part, one world would be peaceful while the other one wasn't so much. The original races I created in my head for my little pair of fantasy worlds were as follows:

Demons (a bunch of different types of humanoids who are hateful and evil by nature)
Beasts (a race of minotaur-like people)
Effigies (living statues)
Quezzelians (snake people)
Xendi (Ant people)
Drem (Dragon people)
Goblins (garden gnomes)
Ivvids (plant people)
Valkyries (humanlike race of warrior-women)
Griffins (griffins)
Dragons (dragons).
(the list would eventually shrink significantly, but this was the beginning)

The idea was complete! By the time I was out of work for the day, I wanted to write it all down. To keep myself from falling asleep at work, I had come up with this cute little setting. I was a writer back then and knew that I wanted to turn it into a book. The problem was I had a setting, a list of peoples, and places. I had no characters, plot, or story. All I had was a stage, but no script and no actors.
If you remember the beginning of this article, you'd know that I play Dungeons and Dragons. I am a Dungeon Master and am thus good at storytelling. I could give my setting a problem to solve at the drop of a hat, all I needed was time and thought. But there was one more problem: commitment.
'Writing a book will take effort and time. Can I afford to expend so much effort and energy on something like this' I asked myself. 'Do I have the patience to write a book?' I didn't answer that question. Instead I told myself that the task of turning my cute little fantasyland into a serious piece of work would take effort, hundreds of hours, and more than a few sleepless nights. I said 'If you really want to do this, you will have to undertake a great responsibility'.
Then I said 'bring it on, I can give it my all'.
Sometime in September 2006, just before I had to eat dinner, with my new laptop, I sat down and began to write.
"Chapter one" I typed. I paused and thought. Then I typed a single word: "Rook".

More to come soon!