Anyway, today I want to discuss my lifelong love, The Amüli Chronicles, and introduce you to how the massive story I want to tell first began. In the near future, Evolved Publishing will be posting a new blog post discussing my series, but not to the depth I seek to do here. Still, I'll let you know once their post is released and link you to it, because that blog will give you an overview of the two series I have out right now. The blog set they're doing is pretty exciting; Evolved Publishing is working with author Timothy C. Ward to create the blog series Great Stories, Dynamic Worlds, Compelling Characters. Expect new posts from them every Monday!
Now, onto the birth of The Amüli Chronicles.
The idea for this story fist struck me many years ago; I actually believe that the seed of this project was born from my (extremely old) short story about angels traversing worlds through mirrors. This was something I wrote in fifth grade for a school project, and other than the teacher, no one else has ever read it. I'm not proud of it, but the idea of angel-like creatures (amüli) passing into our world through mirrors is still alive and well in The Amüli Chronicles; in just about every story, mirrors are discussed as being how most amüli travel from one city to another on Inrugia (and on Earth). I'll go into further depth on mirrors, their impact on amüli society, and how they came about in another post, but it's good to note the relationship that story has with this larger set of epic tales.
It wasn't until many, many years later when a friend of mine in high school (freshman year) asked me to draw what my idea of the perfect boyfriend was that the idea about angels and mirrors took root again. I hadn't really put much thought into the perfect boyfriend before then, but I fulfilled the request, and this was the result:
My friends were so impressed that they asked me to give them more information on this so-called perfect boyfriend. I think it was the abs that did it. I mean, look at those. So detailed, so cut!
...
Yeah, um... So, this was written up by their request:
The very first iteration of Clae Vojtech (then Clei Thak) was born! At first, he was very much a Gary Stu. I mean, those stats! He was super smart, artistic, sweet, funny... yeah, the perfect boyfriend for a fourteen-year-old recluse.
Over the coming months, I dove deeper into developing Clae's character and his story. For some reason, I could not let this character go. And let me tell you, I've drawn dozens of characters who have vanished into time and notebooks, ones far more visually interesting and with neater stories than Clae's originally was. This cool dude, for example:
So what about Clae made him interesting enough to me to keep around if these other characters weren't intriguing enough to even write about past the third draft? It certainly wasn't visual interest. Clae looks kind of boring (at least, until he was given massive scars on his back in 2011). Even then, there's nothing so visually exciting about him that he should have been kept around more than 15 years, let alone have an entire eight-novel story arc written about him.
I think part of his interest lies in the original illustrations I made. He was designed to be the perfect boyfriend, and over the following years, I deconstructed him until he became a dimwitted boy with no sense of how he fits into the world. He becomes selfish and angry, and the physically attractive attributes of his character don't matter anymore. In this deconstruction of him as a person, and by destroying the idea of a perfect boyfriend, Clae became more intriguing to me; keep in mind, though, this collapse of the original character didn't happen for nearly eight years. Honestly, I'm still not sure why I kept writing about him. Maybe because there was something hidden beneath the character I'd started with, something more powerful and a person whose tale needed to be narrated. No clue. Whatever it was, Clae is the longest-lived character of mine.
From Clae's conception sketch came a myriad of other characters, some of which have stayed and others who have been lost to time and now only sit as sketches in my filing cabinet.
The second character I drew was Marik (back then Jake). He had very little development early on; all I knew was that he was kind of an asshole and really didn't like Clae much, and later, was addicted to a drug called schlava (now a fine malt liquor on Inrugia). The two were related, and have actually always been cousins, but unlike Marik, Jake despised Clae from the very beginning. There was never any reason given for Jake's hatred, which made him too shallow of a character to get behind, so over the years, I changed and redeveloped their relationship, giving it depth and complications.
This isn't the first-ever picture I did of him, but it is one of the few that have survived from my teen years. Below is another.
Funnily enough, the characters in this illustration both managed to survive to today's final iteration of The Amüli Chronicles. Marik is on the top, attacking the then-Ormond Cobles (now Draemyn Pex). I think part of the Chronicles' success in surviving all of the other stories I've wanted to write over the years is due to Marik. He became a driven, passionate character over the 15 years of writing, rewriting, trashing, drafting anew, and rewriting yet again, one who I identify strongly with. Something about his character and how he mingled with Clae and the others in the Soulbound arc urged me to keep going. Clae may have survived by pure happenstance, but it was truly Marik who pushed me to write the series and keep going.
Now, this post sort of touches on The Amüli Chronicles as a whole, but mostly focuses on Clae and Marik from the Soulbound arc (a smaller, eight-book, seven short story series within the larger Chronicles). These two were the birth of the other stories of the amüli and ekra peoples. They both grabbed me and refused to let go, and today, I have nine eBooks out, three of which are in print. It's a pretty amazing feeling, and I'm excited to know that The Amüli Chronicles aren't even close to being over.
Speaking of the ekra, by the way, I want to show you their very first concept art!
The ekra retain some of the physical attributes of the original design: large wounds, decaying skin, horns, dark, oily hair, long nails, and even blood-mites. I removed the wings a few years ago (in 2012, I think) and revamped the impact blood-mites had on individual ekrim. But it wasn't until my editor, Philip A. Lee, suggested removing gendered identities for the ekra that the species became whole. I cannot believe the impact discarding gender has had on the ekra people as a whole.
This post is getting a bit long, so I'm going to end it for now. Tomorrow, I'll choose one of the following topics or characters to discuss:
Clae Vojtech
Marik Aneys
Eti
Ekra
Amüli
Mirrors
There are many other topics that I'd love to write about, but I'll start at the beginning so you can follow along with the birth of The Amüli Chronicles and all of the stories and characters within.
Thank you for reading!
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