World Building with Elijana (Part 1)

Today, I read an article about blogging that had me thinking about what I blog about. The article discussed blogging about your passions—the kind of passions that you love researching or thinking about or sharing or… what you love to do. What you thoroughly enjoy doing.

This made me stop, think, and (as any good slightly OCD gal like myself is wont to do) make a list. At the top of the list of things (besides writing) that I absolutely love to do (alone that are related to writing and can be discussed in public without fear of blackmail, teasing, or taunting) were brainstorming, world building, and mapping the ironies of life. When I contemplate that list, it occurs to me that world building uses both irony mapping and brainstorming. So today, I’m going to blog about world building—and I’ll get to that, in just a minute. First, I need to give a little background.

If you’ve ever happened to meet me or catch me online, you’ve probably asked me what I write—to which I usually respond contemporary, historical, and paranormal romance. If you happen to be one of the sane ones I’ve met who either says or thinks: ‘How can you write all of that? Why not pick one subgenre and stay with it?’…, well, allow me to explain.

I love writing all three for various reasons. I love the contemporaries, because it allows me to focus more on characterization rather than the world. I adore historicals, because of the rich backdrops that offer the opportunity to explore creative anachronisms in a whole new way. (That and nothing beats a juicy scandal from a good history book. I have always viewed history books as nothing but great big tabloids written by the winner of this or that political, social, military, or emotional conflict. Sort of like the Enquirer of world history.)

But paranormals… dreamy sigh, writing paranormal romance is just plain fun. Why? Because I get to build worlds. I get to brainstorm building worlds. Ooooh, it gives me shivers just thinking about all the fun I can do while brainstorming building those worlds.

At this point, you might be thinking—oh, she’s just making this up. What has she written that proves to me that she loves world building? And you would have a point—the paranormal manuscripts I have are in draft form, but the world exists for my characters. And that world is called The Tales of WOE (or the Warriors Of Eros) which also happens to coincide in the same realm as my other series, The Chronicles of the Paranormal Surveillance and Strategic Taskforce (affectionately known as P.S.S.T.).

Now for the good stuff—how did I build this world?

It all started with an idea and a whisper in the back of my mind—more than three years ago. The whisper happened one day when I was surfing the internet and one site in particular: Theoi Greek Mythology (http://www.theoi.com/). I’ve always been a fan of Aesop’s fables and for some reason felt compelled to visit that site on that particular day. While reading all about the exploits of the traditional Greek gods, I happened upon the link to the daemons and found the Ker (plural Keres) demon. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Keres, they are (paraphrased from Theoi at www.theoi.com/Daimon/Keres.html) female demons who scour battlefields, are blood hungry, and rip the souls from those who have died a violent death, then hurl the souls down to Hades.

In other words, the perfect mama for a vampire.

And so there you have it: The beginning of my 3+ year obsession with building a world around my Keres-vampire connection.

Up next was figuring out how this connection figured into the plot whirling around in my pretty, little head that was triggered by the whisper of my muse. What was the whisper?

Eros is dead and it’s all Psyche’s fault.

Until next time, my fellow world builders, when I intend to dig deeper into building this world and my thought process for developing a supporting cast of kick ass races all determined to build a plot around this whisper of a gem of an idea.

Take care and happy musing!

~EK