When I was 11 or 12 I wrote a brief story about a girl named Eolia. I gave my short story the ponderous Latin name of Advent Ignaritatis. Eolia went in search of marvelous beauties and instead found a lethal kingdom of terrors. As a middle schooler I had a plethora of novel ideas, and impressively wrote several 100-200 page stories. But I abandoned far more than I finished. Eolia was one of those casualties.

But something about the main character, and the tone, of the story stayed with me. When I made the decision as a thirtysomething to write a complete fantasy story for the first time as an adult, I weighed several story options and found my heart drawn back to Eolia. I looked through a Welsh dictionary and re-christened her Siana. I spent about 6 months plotting my grown up version of Advent Ignaritatis, and delved into the actual writing the fall of 2004. Thus Siana’s War was born. I figured my novel would be about 400 pages, max. Now, 12 years later, I have a Word file containing three volumes of Siana’s story, about 4 times longer than I planned.

This part of my blog is about Siana’s War. But for now, I promise I will avoid plot spoilers. It is an intricate plot with its fair share of surprises and I value readers’ innocence of the twists and turns. I’ll focus instead on my experience writing the story, and how it’s affected my life. I’ll discuss the particular goals and premises I brought to the process. And I’ll muse upon the character of Siana, Princess of Time, as openly as I can without giving away the flow of the story.