I'll start with my first publication. Altearth is a world that covers two thousand years of history and most of my stories take place in the first thousand years. Yet, by ood chance, my first publication is set in a time toward the end of the second millenium.

I had the idea for "The Roadmaster" as the story of a runaway. I knew the feeling, having run away from home five times myself. There's a feeling, a mood, there unlike any other I've experienced, so I thought it could inform a story.

The plot quickly veered in the direction of the supernatural. Once I had decided that the car that picked up my hero was a Buick Roadmaster, I had the key--making a pun on the name. The rest was pretty straightforward story-telling.

I was actually working on a novel at the time. I'm just about the publish that novel, four years later. The short story just sort of jumped out at me, I wrote it in a couple of weeks, and sent it out to some magazines. The folks at Bewildering Stories helped me tighten it up, and then they published it. That was a great thing to happen for a novice!

Developing that story had all sort so ramifications with my world-building, and I've taken to heart a key lesson: I let my stories condition my world-building as much as the other way round.

Next up: The Garden of Hugo Vuerloz