Nada Al-Karmi asked Michael J. Sullivan:

Hi, I recently finished The Riyria Revelations series & I'm a Huge fan. I was just wondering, how did you come up with the Elan world with its history & Gods? I just find the fact that you imagined such a world fascinating.

Michael J. Sullivan Hey Nada,

Thanks for asking...I'm a big history fan and read a lot about prior cultures and time periods. Although everything is "made up" there are a lot of influences from the church's role in Medieval Europe. It is one of those things that evolves over a long period of time. And with each book, some additional aspects get added in. Elan was "built" in my head for nearly a decade before I started writing the series, and as I write the world with an "Iceberg principle" (meaning only a small % of the details are above water) there is a lot I know that the readers don't yet.

In my new series, The First Empire, I go back several thousand years to explain the "real story" about Novron and the forming of the first empire. There is a big difference between myth/legend and reality and a lot of what I've told you so far may not be absolutely accurate ;-p

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