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Ibera is where the majority of the story starts out because
this is the part of the world that I developed in the most
detail when I started putting together the project THE SECRET
TEXTS (of which the first book, Diplomacy of Wolves,
is now in print.) You have to realize that when I drew
this map, I had no story idea, no characters developed, and
nothing more in mind than that I wanted to write something
big. Because I wanted to do a story with world-spanning
sweep, I had to create a whole world. So I sat down with
three or four yellow No.2 school pencils and a blue Pilot
rolling ball pen and a box of colored pencils, taped
together six sheets of graph paper, and got to work on
shaping continents. I got out a compass and drew in scattered
circles, though I had no idea when I did what I was going
to do with them when I drew them. They were impulse -- their
meaning came later, and when I got it, I got a thousand years
of magic, intrigue and terror with it. But meanwhile, I tossed
mountain ranges and rivers around and dropped some dots
on the paper and started naming cities.
Then I sketched in mountains around those compass circles
I'd thrown down, and decided that they had water in their
centers, and I started thinking about what made those circles,
and what sort of world would exist in the aftermath of the
event that created them. I knew I wanted a world where magic
was central, so I knew those circles were created by magic
-- big, bad magic. How long had they been there? I decided
a thousand years was about right. What lived around them,
and in them, and how had whatever had happened affected the
things that did? Ideas started flowing as I began visualizing
the inhabitants and I started writing background.
Who made those holes? More answers, more background.
Who survived, and what did they remember of the disaster?
More answers, more background. A couple of story lines started
falling into place.
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