Welcome to Kodu!
This is a story about how I wrote a story. This is a gift for you lovers of romance and lovers of fantasy: my newest series, Gods Save the Queen. Notice the plural, in my imaginary world there are many gods who are not gods, but they like having people come to them in adoration so it kind of went to their heads. This is a work of love and for those of you that are interested in how a story comes together, this blog is for you.
In this series of blog posts, I'll walk you through the creation of this series of romantasy novels and give you a hint to what you can expect.
It all started on a disc-shaped planet that roamed the multiverse. It didn't have a sun to orbit, in fact, the sun orbited the planet. The ten-thousand-mile in diameter disc sat on the backs of four gigantic elephants, who stood on the back of an enormous sea turtle that swam through space. This Discworld was the creation of Sir Terry Pratchett, an amazing writer whom I adore and try to fashion myself after. I love the Discworld so much, I wrote eight fan-fiction novellas that took place on that Discworld and got some wonderful feedback from the readers.
The problem I had was that the stories were quite good, but I couldn't go anywhere with them. While Sir Terry's estate allows writers to write fan fiction, it does not allow them to profit off of his material, and his daughter is aware of my stories.
What to do… what to do…
I decided to extract my stories from Sir Terry's universe and make my own universe. There were many things that were strictly "Discworld Only," and needed that magic for the plot to advance, so I had to do some serious thinking. I couldn't just plop my story on an earth-like world; I had an entire universe to build.
So, we start at the beginning with a whole new solar system. My star is named Thaal, a Sol-like star that is circled by two planets: Zigu, a huge planet with a solid nickel-iron core that is the inner planet. The next planet out is Kodu, a smaller, Earth-size planet with an iron-nickel core. Every 88 days, or four times every Kodu year, Zigu and Kodu pass close together. The gravity/magnetic/magic field of Zigu causes the core of Kodu to tremble, which causes the stars to shudder if you looked up. The inhabitants of Kodu call this the Stardance, and it's said that babies made on a stardance evening grow to be strong and lucky. Because of the orbital ecliptics of both planets, the Stardance in Autumn is most noticeable.
Kodu has three moons for multiple reasons. It used to have one, but at one time in history, Zigu was the outer planet, and the gravitational pull of a rogue planet passing through the solar system pulled Zigu inward to the inner orbit it has today. One of its moons slammed into Kodu's moon, showering Kodu with a year-long meteor shower that destroyed every city on the planet. When the shower was over, Kodu had a series of rings that used to be its moon, and it picked up three other moons. These moons are Kuu, a large, ringed moon; Rahn, the crimson moon which has three rings; and Livi a tiny, bright moon that's not often seen because it's normally in the daytime sky.
Next week, we will talk about life on Kodu, who is there roaming the planet, what they drive, what kind of animals you may see as we explore Kodu with some of its inhabitants.
Gods Save the Queen book #1, the Enchantress, is available at
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