The general story of The Shadow of the Past first occurred to me when I was in High School. It was a typical outcast discovers he is special and sets off to fight evil story and was written, illegibly, in various required writing journals. This was not the only story that I thought up at the time but was one I routinely came back to in moments of daydreaming where I acted it all out in my head.
Eventually the various stories in my mind, the fantasy ones anyway, were all joined up into one shares Universe with recurring characters, including Val’inar, and a multitude of different worlds which I called Terra.
All of this was a distant daydream, which changed in 2006, when I started my Sophomore year at Miami University and met my new roommate Doug. Doug also had literary aspirations and had written a book himself and we began talking through and fleshing out our ideas.
These discussions led to my decision in August 2007 to actually start writing. I wrote the rough draft of the first three chapters over about a week and sent them off the Doug for feedback. At the time the story was still a simple one of good and evil with a collection of two dimensional characters and a much different ending in mind than I originally intended. They were also long and unweildy, which is why they have beem reworked into 5 chapters.
While proud of my progress, I certain realization that the story had more potential than I first thought and also the beginning of my Junior Year of college would shelve writing until August of 2008 . . .
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