1. Yr

My first series is called the Apocryphon of the Unstar. My plan is to write multiple series in the same universe, with each series named by its own Apocryphon. As you may well know, an apocryphon is a book of secret teachings or knowledge, and the plural of apocryphon is apocrypha. So, the collection of all my series will be apocrypha — the Apocrypha of Yr. (I’ve been using Yrniverse as my informal name for the universe itself.)

I don’t know if it’s in the blood of fantasy fans or what, but many of us enjoy the idea of secondary worlds with vast histories, legends, and mythologies. We love the idea that Disney princesses are all in the same universe. We love knowing that Shelob in Lord of the Rings was a distant relative of Ungoliant from the Silmarillion. We love our Books of the Fallen and our Cosmeres and our MCUs.

Now that I’ve embarked on this quest to be a fantasy author myself (though I prefer the term fabulist), I can’t help it — I want to create my own elaborate sprawling continuity.

I hope to write stories across many ages of the Yrniverse. That concept on its own isn’t all that ground breaking — the Tolkien legendarium covers thousands and thousands of years. Still, I think that my project is — if not entirely unique — at least uncommon, because I’ll be writing stories in not only the ancient past of the Yrniverse, but also in eras that would seem futuristic to us. In other words, I want to write sword & sorcery epics and space operas in the same reality. I’d also like to write some contemporary “urban fantasy” and/or horror stories in between at some point.

The big picture is that in some incomprehensibly distant future of the Yrniverse, a collection of books is discovered on a remote moon that links forgotten mythology, ancient history, and verifiable contemporary records—the Apocrypha of Yr. The discovery has all kinds of consequences: not the least of which is the mass production of popular versions of the documents. These novelizations are more or less similar to the novels that I’m publishing for yo in our universe…

But, I’m getting way ahead of myself, because, as of this post, I’ve only published one book. In the words of Bastian from Neverending Story, we still have a long way to go.