Guest Post David Brown

Today I welcome David Brown to the blog. He wrote a guest post in which he shares the birth of Elenchera.

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Birth of a New World

When I left school and headed for college to study English, History and Computing, I never envisaged creating a new world while I was there. Growing up I had always enjoyed fantasy. Films such as The Neverending Story, Legend, Willow, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth never ceased to enthral me and even today those films stand up as true escapism pieces.

In 1998 I spent my free time from studies on my brother’s Playstation. I used to just play whatever games he had but then I started branching out and trying some of my own. On a whim I bought the RPG Final Fantasy VII and it changed my life. It was my first experience of this series and after negotiating the opening few hours I was enjoying the game to an extent but then the story left the city of Midgard at the outset and took you into the wide world. I was blown away.

I eagerly snapped up Final Fantasy VIII when that came along and moving between the two games things slowly changed for me. This RPG series has gods that your characters can summon to aid them in battle. The creators have drawn on gods from world mythologies, such as Shiva and Quetzalcoatl, and I was fascinated to learn more about them. One god – Odin – led me down the path of Norse mythology. I read extensively, taking in such works as Sturlusson’s The Prose Edda. From there I embraced the Icelandic sagas and even read Beowulf. After a few months of Final Fantasy and Norse mythology, I had drawn a world map that became Elenchera.



Over the next ten years I built the world of Elenchera from scratch. The world map was made up of 23 individual lands so to help me along I drew separate maps for each of the lands. Of course, maps change over time so I had to have one map for each period of history, known as Shards in Elenchera. There are currently 25 Shards so I have 500+ maps for reference. While I drew the maps I worked on a timeline of the most important events in Elenchera’s history. I couldn’t have done the history alone. I needed some help.

I’ve always loved history and even after finishing college and university where I studied History and English, I continued to read history books. I still do with a passion. One book, however, became instrumental when building Elenchera. I turned to Cassell’s World History which recorded the key events in our own world history. I read this from cover to cover, watching empires rise and fall, scientific advancements come along to replace archaic methods, and the flourishing world of literature, film and music. I took it all in and noted all the events that interested me.

Having gone through Cassell’s World History I was able to build Elenchera’s history piece by piece with each land being home to a unique race, many human, some dwarves, elves, dragons and creatures of my own creation such as tolderes and elamorgias. It was a long process and many times I wanted to throw in the towel. I actually tried publishing some novels early in the process of world building but they were no good, they simply didn’t have the substance that the complete world building could give them.

Despite more than ten years of work on Elenchera, the novels are not designed as a history lesson for readers. I want to do something different with the fantasy genre. My dream is for readers that normally do not favour fantasy to find something they can enjoy in Elenchera. The emphasis is on the characters and their stories. The land around them and the history that goes with it is very much in the background. When history does come into a novel it is only to set the scene and contribute to the story. If it has no bearing on the story, it isn’t included. Plain and simple.

Fezariu’s Epiphany was the first novel from Elenchera, published in May 2011, and was followed by A World Apart, published in June 2012. I am currently working on my third book from this series, Ansel’s Remorse, and already have plans in place for the next two books – The Voice of Elenchera and The Stars Beneath the Parapets. Collectively, these books and future instalments make up the Elencheran Chronicles but the reader has no obligation to read them in any particular order. Each novel is a self-contained story, covering a different land, a different period of history and a different group of characters.

Of the feedback I have had about these books, the reviews that have pleased me the most are the ones from readers who tell me fantasy isn’t a genre they usually read but they found something to enjoy in my books. That’s my intention with Elenchera, to sit on the periphery of fantasy, still embraced by fantasy fans but reaching out to other readers as well. Thanks to more than a decade of world building, I am not short of ideas for stories.

David Brown could be considered a fantasy fanatic, especially since he has spent the last 10 years developing a 47,000-year history for his fictional world of Elenchera. When converting his obsession into literary form, David commits himself to a rigorous writing and editing process before his work can meet his approval. Combined with the critical eye of his wife and a BA Hons in History and English, David's dedication leads him to his goal of inspiring readers through heartfelt stories and characters.
Although David is inspired primarily by fantasy fiction, he also finds his muse in the form of anime, world cinema, history, and biographies. His own books, Fezariu's Epiphany and A World Apart, and the in-progress Ansel's Remorse and The Stars Beneath the Parapets combine aspects from worlds both old and new into compelling tales of a world not soon forgotten. David himself certainly does not lack a spirit of adventure; in fact, he left his job in 2007 in order to spend a month travelling. Second only to meeting and marrying his wife, David counts this as one of the most amazing experiences of his life.
Find the author: Website | Blog |  Twitter | Facebook 

Demetrius makes his first mistake when he lets his best friend Halcyon marry Eleyna, the love of his life, without saying a word. On the day of the wedding, he walks away from the Elencheran town of Dove's Meadow and joins the army.
He makes his second mistake when the pirate Black Iris tricks him into letting dozens of men, women and children die in a fire. Demetrius is imprisoned in grief and disgrace.
But he can atone. The Black Iris is dead. The Ivory Rose has risen to the top of the pirates and is leading brutal raids on the coast. If Demetrius can capture and kill her, he'll win his pardon.
And then Demetrius discovers the Ivory Rose is Eleyna. He must decide which will be his third mistake: losing his last chance at a pardon or destroying the one woman he's ever loved.
Buy the book: Amazon US | Amazon UK