Author name: Taylen Carver

Bestselling author of speculative fiction.

Getting There…

I took a couple of days off to deal with business.  Today I got back to plotting the first book (and laying seeds for following books). There is a lot of story to shove into the first book.  But I’m slowly narrowing down the plot to the essentials, so it’s a nice, tight read. At the […]

Getting There… Read More »

What’s Your Story?

Tolkien was brilliant at backstory.  Scratch the surface of any of his characters in The Lord of the Rings, and you can’t help but unearth an interesting, unique life story.  Sometimes those stories actually played out in the books themselves.  Sometimes they were only hinted at, but you could glimpse them and couldn’t help but be

What’s Your Story? Read More »

Details! Details!

Details! Details! I got caught up with administrivia yesterday and didn’t get any work done on the book. But today I did.  I’m still world building, which is kinda scary.  There’s an awful lot of detail building up.  Histories, characters, family trees, fantasy species and their interlocking relationships to each other. It’s slowly moving over to

Details! Details! Read More »

Elemental Gods

Although I’m not sure if I’ll include divine magic in the first book, I may bring it in later.  Today I spent my writing time building a pantheon of gods to match the species that will populate the book.  As I’ve divided the magic into the four Druid elements, I also divided the species into

Elemental Gods Read More »

Elemental Magic

I’ve finished building the broad outlines of the magic system for the series.  It is a magic system built upon the Druidic elements; Fire, Water, Earth and Air…and I am leaning toward the Tarot as a guiding structure, as it dovetails neatly into Druid lore.  Especially the DruidCraft Tarot, which is the deck I tend

Elemental Magic Read More »

Alchemy Rules

More work on the magic system of the new series, today.  Lots of reading. I find it interesting how the same themes run through magic systems, paganism, alchemy and science. Yes, science. Alchemy was once practiced side-by-side with early scientific principles and experimentation, until scientists “learned better” and parted ways with the mystical chemists. Only, it

Alchemy Rules Read More »

World Building

I’m in the very (very!) early stages of world building at the moment, so decisions are flying like confetti and what I think is a confirmed and locked-in decision today may end up changing by the time I’ve finished building the plot for the first book. But for right now, I’m pretty sure the first

World Building Read More »

Scroll to Top