A lot of my friends did this sort of thing, and I decided I'd like to too... so...

Welcome to Legea Trivia!

1. Legea was not intended to be the focus.

It wasn't even intended to be published.

It was ... sort of... different back then.

You see, Legea was where we dumped all our fandoms into an AU Middle Earth with modern technology and wreaked havoc with that.

...Yeah. You can see why we didn't want anybody to know about it.

The weird thing was, it was so much fun that we did MORE with it than with the world we actually meant to make into an epic fantasy (for a look at The Black King of Icedor, see my book of old writing excerpts). Our characters slowly got more three-dimensional, multi-faceted, and actually relatable, and one day we realized with a shock that we actually liked them. We didn't decide that day to chuck The Black King of Icedor, or even to write anything about Legea, but it was the first step down that path.

After the characters' evolution was that of the world itself. It happened even more slowly. Little by little we cut away this thing or that that just seemed out of place or -- increasingly -- too modern. Some aspects went down the drain without us remembering they'd ever existed until months afterward. The last to leave were the telephones.

2. The Journey was originally going to be written entirely from Fred's point of view.

Towards the end of my "I-hate-Fred" phase, about eleven chapters into The Journey, I decided the story needed Sandy's POV as well. Although now I think Fred alone could have managed it, I'm happy with the way it worked; Sandy's upbeat, humourous voice provides a good balance to Fred's introspective and serious thoughts.

3. How did I decide to start the different books of the series?

***minor spoilers for the basic plots of these said books, no big deal unless you never read story blurbs***

The Journey

So my sister and I were in bed gabbing away as we usually do before going to sleep, and tonight we were talking about all the incredible families we'd invented and how it was so cool that they all had their different personalities and idiosyncrasies, and BOY was the Thorne family cool, and their journey to Orden, that was cool too, and so exciting.

*gasping* "Hey -- hey -- wouldn't it be great if I wrote a book about it?"

"Oh Verity, YES!"

The Village

We talk-played Fred's whole romance in one night, and I woke up the next morning and thought "OOH that was so fun, I need to write this down!" Actually, the main focus of the book didn't end up being romance, but that's another story...

The Claw

By this time we were getting quite attached to our characters. So, fun to do a murder mystery with them, right? It didn't take much to make me want to write that one down too, but I did have a hard fix on the title. I mean, "The Claw" was fitting, but all I could think of was Toy Story and the little green aliens!

Well, we went with it anyway. I don't think about Toy Story when I see it any more.

The War

I think we knew we were going to book-i-dize this one as soon as we started. I mean, all the rest of that stuff was epic, and a war is ten times more epic...

4. Because Legea used to be "Middle-earth", there are several countries which were at one time analogous to Middle-earth geography.

I will leave you to guess which ones.

5. Rodron (formerly Rothalon, a.k.a. the country in Flare in the Darkness) used to be just a stupid, villainous enemy of Orden.

Then, while drafting up history for Orden, my sister made Orden be the nation that broke the original alliance. I think she must have realized that Orden and Rodron had a lot more potential as two flawed countries than a perfect country and a rotten country. Gradually, we developed a more realistic view of Rodron overall, and in some ways I think it's cooler than Orden.

6. Falgor in The Journey used to be called Andre.

He also showed up consistently throughout the story and the conflict between him and Fred was never resolved, because I couldn't think how to do it after I dropped the plans of having a random and unrelated battle at the end of the book...

7. Yes, there was a random battle at the end of The Journey.

Originally it was supposed to be part of a subplot that ran throughout, of some evil dude called "The Spider" who wanted to take over the world, but gradually that idea became more and more unrealistic as I juggled storyline and character development and other, better subplots.

8. The concept of the thindran was a very late addition to the story.

It had no place in the first draft. Some time after I chucked the notion of the "epic save-the-world battle", I realized that the story needed a central theme and symbol to tie it together.

*sifts through word documents about Legea* *oh look, here's the thindran*

Thus, perfection.

And that's all I can think of for now. Hope this was fun for you guys to read!

And this is totally unrelated to Legea but my baby sister has her hair in two pigtails (not pigtail braids, just pigtails) and she is SO FREAKING CUTE I CAN'T STAND IT

SOMEONE CART MY CUTEIFIED BODY AWAY