What I'm trying to do

Every part of Sphereworld begins with a simple question: Wouldn't it be interesting if...? Dragons. Living cities. Impossible libraries. Magical universities. Forgotten kingdoms. Wonder comes first.

But wonder is only the beginning.

Once something fantastical exists, the interesting question is no longer whether it exists, but what follows from it. How do people live with it? What professions appear? What institutions grow around it? Which traditions survive because of it?

Every idea leaves traces.

Kingdoms are built from more than kings. Libraries, universities, merchants, engineers, bureaucrats, monasteries, guilds, explorers and scholars have shaped history just as profoundly as warriors ever did.

Fantasy has room for all of them.

Sphereworld was never built around a single hero. Thousands of stories happen every day. Most will never be written.

Their existence nevertheless shapes the world in which the written stories unfold.

Characters should become good at things. Training matters. Knowledge matters. Preparation matters.

Fantasy should celebrate mastery without confusing it for destiny.

I don't think beautiful prose is something to apologise for. Words are not merely transparent windows through which a story is observed.

The world, the characters and the language should elevate one another.

Sphereworld is grounded firmly in classical fantasy: humans, dwarves, elves, monsters and magic. These ideas have endured because they continue to capture our imagination.

My ambition is not to reinvent fantasy, but to take its familiar foundations seriously.

Civilizations remember because people write. Libraries are where ideas outlive their creators. Archives preserve victories, mistakes, myths and lies alike.

Unsurprisingly, Sphereworld contains rather a lot of books.