In the beginning

This is my second post on my second blog, but it really should have been the first on the first.

Way back when (something near to 3 years now) I decided to start writing. Not anything complete, not anything that I thought I might eventually publish, it was just for fun. Mostly it was to fill time between and during college courses when my brain had had its fill of anthropology studies.

I had been a fan of Tolkien - namely the Hobbit - since early high school, but it was really the Lord of the Rings movies that grabbed my imagination and started the wheels turning. I have read and enjoyed other fantasy authors as well; Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, R.A. Salvatore, to name a few. My interest in fantasy writing became a fun outlet for all of the years I had spent studying history, mythology, anthropology, and archaeology. I loved the way humans of different cultures changed (or not) through time. I loved how they sought to explain the unexplainable. I loved how they learned and built and modified their world. And I thought, I can do that!

Thus began Schiehallion. My first ever attempt at world building or fantasy. 

It started with bits and pieces, mostly names for places and characters. Dwarves here, elves here, gnomes/halflings here. I tried to make each part unique so I wasn't rehashing what D&D had already been doing since the 70s. At the time I knew nothing of D&D or Pathfinder or Warhammer. I only knew "that stuff is for nerds." As time went on and I ventured farther down the path into the deep dork forest I found that compared to lots and lots of other people I was a HUGE nerd myself. Once you realize that and embrace it it's oddly liberating. That was the first hurdle.

The next was what to call what I was doing. I didn't know what "world building" was. I didn't know what to do with this new hobby. I didn't know how to describe it. I didn't even know what to call this world I'd created. It wasn't until my final year of college that I came across the name Schiehallion. But I'll explain more about that later because that's what really kicked things off and got the ball rolling. It's been rolling ever since. More to come...