Welcome to the Rowa

Welcome to the first day of my blog party. Five years ago, my mom and I, having finally decided on a blog title and obtained a good header picture, did up a few blog entries, and I promptly became a very irregular blogger. At the time, I was blogging because I thought it was cool, but I didn't know what I was blogging about. I wanted to blog about my life, but I don't have an exciting life. Also, I didn't have a computer of my own, and that's always a deterrent to regular blogging.

Today, we're visiting the Rowa, the first of my worlds. I've mentioned before that this world was created as Middle Earth fanfiction. My sister and I wanted to write stories about hobbits, but hobbits were copyrighted, so we developed the Elvings.

I have set many stories in this world, short stories that were basically an idealized version of my own life (Only surviving example here), to the one that was The Hobbit, but with four young elving girls instead of Bilbo, no ring ... but sticks ... mine was a PVC pipe painted brown, to Infiltration and its sequel Future Flames. Technically, the world is now part of the Mikada universe, and I'm debating whether or not I want to market it as such. I probably will.

It's primary influence has been Middle Earth, but it has been colored by so many different things. I know that Little House on the Prairie was a large influence, particularly on clothing and the fact that children call their parents Ma and Pa. I was studying the medieval era in school during the plotting of Infiltration, and I naturally wanted to show off what I had learned, so the technology and much of the day-to-day life was based on that of Medieval peasants (though much better off), influence largely taken from a documentary called "Tales from the Green Valley"

I had a Left Behind obsession at one point, and I was especially intrigued by the marks given to the Christians, and I'm sure that's what set me on the trail of using the Rings as marks of faith for the Elvings. (Although the Rings themselves came from a cheap plastic ring that my sister had and wanted to work into the story somehow.) The idea of there being some sort of mark by which one can be sure of another person's salvation or not just fascinates me.

A lot of the culture came from my own life. I wanted to include a friend whose dad was a pilot, so I developed the Eaglewings - a family whose main occupation was riding eagles and delivering messages. My love of herbalism had many effects, and I'm sure there were other influences ... but my brain isn't working at the moment.

So pull up a chair by the fire. We're a simple folk here. We like a little bit of adventure, but not too much. We believe that we should follow Yshew with our whole hearts, and any other path is unthinkable.

............................................................................................

Welcome to the party! Please remember that I'm holding all sorts of giveaways (details here), so that if you feel like drawing fan art, writing a review, or anything else fun related to my books, go right on ahead.

Also, swing by Miss Melody's blog today for an interview with Tiger Lily!

I've turned on the "ask the author a question" feature on Goodreads, and I'll be answering any question that anyone asks me on my facebook page, or tweets at me @KendraEArdnek.

And I've turned off comment moderation so that anything you post will be posted IMMEDIATELY. But I've turned captcha back on. Sorry, don't feel like going around deleting spam, so ...

Anyways - have fun!