My History:

Your typical fantasy fan just couldn’t get enough of his favorite authors. Reading constantly, role-playing, you name it. It was this time when I was participating at TSOR, using animal avatars, talking about Brian Jacques, and generally role-playing in the Redwall world. But the Rping just wasn’t up to snuff. The character I had created just didn’t fit the existing games. So then I had a bright idea. I’ll write an actual story.
Thus, the “Deathcurl” fanfiction was born. It was a hit. The community loved my accuracy to the original writing style of Jacques. And I should be familiar with his style: I’ve read most of his books at least thrice! I now had a semi-complete short story. Something I never had before. I even had a huge fan (I love you, WG).

But then, disaster hit. TSOR got hacked. The forums were completely destroyed. All of the comradeship, all of the great fanfiction, all of the feedback…gone. The loss of TSOR was the loss of my support as well. I took it harder than I would like to admit. Those forums meant a lot to me. Afterwards, I just couldn’t find the heart to finish the Deathcurl story. In fact, it still doesn’t have the resolution I had in mind.

Over time, I dabbled at writing a bit, trying out different styles, different ideas. Nothing seemed to work. I slowly developed an idea for an original world (credits to my friend for giving me a kick in the butt here, you know who you are). And then, JaiYiKendra encouraged me to finish a story I was working on. It was the third major attempt at writing a story of Fulai, which still wasn’t very developed at the time of this project. But I pecked at it day by day, sometimes writing as little as one sentence. Eventually I ended up with a short story about the same length as my old fanfiction. And, me likey.

After this groundwork was laid down, everything really took flight once I came to a realization…

My World
That is, that it wasn’t really “my” world after all. I had created it, but it would have been impossible without the help, support, and ideas of many. I thought about the implications of this. I realized that I didn’t want it to be “my” world. The reason I got into writing was to share ideas. My history is in role-playing, and extensive reading of various works. I realized that I wanted something LIKE a role-play, but without being involved in a “game” per se. I wanted something grander in scope. I wanted a kind of open-source fantasy world that everyone could participate in, creating art, games, pass-along-stories, you name it.

And then I managed to come across Dimar, a Public Domain fantasy world created by Dee Dreslough. I didn’t even know that you COULD do stuff like that!

I wanted to do something similar. That’s why I have decided to grant a very liberal use of my intellectual property. Basicly, you can do just about anything with it as long as credit is given where credit is due.

About Fulai:

Fulai is nothing special. No, really. I’m not out to make any groundbreaking new innovations in the genre of fantasy. It is a simple place, with simple politics, and simple (and sometimes not so simple) people. There is no “magic” simply because I have tried “magic” before, and it always makes things seem too fantastical. I prefer a more down-to-earth approach. Although there can, and probably will, be spiritual/supernatural powers which could be considered an equivalent to magic.

Although the details of Fulai have changed much over time, the original concept remains the same. It is a lush world filled with a variety of races, all who have their own idea of what constitutes the good life. I will be delving more into this later, but for now the key players are:
1) Humans: Just your basic homo-sapiens. Big deal, right?
2) Dragons: The classic winged-beasts of lore.
3) Dracis: Crocodile-like creature. Very smart. Very fierce.
4) Krax: Large creature which digs under the earth. It looks like a cross between a tortoise and a crab. They have a hive society, with one queen ruling the colony. Currently, they have not made an appearance in the stories.
5) Raman: Tiger-like creature which often inhabits the jungles and forests. For all general purposes, they are exactly like any of the other big cats, except for their high intelligence.

The bulk of Fulai involves the interaction between the races. It’s a simple premise, and admittedly needs more development. But I love it, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else but write about it, or at least try to.

Author’s Note:
The Black Dracis was my first completed character-driven story. I realize that the pacing is off. The first story was kind of a piecemeal thing. For every five ideas that I had, only one of them was any good. I’m working on that for the next story, promise.

Also, my writing style is very “artsy” in the sense that it is supposed to reflect the characters themselves (and occasionally the author) so some details have been intentionally left out that might not have been left out otherwise. Also, the use of grammar and punctuation was intentional. The work is full of sentence fragments and incorrect comma usage. We are aware of this.

Also, don’t expect a happy ending from most of my stuff. Happy endings typically aren’t very realistic for the themes that I cover in my writing. Not to mention that I’ve already seen enough happy endings to last me a lifetime.

Regardless, you should check it out, have fun, and be inspired!