Monday, September 24, 2012

The idea behind Rey de Noches

I thought that I would get this out of the way considering that I always spend like a good 10 minutes telling others the story how and why I came up with the series Rey de Noches.


Now mind you, I am a very open-minded person. Thus growing up as a otaku, video game, book, and movie freak, there have been MANY inspirations for my passion in writing. But perhaps the reason why I wanted to be a writer, was credited to the Harry Potter book series created by J.K. Rowling herself. A true inspiration for fantasy lovers and children who like me, at the time, fell in love with fantasy. Yes I was naturally wishing that one day, my piece of work would be out there for people to enjoy. My first attempts in becoming a writer didn't succeed; I had taken interest in comics- particular manga- and failed to meet with a committed artist partner. I did try to learn how to draw and create my writing in picture form but I had to accept the fact that I wasn't meant for such work.

Thus my dreams for writing hit a brick wall. However I didn't give up at that point. I continued to write out stories in various genres hoping that it would attract potential comic/manga artists. After some time, I came up with the idea of Rey de Noches sometime during 2008...


During 2008, I continued to seek out potential partners as I laid out my ideas openly to them. Now Rey de Noches was NOT my main interest; it was simply a idea that occurred in my mind to do a world where it's always night time which to me, was 'mystical' and 'fantasy' like in a way. 

Over the course of the next 2 years, Rey de Noches continued to be a side project where I slowly added ideas to it. My first thought was: "Why is EVERY fantasy setting set in either Europe or Asia?". This was the deciding factor in what type of setting I wanted to create. I wanted to be different from most main stream and given that Latin European cultures were rarely done or even acknowledged in fantasy settings, I thought that it would be interesting if a corresponding world existed giving reference to the Latin culture of the real world. Thus Latin America was the next thought that came to mind. 

We all know of the Spanish/Portuguese/French  conquest during the aftermath discovery of the New World. It bridged between two different worlds in a hostile relationship between the natives and their culture. What we see today in Latin American cultures is greatly influenced by the culture exchange between the Latin nations and the native tribes that lived there.

There's actually a lot of mythologies in Native American cultures as well as Latin American cultures. The potential with material such as that was endless in my view. By the time I realized this in 2010, I had decided to mainstream Rey de Noches into my writing career where I spent endless days and nights researching whatever I could learn from the history behind all Latin cultures that exist to today. As well as politics and historical figures. Non-Latin empires during the conquests such as the African slave brought by the conquerors played a important role as well. I decided to explore and web out the culture and historical connections as far as I possibly could. 


Finally, by 2011, I had gather all the material I needed to start off with. Only a few problems: How would this world work without a sun? What 'cultures' would exists and how would they differ yet remind the reader of the real life cultures that are referenced? Should I just write this in a novel format?


For the 3rd question, I decided that I couldn't wait to find a artist after spending a few years without finding people to commit. Thus I chose to do everything in a novel format. 

For the 2nd question, I actually had less trouble in 'changing' and merging/keeping, new and old order ideas. Such as 'keeping' the union between Mexico and all of central america. Where in real life, their Pre-Spanish cultures were very similar and related in tribal cultures but are currently separated by different political views. This made the settings/countries easier to come up with and their neighboring relationship. Honestly, history itself became more interesting once I was able to exploit use all the references that I learned from research. This also helped when choosing character names for what type of character I wanted in the story. Name references towards certain figures would match no? Like "Emeraldsia" is a reference to the real historical union between Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama known as 'Gran Colombia'. A reference to Colombia's rich quality of Emeralds. All of this was possible for the story background/setting that I needed.

Finally, the 1st question was the big one for the future of Rey de Noches. I mean, how can a world exist without a sun? How can you see anything? Why would the moon shine if there's no sun?
Let me tell you: this was NOT easy to work on.

The whole idea was what kept me at bay from really working on this story until the idea sparked in my mind. I found out some interesting science research relating to the possibility of worlds (well planets in this case) surviving without a sun. My research paid off as I found something unique.

Basically, it IS possible for a planet to give life without a sun. So long as there's a heated natural source in or on the planet itself. So this gave a perfect slot opening for involving magic. In all forms of fantasy, magic has always been portrayed as a 'plus' and 'advantage' in certain settings but never as a need. So I thought that making magic essential for the survival of a living thing, would connect all of the dots in the importance. It also played the role of a most valuable natural resource. It heats, it powers, it does it all. It also became a plot factor in the first book and the series itself leading to what you see on sale now~



So that's basically the origins on how and why I came up with the story. If you have any questions that I haven't clearly answered, feel free to ask~

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