The Island and the Seais coming, and I’m telling you it’s going to be the best damn adventure you’ve ever been a part of.  If that sounds like your cup of brandy, then stick around.

Planting the Seed – The Early Years

I’ve loved good adventure and action movies since I was in diapers and watched Harrison Ford running down the Arc of the Consonant in Indiana Jones. 

Books I read as a kid further cemented my love of these genres. Beginning with the illustrated versions of Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and burgeoning into my teen years with Lord of the Rings, Enders Game, and even Jurassic Park.

Movies also had a heavy influence on me when I was young, like Willow, Dune (I didn’t read the book til recently), and of course Star Wars.

All these early influences and more began to spark my imagination and drove me to create my own stories, my own worlds, and write them on paper.

One Year Ago – The Ideas, They are a Brewin

The first inkling I ever had on this story came to me in a dream.  I and my cousin Kael were wandering through a jungle in search of a lost civilization.  We found it sunken deep within a lake.  Within the lake stalked a tentacled beast, and just looking at it we knew it was bad news.  So Kael came up with a device.

He had invented a rocket which he bolted to the ground using great rubber bands, the idea being that the rocket would fly up until the rubber bands forced it hurtling back down to earth where it would dive deep into the lake and past the beast.  So we entered, we soared, we plunged, the beast was on our tail, and then I woke up.

Let’s Keep it in the Pot for a Little While

So The Island and the Sea is nothing like the story told above except for a few key areas.  I liked the idea of going on an adventure with my cousin because, well, we banter.  All this bantering cracks us up, so who better to go on an adventure with.  And thus was formed the basis of the characters Dr Franklin P Fitzgerald (base on me), and Dr Thadeus Lumpen (based on Kael).

Two other things I took from my dream were the setting, much of the story of The Island and the Sea takes place within a jungle on a remote volcanic island, and the search for a long lost civilization.  But there was more to take into consideration.

On the next post: The Island and the Sea – Steampunk Lite