Genesis of the Arch of Time
During high school, John worked as a night watchman at a funeral home. Unbeknown to his
employers, John would invite his friends to the funeral home to play wargames and fantasy games.
In designing those games, John invented Telor, the inquisitive god that experiences the world
through the senses of his adherents who are obligated to delve into all manner of mysteries in order
to please the God.
As the games continued, John fleshed out more of his ideas about fantasy worlds. While studying
economics at the University of South Carolina, John authored a supplement on injecting
author-created religions into games. This supplement included the Arch of Time's current
cosmology. John never found a game company that was interested in adding his supplement's
depth, so his fantasy ideas were shelved.
In the mid-90's John began to do free-form storytelling, in which chat room participants create
characters and a surrounding world through narration and dialogue. Julian Granger, the coldly
arrogant noble, needed an origin. The Arch of Time universe worked quite well for this. Back
then, John wrote brief sketches of the story of Julian Granger's rise to power as Baron of
Krysander and Julian's ascension as King of all Ramas.
Through these years, John worked for universities, teaching economics and researching topics he
was interested in. Part-time, he served as an expert witness and consulted for a real estate
investment company. When he tired of these part-time pursuits, he turned back to the Arch of
Time for a more enjoyable life of writing. All the lessons John learned along the way go into the
Arch of Time, including his training in game theory, his love of politics and religion, Machiavelli,
Sun Tzu, and Musashi Miyamoto.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
