I didn’t set out to build a kingdom. I set out to understand the bigger picture.
Life. Mythology. Spirituality. The stories we inherit and the beliefs we’re expected to accept without question. The ways trauma travels through generations, shaping people who may never realize they’re carrying something that was never theirs to begin with.
I’ve always been drawn to the questions beneath the surface. Not simply what we believe, but why we believe it. Not simply what we’re told, but what happens when we dare to question the telling.
What if the stories we’ve been handed aren’t the whole truth? What if the people history remembers as righteous weren’t always right? What if the gods themselves are capable of cruelty, contradiction, and the very things they condemn in mortals?
And what happens when someone finally decides that the cycle ends with them?
Somewhere among those questions, a world began to take shape. That world became Hadris.
Within it lies Thalengar, a kingdom fractured by power, history, and the consequences of decisions that reach far beyond the people who make them. Eventually, that world became Thalengar | Fractured.
But this story is about more than writing a fantasy novel. It’s about what happens when you create something that belongs entirely to you.
A world built from questions
I didn’t create Hadris because I had all the answers. I created it because I had questions I couldn’t stop asking.
My fascination with mythology and spirituality has never been limited to the stories themselves. I’ve always been interested in what those stories say about us: the structures we build around belief, the authority we give to those who claim to know better, and the uncomfortable space between faith and blind obedience.
I’m fascinated by generational patterns, too. How pain becomes tradition. How fear becomes a rule. How something that once served a purpose can survive long after that purpose has disappeared—and how difficult it can be to challenge a pattern when everyone around you has mistaken its existence for proof that it must be right.
Fantasy gave me a place to explore those questions without pretending they had simple answers. I could build a mythology, decide what a kingdom was taught to believe, and create rulers whose power didn’t necessarily make them worthy of it. I could let those questions have consequences.
Because in Hadris, the past doesn’t politely stay in the past. Power doesn’t exist in isolation. And the choices made by those at the top can change the lives of people who never had a say in the decision.
Sound familiar? That was part of the point.
Welcome to Hadris: a little lore from the Archive
A world can’t survive on philosophical questions alone. Eventually, it needs geography, history, mythology, magic, and a truly unreasonable number of notes. Ask me how I know.
1. Hadris is the Realm. Thalengar is the Kingdom.
Let’s establish the geography before I accidentally confuse my own readers: Hadris is the Realm. Thalengar is a kingdom within it. They’re not interchangeable names. Thalengar’s history, conflicts, and rulers exist within a much larger reality, with other places, other powers, and a mythology that reaches beyond one kingdom’s borders.
I wanted a world that felt as though it existed before the first chapter and would continue to carry consequences long after a book ends. The novel may introduce you to one part of that world, but there’s always more beneath the surface. And yes, I have notes for it. So. Many. Notes.
2. A kingdom can lose more than its peace.
The rise of the storm god Drahgar Ravendal is tied to a devastating imbalance: the land’s magic is starved, and the leyline network that sustains it is broken. Thalengar becomes a place marked by ash, grayness, and desolation.
That isn’t just an aesthetic choice. I don’t want a landscape to be beautiful wallpaper behind the plot. I want the world to tell part of the story before a character explains a single thing. What does a kingdom look like when something fundamental has been taken from it? What happens to a place when its natural balance is disrupted? In Thalengar, the environment is part of the evidence.
One of my favorite contrasts is between Thalengar’s ash and gray and Sovereignia’s gold and pine. Two places can exist within the same Realm and feel as though they belong to entirely different realities. I want readers to feel that contrast, not simply memorize it.
3. The gods are part of the problem.
I wanted mythology to be more than a list of divine names and impressive powers. The gods in Hadris are part of the world’s history—and history is rarely as clean as the version people are taught to repeat.
Power doesn’t automatically make someone wise. A title doesn’t guarantee goodness. And being worshipped doesn’t mean a person—or a god—can’t be wrong. Those contradictions are part of what makes the mythology interesting to me.
4. Lovina’s story begins with a mystery.
Lovina Údar is the Divine Source Vessel, and her story is tangled in the hidden history and power structures of Hadris. For twenty years, Graham has executed her in her sleep. The dreams leave her with the same impossible question: how can someone who may not be real keep finding her?
That mystery is one doorway into Thalengar | Fractured. I won’t open every door here—some things are better discovered in the story—but the questions behind Lovina’s life reach well beyond the nightmares themselves.
When worldbuilding became a mirror
I didn’t set out to write an autobiography disguised as fantasy. Hadris is its own world, and its characters have their own histories, motives, mistakes, and choices. Their stories aren’t direct stand-ins for mine.
But the questions I bring to the world are personal. I think about the patterns people inherit without choosing them, the ways trauma can influence what we fear and protect, and the difficulty of challenging a belief when it’s woven into the foundation of your life.
I also know what it is to live in a body that doesn’t always cooperate, to fight through chronic illness, ADHD, and imposter syndrome, and to wonder whether the thing you’re trying to make is good enough to deserve a place in the world.
Creating Hadris hasn’t magically made those struggles disappear. It has given me somewhere to put my imagination, curiosity, anger, hope, and all the questions that refuse to leave me alone.
There is something powerful about having a place where your imagination isn’t required to ask permission.
I’m allowed to create even when I’m struggling. I’m allowed to be a beginner even after accomplishing something difficult. I’m allowed to publish a book while still learning how to become the writer I want to be. Most importantly, I’m allowed to make something that matters to me before the rest of the world decides whether it matters to them.
The unglamorous magic of building a world
Here’s a confession for anyone who imagines fantasy worldbuilding as an endless stream of brilliant ideas: sometimes it is. And sometimes it’s staring at a database, wondering whether the thing you invented three months ago contradicts a rule you established six months earlier.
Welcome to the glamorous life of a fantasy author.
As Hadris grew, I needed a way to keep its moving parts connected—not just names and descriptions, but the relationships between the things that exist and the rules that govern them. That led me to build a dedicated worldbuilding system in Notion.
I separated World Elements—the things that exist in the world—from Laws—the rules the world operates under. The distinction sounds simple. It changed the way I thought about worldbuilding.
An element might be interesting on its own, but what does it affect? What rule governs it? What happens when someone interacts with it? Does it change the story, or is it merely decoration?
And magic needs limits. If a power can solve every problem without a meaningful cost, the stakes begin to disappear. I want the pieces of Hadris to affect one another. I want the lore to matter.
I am still learning, and I’ll undoubtedly change things as the series grows. But building this world has taught me that worldbuilding isn’t simply about inventing a place. It’s about creating the conditions that make a story possible—and making sure the choices inside it carry weight.
I am the Sovereign of Hadris.
That sentence means something to me beyond the title itself.
I’m not the Sovereign of Hadris because I have everything figured out. Creating a fictional world doesn’t mean I can control every circumstance in real life. It means that here, in this space, I can build, question, revise, and keep going.
I can make room for complexity. I can change my mind. I can create something complicated without needing to resolve every contradiction immediately. I can build a world that asks hard questions and lets the answers have consequences.
Hadris is the place I keep returning to—not because it’s perfect, but because it is mine. It gives me something to pour myself into that doesn’t take without permission. Something I can shape even on the days when so much else feels outside my control.
So yes. I am the Sovereign of Hadris.
Not because I have conquered every obstacle. Not because I never doubt myself. But because I chose to create this world, and I choose to keep creating it.
And this is only the beginning.
Thalengar | Fractured, the first book in the Sovereign Gods series, is available now.