By that I mean I tossed a lot of ideas in the pot and kept what made sense. It also means sometimes I had to cut out stuff that made sense to start with, but didn’t makes sense later. Some of those things are hard to find, or only rear their ugly heads after I’ve written something else. I want my world(s) to make sense to readers, so sometimes whole sections of darling narrative has to go. The result, as ungainly as it was born into existence is the world of Fantastic America.
You might wonder why so much effort went into building a world that is essentially Earth with magic added after the fact. Ah but there’s the rub! Magic has been in this world before, and it left a footprint that didn’t reemerge until there was magic again. And for that I had to invent worlds where the magic resides in between magical ages. I won’t spoil any of it, but I’ve invested years into each of these worlds for readers to get lost in and find a perfect place, or people, or magical phenomenon to fall in love with!