If you’ve been following along on my Instagram, you might’ve seen a humbly boastful post a few months ago that I’d finished the first draft of what I’ve come to call the Cartographers project. I was proud of it, the prose was what I felt was some of the best that I’d done, and the journey across the Droughtlands it took was a beautiful sampler of everything the setting had to offer. Best of all, it was short, clocking in a zippy 65,000 words.

It all started as a distraction. I was in my early twenties and attempting to edit the first version of what would become The Hytharo Redux into something I could throw at traditional publishers while trying to write a sequel to it as well, but none of it was quiet working. I was trying to mash in all these aspects of action and battle that were distracting from what Spiric’s story was meant to be, and I felt myself yearning to see what else I could do.

Three months ago, I promised I would tell of where all this sand came from. The question I slowly had to answer with it was “why sand?”

As I go through my first few months of putting the Droughtlands into the world, I’d love to share the inspirations which helped shape it. I believe the best way to start this series of articles would be to ask a single question:

“Where did the Droughtlands begin?”