Rogan’s Ruminations

Welcome to Rogan’s blog, here you will discover all the background and idea’s that went into creating The Shattered Realms, especially the first book, subtitled, The Great Army.
So, where did it all begin, well for Rogan it was when he was mistakenly taken by Orsk raiders who mistook him for the royal prince of Marcadia. There he was to spend the next ten years perfecting his own escape plan and ultimately, his revenge for all the injustices he thought that had been committed against the people he led away from those cave villages under the mountain in the realm of Obreā.
The real story began almost a whole life time ago in a small school building that no longer exists. I was five years old when I was first taught to write, and I remember it vividly, sitting at a table I shared with one of two other infants learning to spell my name, Shane.
Thankfully, Mum and Dad, you did not call me Phineas or some such name because I might still have been learning to spell it to this day!
The coming together of various letters fascinated and captivated from that moment on, and gradually as I began to learn that those same letters could be put together to form hundreds of different words, I began to formulate the idea of writing a story.
What where my early inspirations? Well believe it or not, cartoons like Scooby Doo, and programs like Doctor Who, Fireball XL5, Stingray, and Space 1999, The first story I ever wrote was in primary school and it was called ‘The Ghost of Belmont Towers,’ based loosely on those Scooby Doo cartoons.
While at leisure I played for hours with boxes of plastic soldiers and cardboard cut-out figures from the Dr Who program that came with boxes of Weetabix.
My second attempt at writing a story was during one six-week holiday at secondary school, it was a science fiction story called ‘Falcon 5, and the planet of crystals.’
That world was being devoured by spacefaring ants who ate everything in their path and pooped out a crystal-like substance, after eating the landing legs of the Falcon 5 spacecraft it collapsed on to the ground breaking open the utility cupboard and dispersing washing up liquid everywhere, the washing up liquid was the thing that finally killed the ants, and the crew of the spacecraft was saved!

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