I'm going to tell you about a story, Void.

About the evolution of a story. It started when I was sixteen. I had been reading about the Roman emperors: Octavian, Caesar Augustus, and all the fellows who followed. And I came across an unusual name: Flavian. The Flavian emperors, who ruled Rome for a time. For a while, I stared unseeingly at my history book and revolved the name around in my head. Flavia...like the lady in The Prisoner of Zenda. It continued revolving, and then formed into Favian. Simple enough, just take out the el, not a bad name. But it was a little more than a name. It was a seed.

Over the next several days, I evolved more names and a story, which turned into the tale of Favian Windlow, a half-elf who learns he is the heir to a duchy in the Faery Realm.

It was dreadful. In a whole lot of ways.

I had two villains. One was a psychopathic megalomaniac and one was a shambling lout whose chief distinction was his deep and sadistic hatred of Favian, his cousin. I had a comic relief duo, I had stuffy older elves, I had a dashing captain of the guards. And, of course, I had a beautiful lady love, with whom both Favian and the shambling lout fell in love. I wrote a good sixty pages and went nowhere. And I plagiarized about half the names from Tolkien, with the innocent assumption that he wouldn't care, since he is dead.

Well. It petered out, as I said. And for a year, perhaps two, it sat there: a behemoth gathering figurative dust.

I think it was two years later when my late epic began nudging me in the back of my mind. Favian Windlow. Really not such a bad name. And the core idea: a half-breed faery struggling to fit into an upper-class society, woo a lady, battle his uncle? Not bad at all! I listened dutifully and decided to try to resuscitate the story.

I changed some stuff; Favian turned from a pitiful orphan being raised by his hateful uncle to a young man in the army. The plucky comic relief stayed, in a sort-of subdued way. (They were kind of necessary to the story.) The dashing captain stayed, and acquired a sidekick. The stuffy older elf became somewhat cooler. And the villains evolved into interesting people.

The psychopath, Favian's uncle, remained his uncle, but he turned into an elf with a genius for administration, who tries to take over the throne with the belief that he would be a better ruler than his brother--a coup more in the interests of the people than of the love of power. The hulking cousin quit being a cousin and became the uncle's loyal companion and the captain's nemesis. And then I hit a new problem. I fell in love with my villains.

So now my story of Favian Windlow has become the story of Valtimer, devoted servant and surrogate son to Felsar Windlow, the exiled duke. Maybe there's still hope for Favian's tale: the half-breed trying to fit into a strange society. But probably not as long as Valtimer is around.

And the dragon. Valtimer has a dragon.