Why I Chose to Build a Secondary World

At first, building an entirely new world sounded like the harder choice.

There would be maps to draw, histories to invent, countries to name, cultures to shape, magic to define, climates to understand, and rules to keep consistent. There would be more questions to answer than I could possibly imagine at the beginning.

For a while, writing stories set in our own world seemed simpler.

After all, the world already exists. The geography is known. The histories are documented. The cultures, languages, borders, religions, wars, trade routes, and cities all have real foundations. There is comfort in that. There is also structure.

But eventually, I realized that the stories I wanted to tell needed a different kind of freedom.

I did not want to write fantasy that felt loosely placed over the surface of the real world. I wanted the setting to matter from the ground up. I wanted geography, history, magic, politics, culture, and ecology to shape the story at every level.

I wanted the world itself to have consequences.

That was when I knew I needed to build Vemados.

A secondary world gave me the freedom to ask foundational questions before the story even began:

Where do the mountains rise?

How do the oceans move?

Which islands become ports, sanctuaries, or secrets?

How do storms affect travel?

What happens when magic is not just personal, but political?

How does geography shape power?

How does power shape history?

Those questions became the beginning of the world.

One of the things I love most about fantasy is that the impossible can be treated with seriousness. Magic does not have to be random. A hidden civilization does not have to exist only because it sounds interesting. A dangerous sea can become a political boundary. A forgotten island can become a source of fear, myth, and ambition. A map can become evidence. A storm can become a border.

In our own world, those details are inherited.

In a secondary world, they can be built.

That does not mean they can be careless. If anything, building a new world made me care more about structure, not less. I wanted Vemados to feel fantastical, but I also wanted it to feel reasonable. The kind of world where a reader may not know every law beneath the surface, but can still sense that those laws exist.

For me, that meant starting with geography.

Before the nations had names, I began with the landmasses, tectonic plates, oceans, mountains, rivers, islands, and trenches. I wanted the physical world to have weight because the physical world shapes everything that comes after it.

A mountain range can divide cultures.

A river can create trade.

An ocean can protect one nation and isolate another.

An island chain can become a haven, a battleground, or a secret.

A storm belt can change the course of history.

Once I understood that, Vemados began to open.

The world became more than a backdrop for the story. It became the place where the story was possible.

That distinction matters to me.

I do not build lore simply to have lore. I build it because the world should press against the characters. It should limit them, tempt them, endanger them, and offer them choices they could not have faced anywhere else.

In The Summit Series, the world matters because discovery is never neutral. Maps have political meaning. Magic has consequences. Old histories are not as buried as people would like to believe. The sea connects nations, but it also hides things. Power moves through ports, academies, treaties, trade routes, armies, myths, and secrets.

Vemados gives all of that room to exist.

Choosing to build a secondary world also gave me room to explore inspiration without being trapped by direct imitation. I could study mythology, folklore, history, geography, ecology, architecture, maritime trade, and political systems, then let those influences transform into something new.

That transformation is one of my favorite parts of worldbuilding.

Research becomes possibility.

A coastline becomes a question.

A flower, a ship, a map, a city street, an old story, or a historical conflict can become the seed of something that belongs entirely to the world being built.

That is the freedom Vemados gave me.

Not freedom from rules.

Freedom to create the rules.

And once I had that freedom, the stories finally had somewhere to belong.

I still love stories set in our world. I love history, folklore, old places, real landscapes, and the strange feeling of learning something true that seems almost impossible. But the stories I was carrying needed a world that could bend around them, challenge them, and grow with them.

Vemados became that world.

It gave me oceans wide enough for adventure, histories deep enough for mystery, and political tensions large enough to shape more than one book. It gave me space for hidden civilizations, dangerous magic, storm-bound routes, old maps, shifting alliances, and characters whose choices could ripple far beyond themselves.

In the end, I chose to build a secondary world because the story required roots.

Not just scenery.

Not just names on a map.

Roots.

A world with its own bones, weather, histories, tensions, and truths.

A world where every coastline could hold a secret, every border could have a reason, and every discovery could come with a cost.

That world became Vemados.

And once I found it, I could not imagine telling the story anywhere else.