Zhayena has always loved fairy tales, myths and stories about magic and peculiar creatures. She has always enjoyed writing and expressing her visions on paper.
In 1995 Zhayena read the Lord of the Rings for the very first time. Until then she though fairy tales and the like was meant for children, but the Lord of the Rings was intended for a grown up audience, and had all the things she appreciated. It also gave her the idea of writing something similar herself.
But it was still going to take two years before she got the first words down on paper. This might be because she discarded the idea or didn’t know what to write about. But around this time she found some drawings she made when she was 8 – 9 years old. They were supposed to depict an evil sorcerer and his malicious daughters that terrorized the world. This was from a game she played with a friend of hers, and she realized that it could be a good foundation for a fantasy novel. Zhayena also found a rune alphabet that she had created, of which you can read on the making of Zha’vu’Pagah page, and started making simple words that soon developed into the language of Zha’vu’Pagah. In the beginning she more or less simply made up names for her characters with the alphabet. She also drew maps of the countries she wished to write about. These are now the lands called the Northwest Lands on the northern continent.
Zhayena wrote down a lot in the beginning and filled up two scrapbooks with notes. She let herself inspire by fairy tales and myths, but also by our own world and things she experienced. But after a year she had to put her work at rest as a consequence of school and jobs. And when she finally had time to reinitiate her effort again in the autumn of 2000, she figured she had to rewrite the whole story. Descriptions lacked, and she found that the outline of the story was inadequate, and so forth, so a new sketch was written. But she lacked access to a computer, so the work was put on hold for another year.
In the meantime Zhayena got hooked on role playing, and eventually an idea sprung to life to set up a game using her own created world as a scene for the game. And that is when the conception of Zha’vu’Keldi really arose. For instance there was a monk in her story, and he needed to belong to an order. Then she needed to figure out the monks system of belief. And finally she had to figure out what drove the people of the countries and what the situation was in each country.
The language matured as well, as she wanted the people to speak her language. Zhayena put all the words in system and the grammar of the language emerged.
The rpg group didn’t get to play very much, but Zhayena did get an impression of how Zha’vu’Keldi worked. Currently she had access to a computer and could transmit everything she had written to a digital document. But Destiny put the project to a halt again, as she found out that she was pregnant.
It was the fall of 2002 when Zhayena finally had time to resume her writing. She used the sketches she had from the role playing games and concentrated on getting everything properly shaped. Soon she got the idea to put together a website on Zha’vu’Keldi and on January 2003 the first Norwegian version of the site was online. The excitement was at its peak as she didn’t know how it would be welcomed, but after many pleasant compliments in her guestbook she found that it was worth the toil. And the idea of making an English version arose, and a year later, in the fall of 2003, the work began.
And the novel? It’s been put on hold, as she is not thus far content with the tree hundred pages written, and feels the need to rewrite the whole thing again. Right now she has an aversion to revive the project, but she has plans to fulfill it in the future. Instead she started to write a new novel based on Zha’vu’Keldi in the Easter of 2003. She has given herself one and a half year to conclude, and hopefully everything goes according to plan.
Written by Kerluen