I'm Erick Bates and I've been telling stories my whole life. As a kid I told my first stories through my GI-Joes. There was conflict, diversity, and even love triangles between my little plastic toys, but I was soon diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. Reading was always hard, and the modern educational system failed me. I was always writing stories, but my teachers never used my love of storytelling to help me read. I was always told you can't write because you can't read. I was so angry when I was told my school journal wasn't for stories. It was for the real world, not a place of imagination. It would take me years, but I would teach myself to study as I worked my way through college. Ounce I understood how I learnt, I was able to graduated Magna Cum Laude.It would still take me decades to finish my first story. My first story was to be a ghost-mystery-love story, but I quickly realized I didn't have the skill to write it. That story revolved more around what I didn't say to create a compelling mystery, rather than what I said. I put the story of Arthur and Angela on the shelf, and I decided to start with a fantasy. I thought, that will be easy to write. I was wrong. It toke me years to write, and build the world of my first book. Every time the story got stuck, I would have to spend weeks filling out the world to keep the story moving, and yes, I fell into the trap of building the world more than writing the story. I learnt that the world is meaning less without the story to bring readers into it. With my first story finished, I hope you enjoy the world I created.
