A Million Words in Lucardia

When I first set foot in Lucardia, I never imagined I would still be walking its shadowed roads a million words later. The very first scene I wrote was simple, almost innocent: a rainbow-barked tree within a cave, sparkling in the sunlight pouring through a fissure. At the time, I thought I was sketching the beginning of a pirate tale. I was reading a great deal of classic seafaring adventures, and that influence bled into the page. What emerged instead was something darker, something older—a world that twisted itself into medieval fantasy, though it never entirely abandoned its pirates.

Lucardia grew organically, like ivy winding through ruins. At first, I had no map, no grand plan. I followed the characters, step by step, word by word. It wasn’t until midway through Dawn of the Lightbearer, and certainly by the time I finished The Mourning Son, that I realized this would not be a single story. It was becoming a tapestry. Six main books—that was the shape I thought it would take. And yet, as stories tend to do, Lucardia began multiplying. Side paths opened, histories begged to be told, and now I have eight complete books (six published and two on the way), two in the process, and twenty-five other tales whispering at the edges, demanding their turn.

I aim to write a thousand words a day. By that rhythm, I knew the million-word mark was inevitable, but I reached it sooner than expected, not only through the main series but through the offshoot stories that kept sprouting like roots. As the milestone approached, it loomed in my mind—vast, weighty, monumental. But now that it’s here, it feels curiously small. Just another number. Just another step up the mountain. There is so much more of Lucardia left unwritten that a million feels less like a finish line and more like a doorway I’ve only just pried open.

What this number does mean to me is proof of dedication. A million words are not dashed off lightly. They mark years of shaping, chiseling, layering—a demonstration of Lucardia’s depth and my stubborn refusal to leave it unfinished. My hope is that readers feel what I’ve felt: the lure of a world too vast to see in one glance, too tangled to ever fully unravel, yet captivating enough to get lost in for days at a time.

And here’s the truth: a million is still only a fraction. Lucardia carries more than a thousand years of history, and what I’ve put to page so far is only a blip against that expanse. If a million words carried me through eight books, then the remaining twenty-five stories might push me well into the tens of millions. And even then, I doubt the world will be extinguished. Worlds like this resist endings.

So here I stand, one million words deep into Lucardia, with another million waiting just ahead. What began with a rainbow-barked tree in the light of a fissure has grown into an empire of tales. And I am still following where the characters lead me until Lucardia decides it no longer has stories to tell.

Cheers!