I first began keeping a journal when I was ten years old. My older sister had given me her old battered notebook that she had used for her math problems, and I had decided to take it and jot down my thoughts in the remaining blank pages. I was not a good speller and I found myself illustrating my point — in the most literal sense of the word — more often than actually writing it out. I had an ache to write about what was happening around me — perhaps I was a bit of a busybody when I was ten, but I found the actions and conversations of other people most entertaining, and I enjoyed the surreptitious delight of recording them in secret and with my own perspective on the subject. As I matured, I became a better speller and less of a busybody. When I was fourteen, my family started calling me the “Family Chronicler” because I recorded so many details on current local events that you could ask me what Mrs. Blackburn served for dessert three years ago at her son’s friend’s high...
The plain of Estelech lies between the river Nonn, in the east, and the river Thyn, in the west. To the south lie the mountains of Calad, and to the north the mountains of Minothir. In this land dwelt many birds and beasts, but few men dwelt there. Scattered clans or tribes, nomadic peoples and wanderers. In lands far to the south, a kingdom was founded by those who came from beyond the Western Sea. The name of this realm was Caldemar. Upon a time, king Kyartin of Caldemar sent forth his emissaries into the north to spy out the plains and hill country, and find suitable lands where folk might come to dwell. Of these emissaries the most renowned was Carnvas, son of Beronthir, who traveled the length of the river Nonn and settled with his people beyond the mountains of Minothir. Here was the northern sea, and from the colonies thus founded ships put out and sailed west along the coast, until at length the land bent south, and following the coast the mariners came at last...