robynmiller

So cool! That's excellent to hear! I'm still amazed to be a part of Myst in this way! Myst was something bigger than me or Rand. It was a phenomenon. We were extremely fortunate... I think with a success of this kind an awful lot of it is often being in the right place at the right time. That blended with working your ass off to make something happen. And willingness to fail.

Hi vagina zits! For Myst we really didn't go through a process. Rand and I were on the phone and it was this almost magical thing. The name just appeared! We knew it was right. Riven on the other hand was like pulling teeth. It took months and many iterations. I remember Cocoon was one... but there was the movie. Chrysalis! It was almost Chrysalis!!! And then Vaginazits. It was almost vaginazits!! Finally Riven.

The seed was the first game. Most of the ideas and the necessity for creating the book came from the game. I had partially written an earlier novel with a lot of concepts that made their way into the book. For example, it was about a young boy, living in a desolate local with his grandfather, in a shack. He discovers an entrance to a cave, beneath the shack and he (and his grandfather) begin to travel downward. The boy discovers "Dunny"... an underground kingdom, though in this story, the kingdom is still thriving. The boy learns that he is royalty in this kingdom and he has been hidden away on the surface as a way of protecting him from an evil entity, Veovis. Now, he is old enough to face Veovis.

Is it below the surface? Augustus would never admit it to himself, but he gay. He's had a hard enough time coming to terms with the idea that he's a vampire... how could he even begin to confront this?

We were finishing up with Myst and we realized we needed a backstory to pull things together. I had this book partially written so it was convenient to use it. And it fit. It did hurt a little bit to uh... give it away... but we had no time and needed something quickly. And it worked well.