By rlds, 12 April, 2019
Sketches of Globiuz and Stratius books

The name Richard Douglas had first time ever appeared in 2010, in works of 'Detroit Motor-Psycho', 'Illuzion', 'Total Vertigo' and the 'World of Ferania', the movie-scripts which haven't been published ever, except the latter - the fantasy novel known today as Globiuz.

First entrance

The fast-pacing writing was so hectic, it barely made into a book volume at first. Keeping all the dialogues realistic, it landed on movie-script format instead.

Another problem was the chair - it had the fourth leg sawed off by the previous owner, so we could write only fast, in order not to fall down any other time...

The 'Total Vertigo' movie script, was even submitted to the Zoetrope movie-script contest in 2010, but it never made it. The 'Detroit Motor-Psycho' was a motor-gang novel rewritten 5 times, and it also left to hit the dust.

Trying start-ups

We thought we would be writing titles after titles, and even self-distributing it from our 'own platform', just like Amazon did in the beginning. But Amazon had a scripting at its core, a server side, where us were based on design and promotion only.

Yankeebook publishing

In 2010 we have even launched a self-publishing service website yankeebook.com and other movie-review websites (2011), for the movie script promotion. It all lead to growth at first, but then was dropped because of ever diverging focus and lack of interest.

Maybe music?

After prolongations and striving for better writing, the author started making music, trying to pursue a new career in solo. Being one-man army was a daring experience, but very depleting at the end. Eventually that failed too.

Bad time management, range of skill-spread, over-stretching, motivational overhead, constant digression... you name it.

The gaming industry

The closest to writing and music industries was the game production. Grand Coders, grandcoders.com, had launched in 2015 with a game title 'World of Ferania', later re-titled to 'Tales of Ferania' (because it was thought to be produced in series), and even 'Globiuz'.

Grand Coders

It was a 2.5D platformer based on the Unreal Engine 4, some screenshots of it are still alive in the search engine scrapbook.

We've actually managed the basic gameplay and progressed well the level design, but the storytelling was lagging. It was almost finished and de-bugged for the Steam stores, but lack of satisfaction started to crumble.

Lack of commercial feasibility and resources to continue scripting, heavyweight designing in Blender, animating, composing and tons of other tasks slated down the project once more.

One-man army

Everything failed, but the formula was carved out from the numerous skills we have developed during that decade. Traditional writing, drawing and, finally, composing on live instruments - all of it matched the goal of the author in 2017.

World of Ferania, Tales of Ferania, Globiuz early posters

 

World of Ferania was an effort aimed at the fantasy world exploration, laying the first draft of the races that were further on developed in the First Light. More on how and why the game developer had stopped working in the lucrative genre, moving towards the traditional media, could be found here.

The name of R.L. Douglas had finally returned on paper again. This time Ferania maps that were sketched in 2009 were finally revisited. Those were 2 A4 paper sheets that survived the litter purge in the house and were left intact by a hunch.

Globiuz I: First Light was finished in October 2018 and had been finally published on a broke-on budget on Amazon, ironically enough.

Our own self-distribution and book-publishing brand was shut in a wrong time, in a swerve of a wrong direction. There were no own platforms anymore like in 2010 - it was a different post-digital world 10 years later, where tons of viral 'studio talents' already flocked the area, we were based on text only, bare-bone and bankrupt...

Where is that fantasy map?

By the time of the fantasy debut the author reached 33, for many considered to be too old for a celebrity start-up. The writing was improved, the style and the inspiration were clear.

Globiuz II: The Golden Scallop, the first work we settle from

 

In 2019 (this very year), Globiuz II: The Golden Scallop had been finally published, and it was a starting-point accomplishment for us to tell the story of two friends whirling into a new journey in best traditions of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Kidnapped, Gulliver and other works that still alive these days.

The story we always wanted to tell in our colours, our words and meaning started with Globiuz II: The Golden Scallop...