Young Lord of Khadora, the first book in Richard Tuttle's Forgotten Legacy series has received the highest rating for fantasy novels on fictionalize.com. Richard has written 14 books since 1997. The first series is The Targa Trilogy which was completed in 1997. The Sword of Heavens series completed in 2003 contains seven books. His third series, Forgotten Legacy, has four books completed and will ultimately contain seven books.

His fourth and latest book in the Forgotten Legacy series is Aakuta: The Dark Mage. It deals with a medieval imaginary land and is structured on three main characters. Richard explained that the first three books each deal with one of those individual characters. In the fourth book, Aakuta and the other characters come together.

In the story, there is a coming invasion that nobody knows about except the three individuals. In order to prepare for the invasion, the three characters from each of the first three books have to bring their countries together even though they are outcasts in their countries. The fourth book introduces another main character called Aakuta. He appears mysteriously in a land where all magic is menial.

"Aakuta is different. First, he is a male. There are no male majors," said Richard. "Secondly, he uses his vast powers in ways that confuse everybody to the point where no one knows where he stands on what issue, who he is for or against, but he keeps popping up at the most inopportune times," he explained. "This book is not strictly about this character. It is an introduction of this character. He carries on through the rest of the series which will be seven books in total. I am currently writing the 15th book of that series," Richard said.

The book in progress is Island of Darkness which will be published in January. Richard hopes to get the last two books of the series published by the middle of next year. That will mark 17 books, which was his original premise.

About 1,000 books of the 14 written so far have been sold. They can only be purchased as e-books at over 30 online book retailers. Richard has toyed with the idea of printing and distributing the books, but he thinks it's too early at this point.

"The e-book market is what I originally targeted as my market because I think, certainly not today, but probably in a few years, this market is going to take off much like the cell phones did and surpass the paperback market. My goal is to get my fantasy novels positioned in that market so that when it does take off, I'll be at the top of it," Richard stated.

Where does Richard get his ideas for fantasy novels? He said it's hard to describe. Most of his ideas are internal and start in strange ways. "One series I wrote started with a mental image of a boy turning into manhood with a fairy on his shoulder. It's all character based. The fairy is an extrovert, strong willed, full of wit and the boy is very shy, not sure of himself, full of self-doubt, yet with great skill," Richard explained. "At that point, I started to zoom out and picture what the two guys were going to do. Major milestone scenes started popping into my head and it kept expanding. I get to the point where I have a mental outline of a series, not just a book. I start with that and narrow it down to one segment, one book," he said.

Richard attributes writing his books to having a great imagination. He said he lets his imagination run wild. To him, it's very exciting and he gets entrapped with his characters. He assumes the character that the dialogue is coming from.

The books were originally designed for the young adults to 30s group, but what Richard is finding is that his customers span every age group. "We have seniors in their 80s who can't wait for the next book to come out. One woman in Oregon is legally blind. She buys the electronic book in a version that allows text to speech and she listens to the book. Then she takes her husband out to dinner and they talk about the book," he said. Richard concluded by saying there is no real age group. The books are written so that younger readers will have no problem reading the books.

To order a book online, go to any one of the following web sites: http://go.to/tuttle; www.fictionwise.com; www.ebooks.officemax.com; www.ebookad.com; and for other stores, use www.ebooklocator.com and enter Richard S. Tuttle in the author field.