"When my two daughters were barely old enough to walk, we started in on a world of fantasy," he stated. They went so far as to create a playtime room where the family developed over 1,000 characters. Each has a name, occupation, bank account and personality.

"This was a learning experience for the girls. We had developed newspapers where we wrote articles, and they each had reporters that would go out and cover events. They would write articles about them which helped develop their writing skills," he continued. "There are good and bad people, and the children learned that sometimes you can tell the difference and sometimes you can't. It was a good character development tool for them as well as fun," he said.

As a family, they are avid readers. Richard's writing career actually started over a discussion of another fantasy novel. He and his oldest daughter were complaining that the characters were shallow and the book lacked a sensible plot. His youngest daughter finally entered the fray with a challenge. "If you can write a better story, then you should stop tearing this one apart and just do it." He tossed the idea around in his head about a storyline, but hadn't accepted the challenge at that time. Every two weeks his daughter would say, "Did you write that book yet?" Finally, he succumbed.

"When I laid out the first book, I spent several months just thinking about it. I still wasn't sure that I was ready to tackle writing a novel, but eventually I couldn't get the story out of my mind," said Richard. That first story became the Targa Trilogy. He said once the story was in his head, it only took a month to get the first book, "Origin Scroll," written. But he realized that the story itself was far from done. He continued writing the story and the next two books of the trilogy, "Dark Quest" and "Ancient Prophecy" were completed within two months.

Since then, Richard has written four of seven volumes for the Sword of Heavens series which includes "Sapphire of the Fairies," "Unicorns' Opal," "Abuud" and "The One-Eyed God." A third series, The Forgotten Legacy, will have seven volumes three of which are completed: "Young Lord of Khadora," "Star of Sakova" and "Web of Deceit."

For the Targa Trilogy, Richard wanted to create a fantasy tale involving three seemingly ordinary young people who would have extraordinary hidden talents. The types of characters he was looking for were a magician, a warrior and a merchant. He wanted them to interact so that they could do something good for the world. The Targa Trilogy has three main heroes who continue on in the Sword of the Heavens series, but five new main characters have also been created.

The Forgotten Legacy series is slightly different according to Richard. Each of the first books of that series revolves around a single hero. There are strong auxiliary characters in each of those books as well, but each book could stand alone as a fantasy novel. Richard stated that starting with book four of The Forgotten Legacy series, the characters in the first three books will interact on a much larger scale.

"All of the heroes start out around the age of 15, which just happened to be the age of my oldest daughter," he said. "The stories are very much about the maturing of these individuals as much as the discovery of their talents," he continued.

Richard uses various methods to develop characters. Sometimes he starts with a skill and then adds a personality. Other times he starts with a look. He has also used an online role-playing game to generate a medieval character and test the personality by reactions to the character from other players within the game. "I think more importantly is how you allow the characters to develop. A 15-year-old must develop gradually into a 30-year- old. The development must be affected by the character's life experiences and cultural influences. To me, the real fun of writing is watching the characters change believably," Richard explained. He went on to say that many characters do move from book to book or even into the following series, but characters also die. He believes that the reader must never know in advance whether a character will survive or not.

How does Richard accomplish all these books and ideas in such a short time? He explained that his stories are developed in his head before he puts them on paper. He has three monitors attached to one computer. Each monitor has a separate program open. Microsoft is on one, and Excel on another with spreadsheets of his characters, places, things, spells, and everything mentioned in the story. This helps him to keep the story flowing. The third monitor has maps of the countries. Since there is a lot of travel in these stories and lot of interaction between countries and clans, Richard says he has to visualize where these are in order to write the story. One of the first things he does in a story is to develop a map where the story is going to take place. Once he can visualize that, he says he can actually see these people moving from place to place. Richard generally has two ongoing series at the same time. "The books are fast paced. They don't cover time, but do cover a lot of territory," he said.

When asked his opinion on the Harry Potter series, Richard said that The Targa Trilogy is an excellent follow-through to that series. His books are slightly more mature dealing with slightly older children and are also enjoyed by all ages. "The fact that the Harry Potter author is so popular right now is great for me because I think that a lot of people are going to progress past Harry Potter and I'll be waiting for them," Richard enthusiastically said.

Currently working on his 10th fantasy novel, Dwarven Ruby, Richard will then begin working on the three remaining volumes of the Sword of Heavens series. If he stays on schedule, he expects that series to be completed by June 2003. After that he says he will tackle the remaining four books of The Forgotten Legacy series.

All his novels are currently self-published and are available in a variety of electronic formats as well as paperback. Over 400 books have been sold.

"As a firm believer in the future of books, I am pretty much limited to self-publishing at this time," Richard explained. He feels major publishers don't have a firm grasp of the e-book industry yet. While he doesn't think print books are going away anytime soon, he does believe that a very large percentage of books will be sold in electronic form within the next five years. "That is not to say that I wouldn't discuss a contract with a publisher," he said, "but my focus is really on e-books. What I found with the sale of the books is that just about anyone who buys one comes back and buys them all."

For a list of Richard Tuttle's books and where to purchase them, visit his Web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~richtuttle.