There are a million ways to write speculative fiction. It’s one of the reasons I love the genre so very much. Possibility is infinite. Potential is limitless. 

Personally, rather than looking beyond our world for inspiration, I prefer to narrow my focus; to peer even more closely at our own world. For me, nature is magic. I’ve always been an outdoorsy person. I’ve always preferred groves of trees to clumps of buildings; the sound of moving water to the happy buzz of conversation in a coffee shop; the tapestry of color roving up the side of a mountain to anything you might see hanging on a wall. 

 So when it came time to create seven worlds and a magic system for each, I looked for inspiration in Earth’s wilderness.