About

Hi, my name is Christopher Dean

I would like to thank you for coming to the website to learn more about Trankarri and The Inkworld Sagas. It began in 1987 when I was sixteen and I started doodling in some of the boring classes that I had to take in high school. That little drawing began to expand and when we got our assignment for Art II I knew exactly what I wanted to draw. I spent the next three months drawing and detailing this 11×14 drawing that I titled, A Shortcut to the Horizon.

After that, I did three more drawings in the same style and size over the next two years and these drawings would later become the backdrop of the future Inkworld that was nonexistent (at least to me) for twenty years until I turned thirty-eight.

A Shortcut to the Horizon

The story behind the story

After high school I went on to study architecture and failed miserably (not so much because of the design aspect but more so the math). Then I thought about getting a degree in creative writing but I was in the wrong headspace for that also. I ultimately dropped out of college altogether and started my own lawn and landscape company and became moderately successful in that I made enough money to raise my family and take a few vacations but the drawings that I did in high school continued gnawing at me. I always wanted to go into one of those drawings and have an adventure, an adventure that eluded me for many, many years. Over time and throughout my professional career I discovered it is an extremely hard and frustrating thing to go through life working in a field that doesn’t bring a full sense of joy. What I really wanted to do I could not figure out so I trudged along never feeling or being truly fulfilled.

On a whim in 2009 I applied to the Institute of Children’s Literature and was accepted in which I completed the course in 2010. In 2009 shortly after I finished a few lessons my mind began to think differently and I became excited about writing again, a pastime I enjoyed for several years and I’ve always been an avid reader since childhood. I was off work one day hanging around my house and I had an idea about a boy that receives a magical pen from his great-grandfather who asked him to draw a Masterpiece with the new pen. After he finished his drawing the boy went inside the Masterpiece and had an adventure. That was it! That was the premise! That was the single idea, the one spark that made all of this possible. I began to write and write a lot. The ideas and the story came so fast that after one month I had written over twenty-five thousand words. All of that took place in the fall of 2009 and I have been writing this series ever since.

While I was still working my lawn and landscape business and raising my family I only had time to write a little here and there in what I call, ‘the cracks of time.’ All of that changed in January 2020 when I got very serious and decided to write five hundred words a day come hell or high water. I was diligent every morning before the sun came up; before my regular work began. Finally in October 2023 I finished the eighth book in the series and in December 2023 I started working with a beta reader. Throughout 2024 I spent that same time in the morning revising and polishing all the books and in September 2024 began working with my editor. We worked together until all the books were ready. In that same time the book covers were created and the interior was formatted.

I will not write about all the trials and troubles and the ups and downs that I went through from the age of sixteen until now because that is reserved for a possible autobiography, but I will say it has been a very long and trying road to get here with you – the reader. This story and these books no longer belong to me but they are yours to ignite your imagination. It is now time for you to step into the Inkworld and have an adventure of your own.

I am currently working on part two titled, The Inkworld Sagas – Trivelwar, and like the first series I will probably write all the books at the same time and release them when they are ready. I am about a hundred thousand words into the first book which makes all the books in Trankarri feel like a prologue. In Trivelwar there are five books in that series and they are written for the ‘new adult reader’ and will be considerably longer. They are slightly different in stlye and larger in scope which I am very excited about. After that we’ll see where the series wants to go. I have a few loose things in mind so we’ll see.

That is pretty much it in a nutshell only it’s not really a nutshell but a brief biography about the history of the books, a little riddle to fiddle if indeed you like to wiggle and jiggle. If you have already read the books you understand the jest but if you haven’t, when you do, you’ll understand that statement better.

Thanks again for your interest in The Inkworld Sagas and don’t hesitate to reach out, I would love to hear from you. Visit the Scriptorium on the Home Page every month for all the latest updates.

I want to end my short biography with a passage from James Allen in his wonderful book, As a Man Thinketh. These words that he originally published in 1903 have been the words that kept me going when ‘the going’ became very difficult and the nasty temptation to give up clawed at me from all angles.

It reads:

THE dreamers are the saviours of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as they realities which it shall one day see and know.

Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, labouring humanity would perish.

He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it; Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it.

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man’s basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: “ask and receive.”

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labour; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities, which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever. Years later we see this youth as a full-grown man. We find him a master of certain forces of the mind, which he wields with worldwide influence and almost unequalled power. In his hands he holds the cords of gigantic responsibilities; he speaks, and lo, lives are changed; men and women hang upon his words and remould their characters, and, sunlike, he becomes the fixed and luminous centre round which innumerable destinies revolve. He has realized the Vision of his youth. He has become one with his Ideal.

These few paragraphs have meant so much to me since I first read them when I was eighteen and these words have never been far from my back pocket for the last thirty-five years. Words inspire. My desire is to let the words that are in Trankarri take you on a journey to the other side where imagination and creative power reside where the possibility of possibilities is… well… possible and more than that; probable.

AuthorTalks

AuthorTalks is a series of topics that I am the most passionate about and that I have the most understanding in. All of these talks can be scaled up or down in time depending on the audience with each topic ranging from fifteen minutes to an hour to long-form podcast.

After writing over a million words in the past sixteen years and completing eight full books in a series I have gained a few insights in several areas – not just theoretically but experiencially, and now I am offering what I learned to the public at large.

(Starts or ends with a brief reading from one of my books)

  • The Imaginary World
  • The Renaissance of Imagination
  • Ideas are everywhere
  • Coming up with the Premise
  • The Power of Storytelling
  • Honesty in Storytelling
  • Almost honesty in Storytelling
  • Story length
  • The Discipline of Writing
  • Character Choice
  • Character Development
  • A Hero’s Journey
  • The Marring of Innocence
  • Secondary Characters are really Primary Characters in their own life
  • Number One killer of creating a good story – money
  • The Power of Words and Wordplay
  • I wish I was, I wish I were, I wish it was that easy
  • Layering in the Story
  • How to Start – Adventure or Conflict or Setting or how about all three
  • I personally like to ease into a story especially if it is going to be a long story
  • The art and purpose of foreshadowing (let the Easter egg hunt begin)
  • Story or Plot that is the question
  • I wrote this book in two months (yeah I can tell)
  • The Grind
  • Light at the end of the Tunnel – the last push
  • Using Symbolism
  • Literary Devices
  • I invite you to live in the Inkworld for a while – go ahead, snoop around
  • Borrrowing from others
  • How much is actually original
  • Revisions and edits
  • Discarding the unnecessary
  • Moving the story along with narrative prose, dialogue and action
  • Open source story or a closed loop – which is best
  • Shades and Shadows
  • Menticide
  • Secrets and Sophistry (sophistry is the root word of sophistication)
  • The Parallel World
  • The pen is mightier than the sword
  • Natural Dynamics
  • Seven Principles of Education
  • The Power of Bells – when the priest is dead the bells stop/where are the sound of bells now.
  • Consistent excellence that results in higher profit
  • The process of writing, rewriting, editing, revising, final proof-read and edit, final read and comb over – finished now onto layout, illustration, design.
Themes that are in Trankarri that have been uniquely woven and layered in
  • Pen is mighter than the sword
  • Imaginative reality is reality
  • Imagination influences
  • Imagination wars
  • Imaginative intuition
  • A Hero’s Journey
  • Knowing your identity
  • Staying true to yourself
  • The high levels of imagination and the high price that is paid
  • The Marring of Innocence
  • The struggle of Imaginative reality vs. concrete reality and which one rules over which
  • Death and how we cope with it
  • Menticide
  • The power of knowing your geneology
  • Writing down your thoughts and experiences – journaling
  • The beauty of family and mentorship
  • Friendship
  • Completing what you started
  • Exploration and discovery
  • Adventure
  • Dreams and how they can direct our attention
  • Secrets and Sophistry
  • The power of lies
  • Keeping secrets
  • Responsibility
  • The ink thread
  • The mind thread
  • The event thread
  • What was once used for evil is now used for good
  • And so much more…

If you are an educator, librarian or you have an interest in one of these topics for your podcast fill out the contact form. Our response is typically same day up to two business days.

Croft Regis Publishing

Croft Regis is an independent boutique publishing company that upholds traditional publishing values, delivering the timeless quality and integrity that make publishing truly exceptional. These traditional values focus on ideas, imagination, storytelling, writing, editing, formatting and overall presentation of the literary work. We give the highest respect and honor to the stories we publish. While Croft Regis remains independent we work with several key people in their respective industries to bring an international presence to the stories we produce.

All of our books that are sold in the United States are printed in the United States.

Our goal is to bring the essence of traditional publishing to the independent publishing world by creating one-of-a-kind original stories with supportive artwork in multiple formats.

My position on AI and our process for the book covers.

Each book has been written, beta read, and edited by a human. I am confident in the writing and storytelling that I do not use AI in the creation of the actual story.

About our book covers. These book covers are a combination of text to image creation, graphic artists, a designer and illustrator/animator. We have worked very hard to create an ‘Inkworld look and feel’ to the covers that is not currently on the market. Text to image AI only gets the ball rolling. From there we massage the image, change or delete certain aspects of the image and then we add in other artwork that we have created along with using special fonts. We also may use images from Shutterstock. The end result is pretty amazing. It is not perfect-perfect, but it is still kind of cool.

For our hardcover collection we will only use human illustrators.

When we introduce our leather-bound editions the interior artwork and maps will be done by human illustrators.

All future artwork will be done by a human illustrator unless specified.

At Croft Regis publishing we are transparent about our process and if you have any questions or concerns please email us.