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Tylor Kranyak
Author of Legacy of Krazatan
About the Author
My name is Tylor Kranyak, and I am the author of the Legacy of Krazatan series. I was born on September 20th, 1989 and I live in Hamilton, Ontario. I currently work full-time as a file manager at a law firm called Andrea Parliament Law where I’m in charge of will drafting, document automation and overall IT and office maintenance (www.andreaparliament.com). My first book was published through the Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency (SBPRA).

The story of Legacy of Krazatan’s origin is a humble one, starting somewhere around 2004. In high school I was a somewhat average student. I had a steady 70-80% average going through school. I got all my homework done either in class or during lunch so I didn’t have to worry about doing any work at home, that way I could spend my free time playing video games. Surprisingly, even to me, English was my least liked class in school. I didn’t like to read, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the lessons, and I found the work to be all-around boring. Even to this day my parents tell me that my choice to become a writer was the most unexpected decision I’ve ever made in my life.
The beginning of Legacy of Krazatan was born from a simple drawing I made in the back of one of my school binders. The drawing in question was of a sky blue sword. I became enthralled with this image, creating different versions of it and coming up with what powers it could hold. I named it the Tenjin, and I began writing a story that revolved around the sword during my spare time at school and in class when there was nothing to do. Looking back on the story's first version it was the worst thing I’ve ever written, but simply writing it was fun and everything had to start from somewhere. At the time I didn’t think anything would come of this story, and when I finished that first version it I put it away for other things. Legacy of Krazatan’s story might have ended there, but one day I stumbled across a book in my mother’s extensive library titled Eragon.

This book was my introduction into the written world of fantasy, and probably one of the only books I’ve ever picked up and read voluntarily up to that point. Having never read anything else in the genre, I absolutely loved the book. I went out of my way to learn more about the author, and to my surprise I found that he was around the same age as me. This came to me as a shock since at the time I thought only adults were able to publish books. I started to think, “If this kid can write a story and get it published at such a young age, then maybe I can, too!” For a time Christopher Paolini became my role model, and I started writing my story’s second iteration.

Sometime during the development of Legacy of Krazatan’s second iteration I looked online for some kind of site where I could post it and get feedback, which brought me to www.youngwriterssociety.com. For almost a decade I spent my free time writing stories online with the friends I made on that site, and during this time I learned everything I know about writing through simple trial and error. One person I became friends with was a girl named Audra, and to this day she remains an irreplaceable friend to me. Together we wrote many stories online, and through the time we spent together online I discovered not only many things about writing, but also about myself and the world around me.

Over the years I wrote one more iteration of the story, improving on everything from the previous two. The memories of these years are a little hazy, but for the most part it was during this time that I experimented with the plot and story elements. Many things changed, but there were three elements that always remained the same: Krazatan, the Arch Dragons (though at the beginning they were called the Earth Dragons), and the Tenjin. At the time I had fantasies of getting a book published, but deep down I somehow convinced myself that this was nothing more than a hobby to pass the time, and I would never get it published. I can’t remember when, but at some point I dropped my story yet again for other things. I grew up playing video games all my life, so when it was time for college I decided to attend Humber in Toronto to learn how to make video games. I loved to play video games, but during the first two years of college I slowly began to realize not only was making them too difficult for me to handle, it was not my calling. I still kept in touch with my online writing friends, and I still visited Young Writers Society daily to write fun stories with everyone. It was during my last year and a half of college that I began to rediscover my love for writing. Then one day, out of nowhere came a bolt of inspiration. I started to explore the world in my head that I had previously put away, and the result became the foundation for the fourth, and final, iteration of Legacy of Krazatan. To this day I still don't know why, but something about the world I had started to imagine as a child kept pulling me back in later years when I least expected it. Using the the knowledge I culminated over years of writing with my friends and all the ideas I created and improved on from all the previous versions, I weaved the story that would become my first ever published book.

I’m a very meticulous writer, so I often spend more time writing than most other authors because I want to make sure everything in my book is consistent and makes sense in its own context. It took a year and a half to write the first book, the time of which spanned over my college graduation. There was a time of uncertainty when I didn’t know what I was going to do for money after college, and from all the things I learned about the video game industry through my course I was scared to death of even looking for a job in the field that I went to college for. The main reason was due to the stories I heard from my professors of the policies of many video game and animation houses, mainly how anything you come up with is automatically their property while you’re under their employ. The thought of losing the rights to my own story simply because I work for one of those houses was one of the scariest things I could imagine, and it would destroy me as a writer emotionally.

When I finally finished the manuscript I started sending it out to publishing houses, but nobody responded to my emails. Things started to look bleak when a friend of mine told me of a publishing service a friend of his used called SBPRA. With no other options I decided to send them my manuscript, and within a few days they offered me a contract. After almost a year of editing and preparing, they helped me publish my book and get it out onto the online market on April 1st 2013. (Yes, I do recognise and acknowledge the humurous circumstances of having my first book published on April Fools.) I wouldn’t say the day I finally held my book in my own hands was the happiest day of my life. I didn’t see it as a reward for all the work and hardships I went through. I instead saw it as a milestone, the first baby step into my career as a writer. I have many ideas and plans for the rest of the series as a whole, and this first book is merely step one toward my goal. I still have a long way to go, but for now I can take solace in the fact that I now have something I can show for all my hard work over the course of nearly a decade.

And none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for a simple drawing of a sky blue sword in the back of my school binder…