Most of the characters in the book were based off of someone I know in real life even though now the characters resemble them now only in appearance. The characters have changed and grown into completely different people than those they were based off of, but those who they were based off of have changed even more.
It was not all my ideas that formed what Yadout now looks like even though I was the one who wrote the books. It was during a progressive dinner with the local youth group that Yadout was formed. My friend Chris thought up the pelican riders, thus earning him the position in the country as the leader of them, Stuart thought up the turtle riders, giving him the position of their leader, Tom had developed the militia and Amber was responsible for giving the country its name.
Other ideas had come forward, such as giraffes as radar units and Kevin the barkeep walking in and out of scenes without speaking, but these ideas never made it to paper (or came out in the early edits). Slowly more and more people found out about my story and wanted a character named after them, it was this that created others such as Brittney, Eric and Kendra.
I don’t suppose there’s much more to it than that. After the premise was created I took over and started to write. I didn’t have a purpose or a set goal, but I wrote. I wrote until I had the makings of a story and over the course of four years continued to find my way back to this book in order to change the characters and their reactions. It turned from a comedy into a more dramatic piece the more I worked my way down into the core of what Yadout is.
This book is dedicated to my Yadoutian family, in memory of a time before our turmoil.