Kiuses did not spring from my head - or finger tips - fully formed and rarin' to go. Partially because I came up with them at such a young age and partially because one simply can't create a whole society in one shot (unless you're a person of incredible talent), the People of Hal Keone have gone through many changes through the years - some subtle, some drastic; and they're still changing.

I'm sure things will settle down a great deal once the book is published (whenever that'll be), until then I am enjoying the freedom to tweak whatever I wish to get them as "realistic" as one can make an imaginary people.

The following is a timeline that roughly maps out what changed and when as well as when I incorporated new concepts and ideas into the culture.

I'll eventually add a link to show what else I was doing when I wasn't working on Kiuses - because I can assure you, they weren't my only little pet project.

*Note: As a young child I absorbed anything that crossed my path to the point of near flat-out plagiarism - especially with the non-Kius ideas and stories. Bear in mind that as an adult (and having a better understanding of ownership) I've adjusted things to be more my own and original, however it's impossible to completely stamp out the influence of others' ideas and thoughts. I continue to try to give Kiuses their own spark of life and originality, this timeline is only to serve as a record and to hopefully give those who directly and indirectly helped me along, their proper due.

Items written in italic indicate that I'm not 100% certain of the date of something.

1989: A computer game company named Sierra releases an adventure/role-playing game called "Hero's Quest I: So You Want To Be A Hero" (later renamed to: "Quest For the Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero").

I'm not sure if Dad purchased the game the year it came out or a year later. Either way I was 9 or 10 years old when I first played it.
In the game you play a hero wanna-be who roams around trying to become a hero. Though I liked playing the game very much, I was particularly intrigued by a couple centaurs in the game. One was a farmer tending the fields outside of the main town, the other was his daughter who ran the fruit stand. I found the idea of mythological creatures interacting with humans in such a mundane fashion absolutely fascinating!
I immediately started drawing humans frolicking with centaurs in magical forests along with fairies and elves. On occasion I'd draw two-legged centaurs - which would become Human-Faced Ciusses and then I took those two-legged critters and gave them horse heads. Voila, Kiuses were born!

1990-1991 school year: I'm pretty sure I was in fifth grade and 11 years old when we did a "Create A Country" project where you made up an imaginary country anywhere in the world and created everything for it from it's flag to population statistics to political cartoons. I devoured the project with a passion and initially wanted to make it a Kius country. Well to do that I needed to write the word "Kius" - something I hadn't done yet. I decided on the spelling C-I-U-S-S. I bucked using a "K" as I felt it looked too harsh and I liked the double "S" at the end as I felt having the word five letters instead of four was more aesthetically pleasing. For a very long time that's how I spelt Kius.

'91-'92 school year: My sixth grade homeroom teacher was in possession of the most amazing paper I had ever encountered. It was impossible not to draw on it (kind of a soft card stock). The presence of this paper is very likely the reason that Kiuses are where they are today. Before this point I had doodled here and there on scrap paper - now I had a seemingly endless supply of paper to draw on to my heart's content. I wasn't big on writing stories at the time as it was a lot of work to solidify concepts into words, but drawing a story was as natural and compulsive to me as breathing. I wasn't exactly drawing full-fledged Kius stories (and I wasn't only drawing Kiuses either - there were fairies and elves, unicorns and pegasuses and tales of little girls going on incredible, magical adventures - you know, the usual young girl stuff); I was mostly scribbling aspects of culture: weddings, various other ceremonies, how the different races (then called "breeds") lived as well as coming up with a plethora of different races.

1993: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine airs (from Paramount Pictures) . The character Odo - who was a shape-shifter - directly inspired Snake Kiuses. At the start of things they too were formless and rather gelatinous in their "normal" state. It was actually one of my brothers who came up with the Snake Kiuses and gave them their name. I was left with the task of coming up with a reason for the name. I originally decided to give them snake-like eyes that would carry over no matter what form they took.
Since then I've changed them so they are regular, solid beings with extremely subtle telekinetic skills. Having the snake be the easiest non-Kius form for them to take fit in nicely so I could maintain their name.

'94-'95 school year: I'd been toying with the idea of typing out a formal Kius story since the year before. In my first year of high school I decided to utilize the computer labs and go for it. The first draft of "The Ciuss Planet" was born - all 18 pages of it (single spaced). Pretty much after this point the flood gates opened and I was sprouting Kius story ideas left and right. I'd write down little chunks in various assorted notebooks, but nothing as organized as "The Ciuss Planet" - which was meant to be "the first book" and an intro to Kiuses. Most of these story ideas I'm still working on and fussing with today.
This is also the year I started reading Anne McCaffrey's Pern series (Dragonflight was released by Ballantine Books ©1968). Poof! Dragon's showed up in the Kius universe. In the beginning they were very McCaffrey-esc; they have since evolved and changed into something less plagiaristic.

'95-'96 school year: I decided to rewrite "The Ciuss Planet", to flesh it out more and give it a little more length. Also this year I started a new Ciuss Notebook. I was trying to make the Kiuses more believable so I nixed quite a few of the races, knocking it down to the eight you see today. Some races would have gotten the axe had it not been for some friends who just loved the Crystal Kiuses (who at the time had fairy-like wings) and one of my brothers who really liked Snake Kiuses.

'96-'97 school year: I promised my art teacher that I would not draw a single Kius for a whole year - you see, he would cringe with every project I turned in as it was always Kius related. He was the flaming skulls, chrome-encased motorcycle type and my cutesy creatures weren't quite his style. Abstaining from drawing Kiuses had been purely my choice and I was up for the challenge since I hadn't promised not to write about them. I have a feeling my English teacher that year developed the same attitude towards Kiuses as the art teacher!

1999: I applied for and received an official copyright for "The Ciuss Planet".

College (summer '98-winter '00): I attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and majored in Computer Animation. One of the reasons for taking up that major (and not the only one mind you) was to see the validity of generating Kiuses in 3D. A lot changed for Kiuses during that time. For instance, that was when I changed Kius feet from hooves to their current configuration on the insistence from my cel animation teachers that a bipedal creature with hoofed feet and low ankles wouldn't move all too easily - even with a tail.
By this time my Kius glossary had reached a level I could no longer handle on paper. Typing it into the computer allowed me to alphabeticalize the words (how wonderful that was!) as well as weed out duplicate words I had floating around.

2001: I learned about an independent publishing company called 1st Books.com (now called AuthorHouse). I contacted them to see what were my publishing options for "The Ciuss Planet". I rattled off the book's specs over the phone and was told "sounds good, but make it longer". So the third rewrite commenced. I did indeed manage to increase the length, however after all that work I decided I didn't want to pay to see this thing in print; I wanted someone to pay me! I thanked 1st Books for getting me in gear to improve the story and moved on.

2002: The latter part of this year was when I started contemplating changing the name of "The Ciuss Planet" as the current title seemed too B scifi-ish. The top name idea was "The People of Hal Keone"; it sounded exotic and interesting but I decided against it as I really didn't want Kius words in the title.

2004: Well, the time had come, I couldn't deny it any longer - I finally bit the bullet and changed the spelling of "Ciuss" to "Kius" since there is no "C" in the Kius alphabet and never was, nor do they use double consonants in their language. Change can come slow some times.
A lot of things changed that year as well. I really wanted to get "The Kius Planet" published and knew it just had to be as sharp and as solidly put together as possible - so the fourth and (hopefully final) rewrite commenced. I also scraped the language (all of it more or less) and started over, deciding this time to base the words off of verb-based roots and growing it from there.

Today: Though - as mentioned in the Book Section - "The Kius Planet" is technically complete, I'm still tweaking with it and trying to squeeze the best possible story out of it. I'm also still getting that language worked out. Currently there's only around 400 words, but that means I'm more than halfway to where I was before!

Other Influences: It is impossible to quantify the effect Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977) has had on my life. My father recorded "A New Hope" with our Beta VCR off the TV when it aired (in its entirety - thank goodness) for the ten year anniversary in 1987. I was seven years old and was hooked from the start. In fact there's a oft repeated joke in the family that when my brothers and I were bugging my mother too much she'd point to the living room and say, "Go watch Star Wars!" because it kept us occupied for an hour or two. The other two movies were rented - along with a VHS VCR so they could be copied over to Beta - as soon as they were available for rental. (You could actually rent VCRs back in the day. Ah, the '80s) I loved them all.
Star Wars was my second reason for choosing the college I went to. As a sophomore or junior in high school I started seriously contemplating the fact that I needed to start thinking about my future and what career I should pursue. I was watching a behind-the-scenes for the trilogy one day and thought, "Hmmm, sounds like fun. Let's try that."
Post-script: turns out my computer animation skills aren't quite up to cinematic quality and I quickly ditched the idea of camping outside Skywalker Ranch once I got my degree.

On a George Lucas theme: the Dark Crystal (Universal Pictures, 1982) was one of the first movies recorded on our Beta (in 1985-ish at a friend's house who had HBO). The story was so magical and it had a tactile quality to it that I just loved. The Osandoa is a direct translation of the Great Conjunction. I was also intrigued by the triangle-within-a-triangle-within-a-triangle thing that Aughra holds up at one point. That too was a direct inspiration for the Kodoa symbol.

And who can forget Star Trek. I mean come on! Actually I was a bigger Star Wars than Star Trek fan growing up but I think that was only because I'd seen Star Wars first and plus we had easier access to the Lucas fare than the Rodenberry. We did have the Star Trek movies on tape (recorded from rentals, of course), but the Star Trek movies are better if you know and love the original show - which wasn't syndicated locally until later in the 80's (early 90s? maybe even...) Aside from that, there was also the childhood loyalty factor that I felt I'd be betraying Star Wars if I liked Star Trek too much and there were the heated arguments with brothers and friends over which one was better.
I must say, I did like the Next Generation when it aired in 1987 (was it really that long ago?!). It became a weekly family ritual to sit down and watch the latest episode, but I think I appreciate Trek much more now as an adult and especially more so since I've gotten involved with Star Trek: Phase II . (Shameless plug - forgive me)

Something people may be surprised to find lacking in this chronology is J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. I never read the books until the first movie came out (then they were all devoured as quickly as I could read them). I have vague recollections of people telling me while growing up, "You should read the Hobbit" and other comments along those lines. My only knowledge of those books were images of Gollum paddling across the lake ready to eat poor Bilbo. Thinking - from that - that the books were dark and scary, I never developed much interest in checking them out. I'm actually very glad I was a late-comer to that set of stories - had I read Tolkien in my younger, more impressionable days, I would have either ripped him off something awful (and spent even longer recovering than I did from Anne McCaffrey); or I would have given up story-telling completely. As it were, I strongly remember first seeing the teaser trailer for the trilogy. It just showed the fellowship cresting a hill along with the dates of the various film releases with maybe a couple other shots from the first film. My curiosity was thoroughly piqued. I wanted to know what this was, what were these movies! There was something primal and familiar in those images and I wanted more; even now I can't get enough of LOTR - I'll happily sit down and watch all three extended editions and follow that all up with the special features. Pete Jackson you freaking rock!