Fantasy Trilogy - Origins

The Harrow.

The very name seems strange but reflects a process that led to the creation of the fictional world with which it is identified. While extending one of his imaginary stories, Philip Mazza penned the phrase "Harrow" on a piece of paper, setting into motion a developmental process that would ultimately help launch his trilogy.

The name "Harrow" is itself a very odd name for a place. For Mazza, the task of crafting a new world - one of his own imagination - which would coincide with our own world required that he build a coherent mythology around that new place. Mazza's new world had to make sense, both to its inhabitants and to his readers.

To Mazza, a word is not simply a word. The word had to carry with it a history which revealed to someone like him - the path that word had followed to its present form.

So, Mazza's new world had to have a reasonable meaning. That is, he realized he couldn't simply grab the name out of thin air and give it to his world. It had to be the name for his world for a reason. The meaning of the word itself - to break or tear, as with a harrow; to wound; to lacerate; to torment or distress - provided that reason.

Mazza has created a world of his own in which dwell Men, Elves, Orcs, Dragons, and all manner of both the hideous and beautiful. He has an active, imaginative mind that fills his books with humor and vivid imagery. His world is not only vast and intriguing but also largely believable in nature. The world Mazza has created feels real. From the different languages and races to the extensive history.

Mazza has created a world that in certain respects is truer than the world we think we see around us, and he has done so by employing the genre of myth. His work is filled with the virtue of hope and hundreds of great lessons.

In 2004, Philip Mazza had an idea for a story. The story came to him as he looked over his backyard - gardens, flower beds, and an apple orchard. Over the next several years, he would write The Harrow and in doing so refresh fantasy fiction again, inventing a complex and powerful new mythology of a world, deep in history and tradition.

Now, explore the fantastical world of the Harrow yourself!.