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Richard S. Tuttle, a Marco Island resident for the past 20 years, decided 10 years ago to start writing. So far, he has written 23 books.

A big reader of fantasy books since high school, he started writing in what he determines a rather humorous way.

“My eldest daughter, Alexandra, and I read the same book and we both had commented on it. I hadn’t enjoyed it that much and I guess we were putting the author down. My youngest daughter, Jennifer, said, ‘Stop it. If you can do better, do it yourself!’ ” Tuttle reminisced. “Two weeks later, she came back to me and said, ‘Have you started it yet?’ which I hadn’t.”

He continued, “I’ve always told the girls they can do anything they want to as long as they set their minds to do it. So Jennifer’s statement became a writing challenge. That was the start of the Origin Scroll and the first book of the ‘Targa Trilogy.’ I found I really loved to write, and that year I went on to finish the entire ‘Targa Trilogy’ which included Dark Quest and Ancient Prophecy.”

By this time, Tuttle was really excited about writing and started another series that followed chronologically called the “Sword of Heavens.” He sold the “Targa Trilogy” to a publisher in Canada. However, he got through one-and-one-half books of the new series when the publisher went bankrupt. All his rights were held in limbo by the bankruptcy courts and he couldn’t continue writing the “Sword of Heavens” series at that point in time.

Tuttle then switched to writing the entire “Forgotten Legacy” series which is totally separate from the first series and includes seven books — Young Lord of Khadora; Star of Sakova; Web of Deceit; Aakuta: The Dark Mage; Island of Darkness; Elvangar; Winged Warrior; and Army of the Dead.

He’s divided his books into two collections. The Khadora Collection is the “Forgotten Legacy” and the Alcea Collection starts with the “Targa Trilogy” and continues with “Sword of Heavens.” It is followed by the “Demonstone Chronicles” which Tuttle has already started.

“The difference between the two collections is two different worlds and different people. The Khadora Collection is one eight-volume series which may have more added later. The Alcea Collection is three individual series but in a common world with characters going from one series to the next. They are, indeed, a collection of the same world,” Tuttle explained.

“All countries are fictional. The worlds are my own creation and that in itself is a fantastic process — building a world from scratch, deciding what your continent is going to look like, the different cultures and how they interact with each other. Everything is totally fictitious,” he said.

Tuttle has no idea how he gets his ideas. They seem to come to him in a myriad of ways. He’s sure things filter through from when he was a child, sometimes from discussions with other writers, in dreams or driving down the highway. Fantasy is always in the forefront of Tuttle’s mind. So he said the ideas can come from anywhere at any time.

“I’ve been nominated for the Eppie Awards which is the Electronic Publishing Industry Council. They give awards for E-books. Primarily I’ve been an E-book author, but as you can see my print books, I’m starting to get in the front now which is exciting,” he continued.

“We’re also thinking of going into audio books. We have people reading my books on cell phones. One fellow hates to shop with his wife, so he sits and waits for her and reads my E-books while she shops. The world is changing for us. It’s great.”

To whet your appetite for reading his books, Tuttle gave a short synopsis of some of his books.

Explaining “Sword of Heavens,” ended in a very good way. The country was impoverished but people were no longer living under thumb of evil. There was a group that developed from that series who called themselves the Knights of Alcea, the world’s greatest warriors and magicians. Although they had the skills for good to conquer evil, it was not what they wanted to do with their lives. So when the series ended, all of these heroes went back to their lives.

The “Demonstone Chronicles” starts three years after the end of “Sword of Heavens.” What’s unknown to the people on the continent is that a new war is brewing. It starts out in mysterious ways, senseless attacks, and a strange religion from a god that no one has heard of. Little by little in the Knights of Alcea, these heroes of old are brought back in to solve the mystery of what’s going on and to battle the advanced troops they don’t know are coming. Knights of Alcea are reuniting the heroes and understanding evil is coming. At the end of the story, the Knights capture an English ship named Remora, so a small subsection of knights decide to sail the enemy ship into enemy territory to learn what they can do about the coming invasion. It’s where these heroes journey to a strange unknown and spy on the enemy.

In the next book, Council of War, the heroes, knowing they are stranded, have decided to do what they can to impede the coming invasion and damage the enemy if they can. They find there are two countries on this new continent that are opposed to the federation of bad guys and decide to set up a Council of War together. This includes all of the enemies on that continent of the federation, so that the Council can do whatever they can to lessen the impact of the coming invasion of Alcea.

In the next story, Demonkin, we find out that the evil is not a random occurrence. The great demon who was vanquished at the end of Heavens has found a way to return and it’s through his Demonkin that he’s causing this war. So the Knights of Alcea have to battle these Demonkin.

Heirs of the Enemy follows. The Alceans are planning for after the war even though it is unlikely they are going to win it. They go around and grab the heirs in each of the countries that make up the federation and spirit them to a safe place to indoctrinate them to go back and leave their countries for good rather than for evil.

There are several morals to each story. One is that anything is possible if you work to achieve it. The theme through all of Tuttle’s books is that good conquers evil.

“Without that, I don’t think I could write a fantasy book if evil prevailed,” he said. “A fantasy book is a good escape for people especially during times of stress. It’s nice to read about somebody taking care of and conquering for the good. Once I get somebody to read one of my books, I know they will come back.”

He continued, “I have a very high retention of readers. I don’t know what makes people want to read my books. Maybe it’s the description of the book. I think you really have to have someone bite the bullet and say ‘I know this guy’ or maybe not, or ‘I think this looks interesting and I’ll try this book.’ There are a lot of people who constantly read fantasy books and are always looking for something fresh and new. I think I give that.”

Tuttle primarily started out as an E-book author and as he put it, “I’m kind of happy to be an E-book author.”

He feels that E-books haven’t taken off as planned, and that there are still problems with competing formats.

“Each year we get closer and closer to where E-books are becoming main stream, but we’re not there yet. My E-Books sell rather well at $5.99 but print books are what the vast majority of the readers wan,” he said. “A lot of people aren’t technologically savvy and don’t want to sit in front of a computer and read. They don’t want to read on a small palm pilot either. They want a book. So I’m spending all of my time converting my books to print. I’m the publisher but not the printer.”

The first half of his E-books are available on www.amazon.com. He is currently looking to get them into local book stores, too, but that hasn’t gotten off the ground yet.

“You have to have print books available at a price that allows the book store to make money. Where I’m selling them now is where I’m getting them printed. There’s not enough margin in there for a retail store to carry. The print books sell for roughly $15 a piece, and it costs the majority of that to print, so there’s not a lot of profit in the book,” he said. “There are printers available out there that will produce the book a lot cheaper, but it also costs a lot more money up front. So we’re going to go cautiously and try one book and see whether there’s a call for it or not. www.fictionwise.com sells hundreds of books a month for us. They even discount the E-books. They carry all of my books. The important thing is to get my name out there.

“I really do think that E-books are going to be a major market sometime and I want to be a leader in fantasy books. Scholastic pushing in schools can sell a lot of books. I’ve been doing everything on my own from writing the books to formatting and laying out the book covers including doing the art design,” he said.

Tuttle has readers from pre-teens to 80’s. It really spans the globe and internationally as well. The majority of his readers are in their 20’s. He gets emails from a lot of technical people and engineers asking when the next book is coming out. Some of his readers are nine and 10 years old. Tuttle said he has one favorite 80-year-old blind woman in Oregon who buys his E-books and has the text converted to audio. There appears to be no actual age limit. The books are child-acceptable with no sex, but some violence such as armies fighting. Tuttle said it’s pretty safe for kids.

How can an author who creates such fantasy keep it all together? It isn’t easy.

He uses four computers at the same time. One is for formatting, the second is for writing, the third keeps track of countries, cities, objects, characters including their ages and whether they are living or are dead, and the other for email and maps of his worlds.

All computers are on at the same time so that he can find out the names of people, places and things, notes on Excel for continuity and chapters, titles, and how unified in a sense that everything he needs is at his fingertips on all four computers at any given time.

The Tuttle family which includes his wife, Kathleen, and daughters Alexandra and Jennifer are among his editors. But Tuttle started what they call a playmobile. It’s in a back room that was created as a special place for birthdays and Christmas that has handmade castles and bridges, and all sorts of characters. It has grown over 20 years and keeps getting bigger.

“It became a main hobby, and everybody is still involved. I used it to teach the children about morals, such as people with good intentions and people with bad intentions; that there are consequences for what you do. We taught them about writing,” Tuttle continued. “They used to write newspapers. They each had a reporter who would go around and interview people and physically write a gazette. We taught them bookkeeping where each person had to go out and work to earn a living and have a bank account. So it was more than display. It was a fantasy world, one that we could readily immerse ourselves in and it just persisted year after year. It’s a lot of fun.”

His books can be purchased at www.LuLu.com/rstuttle which will take you to Tuttle’s book store or through his website at www.rstuttle.com.

All books are now available in print. If you like to read fantasy novels, start with the first book. You’ll soon find yourself longing for the second one, and then the third, and so on.