A Goodreads user asked Michael J. Sullivan:

You have put yourself in a unique situation of writing the stories from which your previous books have built myth and religion. I am loving every minute as you untangle (and tangle) myth from reality. Care to offer insight on how you go about deciding what is myth and which is reality? This is quite a ride! I'm loving every minute of it.

Michael J. Sullivan Hey thanks for reading...and for the question. This is going to take a bit of time...

I wrote books for about two decades (producing 13 novels) and never got anywhere with regards to publishing them. So I figured I was wasting my time so I quit writing altogether. Never thought I would take it up again. But I'm a natural-born storyteller and the ideas kept coming to me...especially related to the world of Elan -- because it's fun to play God and create your own sandbox.

Well, I wasn't writing any books, but as I said the whispers didn't quiet and after a decade of being away, I finally returned to writing (but only on the condition I wouldn't write -- that way led to the dark side, meaning depression and sorrow of not having people read my work. Armed with the fact that no one was supposed to read my books, I was able to write the books I wanted to read and I developed the world, along with a pretty simple, and straight forward origin story to the universe.

Now, when I write, I employ the "iceberg technique" - meaning I expose just a small fraction of what I know to the reader, because in most cases the background was there for me, and it would bog down the plot to show off all the pretty little things I came up with. part of my world building was a recognition that history is written by the victors and legends are made out of ordinary people. So, I not only developed the "fake" origin story, but the real one as well. It was fun for me when writing Riyria to know I was lying about a great many things...well lying might be too strong a word...I was glossing over the real facts and building myths that weren't true.

I never thought I would do anything with all those details about "the truth" but then Riyria took off and got popular (who knew that would happen) and when I wanted to write something else, I thought it would be fun to expose those parts about the past that only I knew about...and so The Legends of the First Empire books were born.

I like playing around with history...mentioning things in passing, then going back and fleshing them -- along with the full details. I'm currently working a third series (don't have a name for it yet but am calling it The Bridge books). It takes place between Legends and Riyria and if Legends tells how the Empire was formed these bridge books shows how it fell, and also gives backstory to people like Esrahaddon (who shows up Riyria) and Nevrik and Jerish, two historical figures that I would like to tell people more about.

Glad you are enjoying the read so much. Lots more to come. Age of War hits in April.

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