Goodreads asked William Ray:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

William Ray A number of things inspired Gedlund, but the spark that goes the furthest back is the ending of Lord of the Rings. When I finished Return of the King, the question that haunted me was, "What about all the other stuff?"

The Elves left, they took most of their magic with them, they took the wizards, they took the most magical hobbits, they took a lot... but they didn't take everything. Sauron himself is gone, but surely there were a handful of orcs or trolls or other things that never made it. A particularly lazy dragon might be napping somewhere further afield, or mystical detritus of Numenor like the various other lost seeing stones. Lots of loose ends that don't lead neatly into our modern world.

It probably helped that I next went on to read a bit of Dickens and Jules Verne.

Humans would keep going, so what happens when industrious humans meet ancient magic? Much like armored knights, dragons seem less fearsome once you develop rifles. The ancient mysteries of distant lands become more immediate concerns when you can steam on over in the latest ships.

So much fantasy literature takes place in medieval worlds, and the Verin Empire was an idea developed to explore the question of what happens next in those sorts of places.

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