Creating everything

So, I like to step out of reality for awhile, but I find the worlds made by other people to be a little stale. I prefer my own, but how does one go about building their own world? I mean, honestly, how pretentious is it to say "your world's not good enough for me, I need to make my own"? And then, do you make a whole new world or bastardize someone else's or even the real world?

That's the difference between 'high fantasy' and 'contemporary fantasy' in a large respect to me. Either you create everything, including names and titles and words in addition to playing god by creating the universe, or you create some of the things and plop them into what's already familiar to the reader.

That's why I  write 'urban fantasy,' supernatural goings-on in a mostly real world setting. I don't have to build a world for you to relate to, because you live in it. However, it's still different. I've created a race that lives in our world only in my mind, and I have to sell you on the realism that they've been there since ancient times, evolving with us yet apart from us. Their world is completely different from the one you know, so I have to start out 85% high fantasy-thinking and blend it with 15% contemporary because they are technology freaks but stuck in the mindset of an ancient culture that saw no reason to change what worked for them thousands of years ago.

Really, in a way, it reminds me of some Final Fantasy games. There're magic and monsters, pixies and nymphs, satyrs and winged people, but there is also the overwhelming presence of technology in cars, hovercrafts, guns, holograms and automated living quarters.

So the task of the author (that's me) is to persuade the reader (that's you) to believe in my blend of opposites and keep reading. I think it's easier with a medium like a game, because you can see it and seeing is believing. As a novel writer, I'm asking you to believe in something wholly intangible, something only I can see in my mind.

If I do it right, you come with me for a jaunt through my merry land of misfits and rogues; if not, you toss my book and tell people not waste their money.

Here's hoping we make tracks together.