Stardate: 20260105
Intro:
First, HUGE FREAKING NEWS. But that’s the next section. Now that you’ve been properly teased, I shall continue with the Introduction.
I have several rules by which I live my life. Some are silly, some are bedrock serious. Not all were written by me, but all feel right. I’m going to begin a series examining and explaining each one. First up, is the rule so bit it appears on the front page of my site.
Dev’s Rule Number One:
Nobody gets to tell you who you are, not your folks, not your friends, not a teacher or a priest or anybody else. Only you get that right.
Today, we examine the Good, the Bad, and the Fugly of my primary guide.
News:
OK, wow. Here we go with the biggie.
FLAME & CLAW HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY RELEASED!
The first two books, Peacebreaker and Lightbringer are available as e books (you find them on Amazon, Kobo, or DRM free on Itch.io). Worldender, the climax of the trilogy should be up for pre-order by the end of the week. All three books will be roughly $5 each (the platforms control foreign currency equivalents). I chose the platforms I did because I want to reach the broadest possible audience.
I’m exploring print options for those who would like a physical book. Hell, -I- want a physical book. but the options are, in a word, grim.
It has been a long, wonky road to get to this point. Between writing and editing and formatting and advertising (which I still royally suck at)… it’s a lot.
If you’d like, you can read the first chapter of Peacebreaker for FREE right here.
Read and Enjoy.
In The Library:
I always intended this section to be about OTHER people’s work, but this time I want to talk about Peacebreaker.
Being the first in the trilogy, It has a lot of heavy lifting to do. It’s gotta introduce Sara and the other characters, establish their relationships, and explain the intricacies of the world itself. Being an urban fantasy (or magical realism if you prefer) gives me a bit of an advantage. I don’t have to explain the mundane side of Sara’s life.
Not that it’s terribly mundane to start with. She’s living in her van with her cat and driving round the country as some kind of hybrid homeless person/wandering adventurer. That’s where the phrase “highway ronin” comes from. She wants to think of herself as controlling her own journey as she travels fork stop to stop, but the fact is she’s staggering from bad situation to barely acceptable short term solution to disaster. The book doesn’t romanticize her life as much as it may seem to, but when the call comes and she heads home, she’s secretly ready to settle down.
And what she finds when she comes “home” is nothing like she expected. She’s quickly drawn into a world of magic, and Immortals waging a cold war that has lasted for centuries. Sara very quickly discovers that her very existence has upset that tenuous balance and that cold war explodes in violence, fire, and death.
But she’s not in the world alone. She has her brother, and group of unexpected friends who welcome her into their family forged by flame and claw.
The Good
My number one rule.
Nobody gets to tell you who you are, not your folks, not your friends, not a teacher or a priest or anybody else. Only you get that right.
Obviously, the good of this is you define yourself. That is a simple, yet enormously powerful statement. Other people will try to label you, try to put you in a clean, neat, and tiny mental box.
But those labels? They only apply to you if you agree with them. Fight for your identity, because no one else has that right, or that responsibility.
The Bad
What could possibly be bad about the rule? If everyone gets to define themselves, where’s the harm?
Well, that’s an answer that again, only you can find. Here’s some food for thought though.
It’s human nature to fit everything we learn into our own frame of reference. Depending on the breadth of that frame, you might be more accepting of the differences in others. Or, maybe you live in a world where most if not all folks think the same way, hold the same values, and fit into similar frames. That’s not a bad thing, but it tends to shrink a person’s view of the world.
YOU get to decide who you are, but also remember that everyone around you has the same right. Conflict comes when we try to apply that decision to other people.
Assholes have the right to be assholes. Saints have the right to be saints. It’s their behavior toward others that is good or bad, and should be acted on accordingly, not their personal identity.
The Fugly
I’m not sure how fugly this is. To me the term has always meant ugly in a funny way. But then again, most stand-up comics will tell you folks don’t laugh at funny, they laugh at true.
What if you can’t answer the call to define who and what you are? Well, I think we call that condition ‘life.’ We’re all individuals who are constantly growing and learning, even if we don’t think we are.
I offer myself as an example. I was born into a very Catholic family. I attended a parochial school from the second through the fifth grade and only moving to a new town with a parochial school that was too pricey and that I vocally did not want to attend got me into the real of public education.
My father was very conservative. He felt Reagan was a tad too liberal. He was a Trump voter twice (would have been three, but he passed away a few years ago). He raised me think like he did, to value what he did. He was very much ‘Father Knows Best’.
But as I grew, I realized I didn’t share his values. Individual choice is very important to me. the wellness of the COMMUNITY is more important that making more money and driving a bigger car. Speaking of cars, My father and I are both large people. Over 6’4″ and broad in the shoulders. He drove the biggest family vehicles he could find. He drove a Ford cargo van with a converted luxuriously comfortable interior for over twenty years before shifting to top-line SUVs.
I drive a Ford Fiesta. The smallest car Ford made at the time. I don’t need 4-wheel drive, or a power-adjust chair with 16 dimensions. But he did, because it made him feel better about himself.
To get back to the point, We learn, we grow, and sometimes our answers change.
And that’s not fugly. It’s actually a good thing.
Well, that’s it for next month! Next time we’ll delve into some of the cast of Flame and Claw, and examine my second rule for life. I promise, thus one’s lighter:
Never turn down free food.
-If it comes from a trusted source. I’m looking at you, coworker-baked peanut butter sriracha cookies.-
See you in February!
-Dev