Horny Science Fantasy Trilogy

Weekly book update:

My horny fantasy trilogy is now a horny science fantasy trilogy. I found out on Twitter that some readers get upset when they find science fiction in their fantasy, so now people get a warning. This fantasy novel has sex and robots!

I printed out all 600 pages of the first book, and I’m almost to page 300 of the readthrough. I’m assuming my pace will slow a bit in some rougher later sections, but I’m making good progress. My goal is to have a finished draft and start writing book two before the end of the year.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,

Wes

An early look at my new dark fantasy novel.

^{Image by Stefan Keller}

I’m working hard on my dark fantasy trilogy, and I thought I should give you an early look at the first chapter.

Chapter One
Moths

My back wounds are being patched up after a battle I can’t remember. Stitching and searing pain. Light in my eyes. Someone says, “Stay still. We’re almost done.” My whole upper back has been carved up.

These aren’t field doctors. They’re too clean. I can’t smell the earthy richness of the forest, just disinfectant and my own blood. I’m in a modern operating room. Two of the doctors are women. Where am I?

The war has been over for a decade.

I’m not in the Wilds. I’m in a hospital in Armskirk. And something very bad is about to happen. A premonition. Dread. I roar as if I’m charging into battle.

I buck off the orderlies that try to restrain me. Surgical instruments crash to the floor. I shove past infirmary nurses and sprint down a long hallway. I’m in Highborne Citadel’s infirmary. I recognize the stonework and the crisp uniforms. I run past door after door, my bare feet slapping polished stone. I reach the end of the hall, dash through Reception, and burst outside into a massive crowd that has filled the citadel courtyard.

I’ve seen Armskirk’s whole military lined up here, a hundred thousand men in neat rows, but today it’s a sea of civilians in a chaotic mass. In the west, it’s shoulder to shoulder.

The snow is trampled slush. The winter air is bracing. I’m bare-chested, and a Spell of Forgetting has been carved into my upper back. That’s why I’ve been thrown into confusion.

Despite the cold air, the sigil burns like a brand. I reach back. I feel bandages. I’m mostly stitched up, but damn if it doesn’t hurt like hell.

Thousands of faces are looking up at the Moon Tower observatory where a woman balances on a railing.

My heart leaps into my throat.

The Moon Daughter, cultist Quelana, the woman who is my tutor and lover, balances hundreds of feet above the crowd with a noose around her tender neck.

This can’t be happening.

I’m Everard Kalvaitis, known everywhere as Everard the Strong, a beloved war hero, yet I watch from the courtyard with the rest of the commoners, powerless.

I look over to the keep’s highest balcony. The Eternal King stands there, watching. He ordered this. Chancellor Silva, draped in her finest furs, is there too, propping him up. Once the Minister of Health and a respected physician, she is now his closest adviser.

The dukes and duchess, far removed from the commoners in the courtyard, line the balustrades of the lower balconies. I know many of the gentry personally, slept with more than a dozen, but they see me as an indulgence, not as an equal. And now that I’m approaching fifty, I’m an indulgence past my prime.

Three orderlies exit the infirmary in pursuit. The crowd parts. The men see that I’m not trying to escape and halt in their tracks.

Just breathing aggravates my bruised ribs. 

I’m not the only one injured from our scuffle. One of the orderlies holds a broken nose, blood dripping from his chin. Another grips a shoulder and grimaces in pain. How long are they going to draw this out? They know I’m not going back with them without a fight.

Quelana steps off the banister. Executioners likely force her, but the angle obscures them so it looks like a suicide. She plummets thirty feet until the rope pulls tight.

Her neck doesn’t snap the way it’s supposed to. It stretches like pulled taffy for another three feet. She’s still for a moment. Then her jaw demoniacally unhinges down to her clavicle, and her mouth gapes impossibly wide. Even from such a great distance away, I see it well enough, and I’m horrified. Then her throat expands like a mating frog’s vocal sack, only slower. As the skin balloons, it losses its color and becomes translucent. Something swarms inside.

A few isolated screams sound from the crowd as her neck flesh keeps stretching
and expanding, but mostly it’s silent anticipation. How big will it get? 

Everyone holds their breath. And, oh God, what’s inside?

The bubble pops. There’s no blood. Instead, hundreds of moths whoosh out in an explosion of gray dust and sparks.

Moon magic. Quelana’s last bit of dazzle for the people of Armskirk. The moths fan out over the crowd. People laugh with relief.

The Eternal King can’t be pleased. He surely ordered this to repress her spirit of rebellion, and even in death, she defies him.

The crowd cheers and applauds. For the hanging or the explosion of moths, I’m not sure.

I hope to see the king’s reaction, but I’m too far away. He’s seven hundred years old. In his ornate silk robes, people say he looks no older than seventy-five. He’s eternal, but he’s no longer the muscled warrior who founded Armskirk, and if Armskirk is anything, it’s a kingdom that prizes youth, strength, and masculinity.

He’s afraid. Why else would he do this to Quelana? She’s been made an example.

A string quartet on one of the lower balconies plays a waltz.

My war buddy, Akanax Baily, claps me on the shoulder. “You didn’t need to see this.” He’s a big man, as big as me, and captain of the Royal Guard. 

“Yes, I did. This is justice.” Quelana was the only one who could have carved the Spell of Forgetting into my back. She was a powerful mage, the most powerful in Armskirk.

Akanax waves off the orderlies, who grumble and go back inside.
With the execution complete, the Eternal King sits in his wire-frame wheelchair. Chancellor Silva speaks something into his ear and wheels him back inside.

The rest of the gentry remain. They drink and soak up the festive atmosphere. A few waltz. This is just another social event. Quelana was one of them, and yet they don’t care because her faith in Luna made her an outsider.

Quelana’s body slowly turns in the wind, her head far above her shoulders, her shredded neck now a twisted cord.

Akanax nudges me. “Who told you she was being executed today?”

“No one did. It was just a feeling.”

She’ll be left to rot, which won’t happen until the thaw.

Children, bundled in winter clothes, chase the various-sized moths. The larger ones leave trails of sparkling dust. The faster, smaller ones make whistling trills.

Akanax says, “You’ll be the next entertainment if you don’t think of something.”

A black and white moth, a Pangora Moth if I had to guess the kind, lands on the back of my hand and spreads out its wings as if putting them on display.

I can’t help plotting ways to get Quelana down. If I cut the rope, she’ll drop another hundred feet. Maybe I could pull her back up into the tower.

“You can’t go up there,” Akanax says as if reading my mind. “The tower is off-limits because of the ongoing investigation.”

Why do I even care? She betrayed me too. The moth on the back of my hand turns to ash.

“Come. You’re freezing.”

The two of us make our way north through the crowd toward the barracks. Akanax is dressed in leather armor that emphasizes his musculature, and an oversized broadsword rests on his shoulder. He’s always been intimidating, and he hasn’t mellowed with age. I look like a deranged, hulking animal. I’m bearded, my hair wild, and the bandages on my back are bleeding. People make room.

“Look at me,” I mutter and wince from the pain in my back. “The king knows I don’t know anything.”

“How long will that buy you? A few days?”

“He wouldn’t dare. There’d be an uprising. Besides, I would like to see him try.”

The spinning meat-cone of a kebab cart makes my mouth water. A startled woman yelps and pulls her small daughter out of our path. Everyone is staring at me even more than usual.

“Quelana was the Moon Daughter,” Akanax says. “She was practically your wife, and she’s hanging from a rutting tower of the citadel. No one’s safe.”

He’s right, of course. Just because I’m beloved by the public doesn’t mean the king can’t have me killed any number of ways. The Royal Guard would overwhelm me, even if Akanax defected. And an uprising would be quelled within a week or two. Maybe if the public saw me executed they would just cheer.

“She wasn’t my wife,” I say, knowing that’s not his point. “She turned me down.”

“You’ve mentioned.” Akanax shoves me into a room in the barracks where we can talk privately and I won’t freeze to death. “Damn it, Everard! Think! I didn’t save your ass all those times in the war for it to end like this. Quelana must’ve had a contingency plan. You have money, right?”

The stone floor is hot by the fireplace, and it warms the soles of my frozen feet. “Yeah.” I rub my upper arms to stimulate the blood flow. “But not enough to smooth things over with a king.”

“That’s not what I mean. Take a holiday in the Wilds. Go native. You always liked it down there. God knows why. Out of sight and out of mind is your best bet right now.”

“I’m not running.”

“You don’t have a choice.” He pulls a cloak off a chair and drapes it over my shoulders.

“That’s not who I am.” I’m not being stubborn. I’m being honest. “Besides, running would only make me look guilty.”

“Everard, you can’t stay here! You don’t understand how serious this is. I can’t protect you. They say Quelana was plotting to overthrow the king!”

“I wouldn’t ask that of you.” Asking him to protect me would be a death sentence for us both. “Armskirk is everything, everything we fought for. Now that I don’t have Quelana . . .” My emotional numbness is already dissolving. Despair takes its place. “If the king wants me dead, maybe that’s my fate.”

“You don’t mean that.”

This back and forth reminds me of a conversation I can only half-remember. Quelana and I were in the Moon Tower quarreling about my future. She gave me a tarot reading that I accused her of rigging. She insisted that I become the Southern Herald, that I was destined for more glory, but I didn’t want more glory; I wanted to have a family with her. It’s the last thing I can remember before waking up in the infirmary.

That and the Moon Card in the center of the table. The card seems to blot out everything else.

Maybe we said our goodbyes while she was cutting the Sigil of Forgetting into my back.

There’s something on my hand. When the Pangora Moth turned to ash, it left a message, but it’s now smudged, leaving only one legible word: “live”. I wipe it away.

“Quelana brought this on herself. She betrayed the Eternal King. She knew the risks.” I shrug off the cape and pull at the bandages on my back. “She did this!” My anger comes out in a sob.

“Stop! You’re bleeding!”

“I don’t care!” I clutch the bloody bandages in my fists and throw them into the fire.

“Everard. It’ll be okay.”

“No!” I can’t breathe. “No, it won’t!”

“We’ll figure this out!” He grabs onto me. The leather armor is hard and cold against my bare skin.

“Our last conversation . . . The last one before she cut into me, she wanted me to become the Southern Herald. I told her no. I told her that I couldn’t leave her, but she kept insisting. Quelana didn’t want me.”

“She loved you. I know she did.”

I shake my head, my tears wet on the hard leather. “Her love . . . It was always out of reach. She knew how I felt. And she . . .” I choke up, too upset to continue.

Akanax holds me, and I let the fight go out and rest against him. The fire crackles beside us. I feel the urge to kiss him, but his love for me is platonic. This type of intimacy is required of war buddies. Someone has to be there when the atrocities of battle resurface. Flashbacks. Survivor guilt. Sleepless nights and paranoia. Now that Quelana is dead, Akanax is my last safe harbor. My parents. My brothers and sister. They wouldn’t understand. They’ve never experienced war.

After a time, Akanax says into my ear, “That might work.”

I stand straight, sniffing and wiping my eyes. “What might?” The grief recedes for now.

He puts his gloved hands on my shoulders, our faces close. “Become the Southern Herald. Who better than Armskirk’s favorite son? You’d be perfect. I can convince Silva, and she can convince the king.”

“Akanax,” I say, skeptical.

“No, listen. As the herald, you could sleep until the king forgets.”

I sit down in the chair by the fire, suddenly exhausted. “He’s not going to forget. He’s eternal.”

“Fine, sleep until he has more pressing concerns. You’ll wake during the second Dark Advent.”

I admit the apocalypse would be pretty distracting. I consider it more seriously, stroking my beard. “As the herald, I’d help prevent the end of the world.”

“After that, he’d have to forgive you.”

I watch the fire. “Quelana wanted me to become the Southern Herald so I could see Armskirk’s glorious future. She thought it was my destiny.”

“The Moon Daughter can feel the flow of time. Isn’t that what you told me? Maybe she did this all for you. Maybe she thought she was holding you back from your destiny and sacrificed herself. She had to see this coming.”

The idea gives me hope. There’s just one problem: the sigil.

I slouch. The pain in my back flares, and I sit straight again. “Then why make me forget? The Sigil of Forgetting can only be carved by the Moon Daughter. She wanted to overthrow the king. I must’ve discovered her plan. I loved her, but I’d never commit treason, and so she had a choice: kill me or erase my memory. She carved the sigil.”

“It was her downfall. After that, her plan kept unraveling. She was found out anyway.”

“And now she’s hanging from the Moon Tower.” It still doesn’t feel real.

“At least she didn’t kill you,” he says. “She could’ve. It would’ve been the safer option.”

“Quelana was a traitor. And I was a fool. I thought she loved Armskirk, and this whole time . . .”

“She fooled everyone.” His leather armor creaks as he pours whiskey from a decanter. “I thought she was good for you.” He offers me the whiskey. I shake my head, and he downs it himself. “Damn it, I introduced you two at the Bacchanal!”

“She wanted me to become the herald so I’d be out of the way when she tried to overthrow the king.”

“That’s diabolical.”

I’m boiling with anger now. “She charmed the public with her Moon Magic. She made me fall for her. But she’s no martyr. If anything, she was an evil mastermind, fooling everyone and biding her time.”

“Okay.” Akanax throws his glass into the fire and grabs his sword. “Fuck her. Now we have to make sure you’re not collateral damage. If we can’t convince Silva that you weren’t involved, she’s going to order me to turn you over to the torturer’s guild for interrogation. I’m surprised she hasn’t already.”

Mention of the torturer’s guild chills my blood, but I stand to meet Akanax and ball my fists. “What can I do?” 

“Good point. Nothing.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s best you wait here. I’ll petition on your behalf.”

“Akanax, I can speak for myself.”

“You’re a handsome man, but right now, you look like a villain. You’d only hurt your own case. I’ll have someone bring you some food.”

I sit back down and put my face in my hands. I know he’s right. I’m a mess.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

I say as he’s leaving, “Akanax, sorry I got you wrapped up in all this.”

He looks back from the door. He shrugs. “Saving your ass never gets old.”

Creating my own Substack Logo

When you create a Substack newsletter, you get to create a logo for yourself. It must be at least 256 x 256 pixels, with a transparent background. I chose to keep mine at this minimum size to make sure I didn’t over complicate the image.

Part of my newsletter will eventually be about drawing so I didn’t want to experiment too much with graphic design programs. I wanted something handmade, so I used Procreate on the iPad to simply draw the logo. Here was my first try. I settled on the WM of my initials as my foundation, and I wanted to capture the idea that I’m trying to grow.

I liked it fine, but when I saw it small, it just sort of lost something, and it didn’t really say anything about who I am as an artist.

I tried some more Sumi Ink style lettering, but that wasn’t really me either. I experimented with different brushes, finally landing on a design I actually liked. It’s darker and grimmer but more who I am as an artist. As much as I would like to grow in the coming years, I still want to embrace the horror elements that I love.

And it looks good when it’s small.

I then emailed the image to myself and uploaded it to Substack in the settings page. I hope this helps if you are considering making a Substack newsletter. A logo can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be a complex process. Also, when starting out, remember that you can always change it later.

If you would like to sign up for my newsletter and see my logo in action, you can do that HERE.

Growth Mindset

You don’t know when or if an idea will change your life until you have the benefit of hindsight, but if I had to take a wild guess, I’m assuming my life changed last week.

^{Image by jplenio from Pixabay}

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to define myself by my inability to do certain things. Some of these things, I tried them briefly and wasn’t very good at them. Others, I haven’t done them in a long time and so I’m not good at them anymore. Many others, I imagined that if I tried them I would be bad at them. However these ideas got in my head, they built up over time.

The possibilities for my life started to get very small.

Then last week I was introduced to the idea that, generally speaking, no one is good at something unless they work hard at it. For some reason, I had started to think that I should focus on the things that come easy to me, and that if I’m not good at something at 40, than I’ll never be, but practice is required of even gifted people. Not just repetition, a concerted effort to improve. Somehow, I had forgotten that I can grow and change, and that it takes work.

The possibilities for my life are much bigger now. Yes, I have limits. But there are a million things that I could be better at if I put in the time and effort. Everyone is incompetent at the beginning. Most people stop because learning is hard, but hard isn’t a bad sign. It just means you haven’t developed the skills yet for what you’re trying to do.

I can learn to draw, code a game, and write a weekly blog post, but I won’t be good at these things immediately. And that’s normal. As they say, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

What are you bad at that you forgot you could get better at? Cooking. Staying tidy. Remembering people’s names. Video games. Grammar. Talking to strangers. Being alone. Dating. Married life. Finances. Loving yourself how you are. Seeing your own potential. Everyone has their blind spots, but I promise, we can improve, and it helps to have a Growth Mindset.

Why I’m Starting a Substack Newsletter

I’m starting a simple weekly newsletter on Substack. It will highlight some of the cool things I’ve discovered as I learn to write, program, and draw. Maybe some of the things that inspire me will also inspire you.

Why am I doing this?

Well, first, a little about Substack. Unlike many other platforms and email newsletter services, Substack is completely free for everyone to use, and they don’t even have ads like WordPress, Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter. Substack only makes money when creators charge for content. Mailchimp’s newsletter service, for example, has a free-use limit of 1000 subscribers. This means I can use Substack for my mailing list and never pay a dime. If I every wanted to create a paid tier, like a new short story every month and preview chapters of my novels, I could add that at some point in the future without any further complications. I don’t think I’ll ever do that, but it’s a nice option.

If you know anything about self publishing, you’ll know that everyone advises you to start a mailing list. It’s the best way for authors to keep in contact with their readers. So that’s what I’m doing, and I’m starting simple.

This newsletter will be a good excuse to look back at the week and synthesize some of the information I’ve taken in. What brought me joy? What did I find useful? Because it’s a safe bet, you’re overwhelmed too and wouldn’t mind some curation.

Sign up HERE so you don’t miss the first issue.

Two Quick Things

I’m reviving this WordPress site and starting a Substack newsletter. My tiny mailing list is moving from Mailchimp to Substack, once I figure out how to do that, and here is the link to my Substack if you would like to sign up.

Twitter Break

I’m using February to finish the alpha draft of my horny dark fantasy novel, Eternal King. To accomplish this, I’ve decided to take a break from Twitter. I’ll be posting here, from time to time, to talk about my writing process and current projects.

The big plan is to write all three novels of The Bathhouse Trilogy before releasing the first volume. The three books of will be called Eternal King, Merchant Prince, and Pope Queen. Writing them will take at least a few more years, but I have a lot of little goals and projects before I get to that big finish line.

While I work on the trilogy, I’ll be studying visual art. I would like to start posting my own art to this blog before the end of the year with the goal of maybe painting my own book covers, and eventually (in ten years or so) drawing a graphic novel.

Planning so far into the future feels a bit silly, considering the state of the world, but this is more about the day to day process than an end point. I want to create visual art. I want to write books. The big challenge is figuring out how to do both.

Is Writing Worth It?

I know it’s taboo to advise asking yourself if writing is worth it, mainly because writers ask themselves this all the time without me advising you to, but I think it’s a valuable question, and we often don’t ask it in the right way.

Ignore all the self-doubt you feel. This question shouldn’t be about your skill or talent. I firmly believe that most people can be writers if they take the time. After all, it’s just putting down words, and most people can form coherent sentences and thoughts, so it’s not a big leap to make those thoughts and sentences into text.

But is it any good? you ask. Given enough time and practice, you’ll write something that someone thinks is good. No matter how well you write, someone will also think it’s bad. So really, all you can do is work hard and try to do the best you can, just like every other writer.

Which brings us to . . .

But is it worth it?

The first thing that may come to mind when you hear this question is monetary reward, or maybe if you’ve rejected capitalism, maybe you think of writing as your therapist, but there are easier ways to make money and you might should consider an actual therapist if you want therapy.

Maybe writing is a chance for you to hold power over something when your life feels so out of your hands. Is it healthy to spend so much of your life escaping? Probably not. The real world needs your help.

Maybe publishing a book would garner respect. From my experience, people respect you if you show them that you care about who they are as people. The average person doesn’t much care about the specifics of your accomplishments; they just care about how you make them feel. Publishing a book won’t change that.

Did it lead you to a dead end?

I’m sure some writers have made a ton of money, had amazing emotional breakthroughs, and earned the adoration of their peers, all the while, lording over their own creations and feeling like gods. But as you probably already know from experience, most writers have lives nothing like this, and even if they do, they are still making huge sacrifices. Even the hugely successful, if they are happy writing, aren’t doing it day in and day out for the things that often only look great from the outside.

Writing is about doing. Which means for writing to be worth it, it must be worth it in the doing.

You can get good things as a result of this doing, but writing is too damn time consuming. The rewards are almost never going to be good enough to validate all that effort. Because of this, the time you put in has to be the thing you cherish. If it’s not, you need to reconsider how you write.

That is why I’m reconsidering how I write.

Here are some ideas about writing that I’m still wresting with (feel free to add your own):

Is writing about reaching a mental state of flow? Is it about approaching the task with a sense of freedom and play? Is it about the mastery of a skill? Is it about fulfilling the basic human need to be creative? Is it about saying what no one else is saying so as to contribute to society? Is it about observation and truly engaging with the world? Is it about writing as if no one will ever read what you write so that you can be free to create something honest and uncensored? What combination of these things do I value enough to be my personal focus? What rewards from writing am I undervaluing, maybe that I’m even blind to? Maybe writing is about asking for help, no matter how much I don’t want this to be the case.

Writing is so many things before you ever reach any kind of goal. It would be tragic to miss all that, because that’s the actual life of a writer.

Find what you value in the doing so that writing can be worth it now.

A place to read The Forgiving for free.

A novel of horror and suspense.

Three lovers, as a way to save cash, seek out a real estate agency that specializes in poltergeist activity. What they find in their prospective house tests their faith in God and their faith in each other.

Here are the Table of Contents.

Or buy it from Amazon here.

 

Interactive Fiction RPG

This year, I’m taking a break from writing a traditional novel. Instead, I’m using Twine to create a dark fantasy interactive fiction RPG.

Six months in, I’m a little overwhelmed, but I’m trying to power through. The game focuses on romantic relationships, so there is a lot of conversations, but there’s a strong exploration element too, so there is also a lot of game design and setting descriptions. When all is said and done, it should be three times more words than a normal novel.

Its working title is Bathhouse: The Desiccation. The world hub of the game is a sacred bathhouse. The Desiccation is a coming scourge that the three heroes must stop.

I’ve always hated dealing with a text parser, so while it’s a text adventure game, there’s no typing. It’s a bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure book with more freedom to move around locations. While there are battles, they aren’t the focus of the gameplay.

I’ve been thinking about this game for a few years now, but I always thought I would need a large team to create it. By using Twine, I realized a could make a text version. So while it was originally envisioned to be more like Quest for Glory, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Dark Souls, it still works surprisingly well as a text game. It explores adult themes in a way that I think is new and interesting, in ways that are probably too edgy for a mainstream game.

I’ll try to keep you updated on its progress.