Light vs Dark-The Journey
It’s been a long time since I’ve been active on my social media accounts. This is part of the reason why.
LIGHT vs DARK Kindle Vella Stories-Two very different stories with nearly opposite themes. Both set in the near future. Both inspired by recent (or current) national and world events and discoveries, as well as the spiritual journey I’ve been on since 2019. (spiritual, NOT religious)
Light- I originally started writing The Event in book form in 2021 after the idea for this crazy epic story just came to me out of the blue. After I wrote out the basic outline of the story idea itself and added a list of all the elements I wanted to incorporate into it, I knew that it would likely take more than one book to tell the whole story. By the end of the first chapter I had decided to try to cram it all into a trilogy and call the series The Portal War. My biggest fear when I started writing it was that I wouldn’t be able to do this amazing story idea justice. But since I wasn’t sure that I would ever do anything with it, I tried to push those fears out of my mind and just focus on enjoying the process and on getting the story out of my head.
It’s been a year to the month since the idea for The Portal War popped in my head and I started writing it. At the time I needed hope that the seemingly ever darkening world we are living in would someday be bright again. My son and every other child, deserves to be able to grow up in a brighter, more loving and accepting, with more empathy, world than it feels like we are currently living in.
When my wife and I got married in 2017 and decided to start a family, we took into account the fact that “certain parties” were subscribing to and spreading baseless conspiracy theories at an alarming rate that demonizes families like ours. We honestly hoped and thought that once those four years were up, a certain someone would be voted out of office, and things would get better. He was, but unfortunately things have continued to worsen. In just those four years, an astounding amount of damage to this country (and the world, really, if one were to be honest) was inflicted.
By the end of the four years, the dark true colors of waaaay more people than I ever would have imagined possible just a few years earlier, had been brought to light. So many monsters parading around in human skin suits, even among my own “friends,” sickened me. (See 2020 blog post “Tidying Up.”) Our son had turned three by then, by 2021, and like I said, I desperately needed hope that the world would someday be brighter than it is. And even though I was already on a spiritual journey, although I wouldn’t call it that for at least another few months, the despair overwhelmed me some days. Then the idea for The Portal War came to me, and gave me a way to focus some of my wishful thinking and hoping.
A year later I’m not nearly as far along with the series as I had hoped to be. But hey, getting anything at all done with a toddler is woah, and my wife and I are not spring chickens anymore. Ha. I still experience those days where I feel like I’m filled with despair. And I still struggle with finding and seeing the good amongst all the bad. But having another outlet (the other outlet being reading of course) has been amazing therapy, and I just keep holding out hope for our children’s futures.
Hopefully one day soon humanity as a whole will love more and hate less. In the meantime, I’ll just keep writing about the what if’s. Like what if something happened that brought the whole world together? And what if that something gave thousands of people all over the world abilities that could help the human race as a whole evolve? People who want and hope for a more caring, loving, enlightened world for everyone like I do.
After spending a year (off and on) writing a story with such a clearly defined good vs evil theme, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when another, much darker story idea hit me. But I was. It surprised me because Whispers is not at all the type of story I’d have pictured myself reading, much less writing. Not even on the darkest of days. I suppose it was only a matter of time before balance would be required though.
Dark- Not long after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe, a new story idea popped into my head. Within hours, I started writing the prologue and first chapter of Whispers: The United States of Christ. The rage I’d been feeling, that I was having trouble suppressing and stuffing down, was just too great. The end result is this darker, cautionary story.
It too felt like it NEEDED to be written, that I HAD to write it and get it out of my head. The same way I felt in 2021 when the idea for The Portal War series came to me. I needed to get it out. To write it. Regardless of whether or not I would later do anything with it.
So now, on days I feel RAGE over the injustices happening daily and need hope that “the good” won’t be squashed under the boots of the extremists who are putting so many innocent people and families like mine in danger (and I need to express it in a healthier manner than to rage-post on social media), I write chunks of Whispers: The United States of Christ.
And on the days I feel despair and need to keep hope alive, I work on The Event.
Even though I’ve read close to 200 books over the last 18 months with my Kindle Unlimited subscription, I only just last month discovered Kindle Vella. I don’t know how in the world I kept missing the entire freakin section that is Kindle Vella, but I did. I’m so glad I finally noticed it though. There’s been a certain type of book and only like two genres that have really appealed to me since I rekindled my love affair with books in 2019. But while taking a peek at “Top Faved” and trending, and while browsing through a variety of genres and tags that seem to be popular on Vella, I got hooked on a few stories totally unlike anything I would normally read. Some of them are brilliant too, so I’d have been missing out big time.
Next thing I knew, I had read like 10 episodes in a row of this one story in a genre I’ve never read before. And because I discovered Vella only days after I started writing Whispers, the timing felt a little bit meant to be. I know, I know, cheesy, right? But I immediately knew that I wanted to put Whispers on there. And by luck or coincidence, or because it was meant to be, ha, the format or style that I was already writing Whispers in was easy to reformat and turn into episodes. After I published the first episode of Whispers I made a decision to go ahead and reformat and make a few changes to the original story I was working on, and put it on Vella too.
So here I am, still writing, trying to do both of these stories justice.
The Event: Season One of The Portal War
Science Fiction/Action & Adventure
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BC2TVP5S
LIGHT- good-v-evil, aliens, human ascension, awakening, angels & demons, metaphysical, ancient advanced civilizations, Atlantis, enlightenment, pyramids, superhuman abilities, portals, secret societies, mythological beings and creatures, diverse characters as the norm, nature, all living things connected, cosmic consciousness, cosmic awareness, new earth ascension, light beings, prophecies,
DARK- alternate history, alternate reality, cautionary tale, Dark America, TW, persecution, survival, Obergefell v Hodges, Roe v Wade, religious extremists, trials and tribulations, Supreme Court corruption, near future, what-if, fanatics, diverse characters as the norm, horror, haunting
Whispers: The United States of Christ
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0B7CW7Q83
