In addition to praying, writing poems, and painting, I also write fiction, much of it in the fantasy genre. I publish some serials on Royal Road, and I have a Patreon site where I publish all of the world-building materials that I create for my main stories. This is a form of play for me, and I find it really joyful.
Patreon
What if J.R.R. Tolkien had published all of his notes and sketches for Middle Earth as he wrote them? What if Suzanna Clark had created a special repository for her footnotes that her fans could access as she was writing them? I don’t claim to be nearly as talented as either of those two literary giants, but I am inspired by them to undertake the (brave? foolish?) work of inviting my readers into my world-building. In these posts, you’ll find entries from bestiaries, botanical guides, histories, timelines, brief character sketches, and much more. These are, essentially, the field notes that I use to create the world I write about.
Go to my Patreon page to start reading the stories.
Royal Road
I have one completed novel and a work-in-progress novel up on Royal Road at present. Click on the covers below to be taken to the site. I’m also including a snippet of the first chapter to pique your interest.
Chapter One: In the City of the Scholar Masters
The stranger was big and hearty, and his hair was so coppery that it seemed to have verdigris. He smelled of turned earth, and the skin around his eyes looked too soft, like the frilled flesh under a toadstool’s cap. When he rubbed at his nose, Manrie expected it to come apart and release its spores into the air. She sat on her bed and ate a bun and watched him.
He had come into the room to lay a sparrow’s nest on the table before Aizdha, who sat back and looked at it, a sick expression on his face. He seemed to know Aizdha, and Aizdha seemed to know him. He reached out a moist looking hand to seize one of the buns that Manrie had brought for Aizdha’s breakfast. “I am so sorry,” he said.
Aizdha sighed. “I knew when I saw the hawk yesterday that the fledglings would be dead today.”
“I saw the mother at the bottom of the stairs. Her body had been torn asunder, and her feathers were scattered on the ground.”
Manrie hadn’t seen this when she had gone to fetch breakfast from the kitchens, although she had turned left along the base of the wall, and couldn’t be certain that the dead sparrow hadn’t been deposited somewhere to the right.
“Truly,” the stranger sighed, “this world intends to kill us.”
“It is how things are,” Aizdha said mournfully. “How they’ve always been. This world is a cycle of death and dissolution, and the emergence of new life.”
“Perhaps for those creatures it considers its own,” the stranger said. “But we are not of this world. From the moment our ancestors came through the Door of Hasra, we have had to contend with the land. It has never accepted us.”
Chapter One: Everyone Else’s Guard
“I’m feeling good, I’m feeling good, I’m feeling good,” Andraescav said. I didn’t ask him why. I knew why. He told me anyway. “We get to see the boss today,” he said.
He was puffed up, pushing his substantial chest forward. His neck was tight with tendons. His mustaches quivered with aggressive delight. None of it was really aimed at me. Vaenahma, who was seated on the windowsill, was the intended audience for his preening.
Vaenahma rose to the bait. “The boss,” they snorted. “The king is not ‘the boss.’ Haendil is ‘the boss,’ if anyone is.”
“Not a boss,” I said mildly. “Just your captain.”
Andraescav dismissed me with a glance. He was handsome. He was muscular. He was even mildly intelligent. But he had decided, in some tragic moment of his youth, that he was not worthy of his own admiration. So he had looked around for someone who was also handsome, muscular, and mildly intelligent, and he had settled on the king. Not that Poritifahr the Fourth ever paid any attention to him, or to any member of our garrison. We are the Garrison of the Courtly Palaces, more commonly known as Everyone Else’s Guard. Since the day he joined us, poor Andraescav has wanted to leave us. If he were to become a member of the King’s Guard, he tells himself, he and Poritifahr would be the closest of friends. Well, not friends, maybe, since friendship can’t survive such naked admiration. But close, in the way that a dog and its master are close.
I’m an old man. Maybe I was like Andraescav when I was young. I think I remember believing that I could be a hero, if only someone would only notice me. I didn’t mean the common people. Their notice was beneath my contempt. I had accepted all of the notions of hierarchy and status that make a kingdom a kingdom. I wanted the king to notice me, or his mother, or one of his brothers.
KPB Stevens 