I love to read fantasy novels.  Today’s author shares how Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule (a book that’s been in my TBR longer than I’d like to admit) changed his outlook on life.  Welcome, Michael!

I love Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. When you boil it down, it was the first fantasy novel that had a philosophical foundation. The Rule itself (People are stupid) really spoke to me because it stated that the concepts of good and bad are basically an illusion of perspective. Everyone is the hero of their own story; there is no bad guy. I started defining villains by their actions. You really expect me to believe that Emperor Palpatine, the great savior of the galaxy, had to resort to murder to get things done? He couldn’t think of any other solution? He’s not evil because he destroyed democracy. He’s evil because he relied on the easiest things a person could do to get it done. That book shaped my outlook on life.

My latest work is a bit of a tangle to describe. Chased By Flame and War were originally two acts in a much bigger book called Smoke & Mirrors. My publisher Reagan Rothe suggested to break the book down into smaller chunks and essentially make each individual act into its very own book. Hence Chased By Flame and Chased By War. There are four other acts left in the original book, and the plan is to treat each act as its own individual book (though I have been toying with the idea to fuse Flame and War together).

Chased By War starts off where its predecessor (Chased By Flame) left off: catapulting protagonist Mykel LeKym into the past. He really comes into his own here. He’s relied on others for most of his life, and his inexperience really shows, especially in the way he fights battles. In the first book he has panic attacks during fighting scenes, and I have him recite historical facts to calm himself down. There’s less and less of that here. He still has no idea what he’s doing, but he slowly learns how to handle himself.

Author Bio

I have cerebral palsy, a birth defect that means I have very little function in my left arm. I consider myself lucky because a lot of cerebral palsy cases have much more severe symptoms. I will always need help cutting my food, but it gives me a unique perspective that a lot of others don’t have. Mykel LeKym is the embodiment that someone can be a cripple and still be a hero.

Wrote the Wolff’s Den entertainment column in both my high school newspaper and for the Meriden Record-Journal newspaper chain.

Wrote and published a dozen articles for Scifibloggers.com, a science fiction and fantasy blog. Articles were educational; describing new television shows, a codex of sci-fi/fantasy slang, and rare video games.

Wrote Smoke & Mirrors, a six-act fantasy in the vein of Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time series. Two of the Acts in Smoke & Mirrors have been published as separate novels (Chased By Flame and Chased By War).

Book blog address: https://sefiroseishi.wordpress.com.