Dramatically Happy

I am a storyteller as a writer of fiction. As such, I am mindful that it is easier to make a story dramatic by making it tragic. Simply craft a character according to what is obviously sympathetic and then kill him or his dearest loved one.

I do better than what is easy.

My most dramatic work is the Sorcerer series of my White Empires universe. Its most endearing character is its villain, a genocidal war criminal. His specialty is mass-murdering children. He recruits his teenage daughter to assist him. The reader wants him to be defeated... yet is likely to weep when he is. His archenemy, the sympathetic mother of his daughter prevails, so the story is not a tragedy.

A story that makes you weep by its happy ending is greater than any tragedy. Unlike a sad ending, it inspires you. It gives you hope rather than makes you cynical.

I do write tragedies. It is not to easily evoke strong emotions. It is to convey something meaningful. The doom of the protagonist is spiritual before physical, thus justified.

We yearn for goodness in a world of evil. You are the evil... though you are not alone. Despite your desperate wickedness, you intuitively understand that there is no satisfaction without justice. There is only gratification at best... and you become numb and restless whether gratified or not.

Even fiction ultimately fails to satisfy unless justice prevails, for better or worse. A tragedy is ultimately pathetic even as make-believe unless its victim deserves his grim fate. The innocent victims must be avenged... or the story is lacking.

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A Weird World to Read, Watch or Play

I write fiction... as novels or short stories. I create universes by doing so. Each universe is with a particular genre in mind, though stories can be of any genre so long as they are consistent with established lore.

I write the prose with the idea that it can be converted into any other medium of fiction. The books lend themselves to being turned into comic books, shows, movies, tabletop role-playing games or video games.

My Weird World universe is already four books, as two novels and two collections of short stories. The genre is dark fantasy as survival horror. Children are usually the heroes. They are often characters of classical literature re-imagined into new characters with the surnames of the original authors.

The strangeness of Weird World would make it visually amazing as comic books. The stories emphasize dialog, which would make a show dramatic. The action lends itself to movies.

The protagonists usually seem like normal children... but prove superhuman. They have special skills and powers, which are not always obvious at first.

Weird World is the lore of many heroes. They travel to various and exotic locales while adventuring. They find various items and treasures. They encounter many creatures, some of them helpful but others hostile. The universe is ideal for role-playing games.

Heroes are most interesting as the slayers of monsters and baddies. Weird World has many monsters and baddies. The lore itself provides plenty of enemies for players to fight.

Everything about Weird World is what it is because of its rogue's gallery. The masterminds challenge the heroes to think. The monsters challenge the heroes to be brave. The foot soldiers of villainy set a standard by which the heroes can be objectively measured. The variety of baddies provides a challenge for every aspect of human nature. The universe is immersive accordingly. Its heroes are endearing accordingly... even if player characters in a story that is actually a game.

I do hope Weird World becomes more than prose. I want to see it in action. I am eager to play.

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Two Novels Inspired by Two Movies

Since childhood, I have been fascinated by dreamlike survival horror stories. The interest was inspired by my interpretation of the movies Alice in Wonderland (1951) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

I wrote novels that are mature expressions of my childhood fancy. I finished The Goddess of Self in 2017 and The Wayward School for Girls in 2024. They are very similar... yet very different.

The Goddess of Self is about a girl from our world who travels back and forth between reality and an alternate reality. What is normal to us is normal to her. What is weird to us is weird to her. She is our representative. The novel is very much like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz in this regard.

The Wayward School for Girls is about girls native to an alternate reality. What is weird to us is normal to them. They are as strange as anything else in the story.

The protagonists of The Wayward School for Girls are “Alice” of Alice in Wonderland and “Dorothy” of The Wizard of Oz... but as girls in the modern day. They have special powers based on their strange abilities in their original fiction.

The Goddess of Self is my version of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. It is not fan-fiction, however. It is original.

Though the protagonists of The Wayward School for Girls were inspired by those of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, the story is not. It is my actual dreams, my nightmares specifically, but turned into fiction with “Alice” and “Dorothy” instead of myself as the main characters.

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