Welcome To The Rebellion: How Reading One “Bestseller” Started A Gritty 9-Book Epic Fantasy Saga

Being outside of the reading loop for a decade (or two…) has been a meandering, single-engine, open-air cockpit flight of blissful ignorance.  Coming back down to earth has been an experience, and it was gifted to me by my sister on Christmas morning, 2024.  My landing back into reading wasn’t akin to a plane with shocks attempting to touchdown on a poorly maintained tarmac, but rather, through an overgrown jungle.  The titillating slaps of poorly exercised trope branches, trunks of wing-snapping backstabs from an author not trusting their readers, and the crescendo of entire flocks of birds squawking for more indigestible plot fodder seeds, has resulted not in my eventual landing of a plane, but in my full-body jettison from it, a multi-roll tumble across today’s gravelly reality, and a face-down slide to an eventual stop, with the local fauna’s refuse and droppings thoroughly implanted into my skin.  It was then, in that humbling, prostrated position of utter defeat and indignation beneath a thundering storm of today’s average readers, that my spark got ignited.  I had a reason to become an author.

While I have always enjoyed writing, ever since childhood, it was never something I imagined attempting to do professionally.  After expressing my disappointment in the book (with loving self-restraint), my sister wound up saying a single, simple sentence that brought me to this moment, writing this blog.  “If you think you can do better, then go do it.”

I have yet to forgive her for this profound source of motivation.

This saga wasn’t a same-day sensation.  At first, it wasn’t even an intent of being a book.  Rather, I had a moment of standing up and dusting myself off, thinking ‘this can’t be right, this has to be an exception,’ and meandering away from the ridiculous challenge to go prove my theory to myself.  It took a few days of Googling and attempting to find ‘a good book’ to lose myself in, for me to finally have my moment, which I will be so bold as to claim was far more spectacular than Charlton Heston finding the Statue of Liberty half-buried in a beach on a planet full of humanoid apes.  I faced the void, and found in it a hearth.

Literary Fast-Food Crisis

Today’s perception of literary content closely parallels most people’s perception of food, at least in the USA.  It’s quick, it’s easy, it wards off the hunger for a little while, and it’s satisfying.  No fast-food chain will plaster the cons onto their menu, and the same goes for the publishing industry.  They won’t tell you that a

book’s content will merely suspend your thoughts rather than challenge your critical thinking skills.  They won’t warn you about unrealistic and unhealthy expectations you may develop towards reality, or how it affects your ability to navigate life and relationships.  The fries are extra salty, upgrade that soda to a frosty for free, and sit down to a zero-nutrition meal that’ll leave you cognitively bloated, emotionally constipated, and your life unimproved.  Ample tinder…

The Rebellion Begins

Conclusion: This is how I started writing The Sourcer Saga.  Bringing it all together has generated a burning motivation in me to do my part in hacking back today’s jungle and creating not just a space for others to spot from above and land safely into, but a literary garden to explore, one I hope will make the bestselling writers from decades ago proud.  I do not seek to fill a trough with cheap seeds or, goodness forbid, Artificially Intelligent ghosts of the greats.  My goal is to capture what I failed to find in today’s marketplace.  I want relatable characters who struggle, not because they’re ridiculous or senseless, but because they are still growing and earning themselves.  I want a plot with flavor and meat, not a cookie-cutter story pressed out into frozen patties that heat up in thirty seconds.  I want a world of fantasy, adventure, and consequences that feels lived in, believable, and worthy of reader investment.  I want to produce something that teenager me would have loved to find on the shelves, so that the teens and young adults of today can have a taste of what I mourned losing.

A year and a half and three manuscripts later, my fire is still burning bright and growing by the day.  The ‘bestseller’ failed to feed me, but its ashes have made for great fertilizer.

What common marketplace practices in the publishing world are getting you fired up?