Today’s thought — “What if everything that shaped your world was a lie?” — is one of those questions that led to The Dragon Kings of Broken Light taking longer to write than the others.
There’s no easy answer.
The story, the characters, and the readers deserve more than simple fluff.
I wonder if other authors hit the same wall? The writing of this story made me rethink my own timeline. How many times in my life did I stand up for a belief, debate its authenticity, sometimes get downright angry that my perspective wasn’t shared — only to realize later, sometimes years, that I was missing a huge piece of the puzzle?
Sometimes these situations were personal, relationships where I couldn’t grasp another’s viewpoint, but others were world-changing. Religion, politics, medicine — constructs that are easy to accept at first glance because a respected person of authority delivered the message.
To be clear, I’m not calling anyone out as a liar or purposefully misleading, I think those individuals were stating their own personal truth at the time. In Dragon Kings, everything shifted. What if some of the most important truths of a lifetime were carefully crafted to make you believe — and over generations, those stories just got repeated. What would it take for all those stories to be wiped away and the truth revealed?
As a child, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, my favorite question was – “Why?” I was so insistent that an encyclopedia set called “Tell Me Why?” showed up on my bedroom shelves. When that question left my lips, I got a finger point. Which meant go to your room and find the answer in your books. I never stopped asking why, but two readers pointed something out to me yesterday. I’ve been sitting with their comments: Dragon Kings is written in simple language, but the ideas underneath aren’t simple at all. They’re right — it’s not simple fluff — and it comes back to a recent post I made with Nanobyrd Fragoli. The burning question of why, and learning to ask the right questions. Perhaps it is even more than that. Perhaps in stories and in life it requires a curiosity — the gumption — to dig deeper than the top layer.
If you’re like me, with every question, you begin to realize that eating only the frosting will make you sick.
In the Dragon Kings of Broken Light, this conundrum of thoughts plays out in multiple characters — everyone seeing things from one point of view. And the collision of their personal truths was an interesting experience for me as a writer. You can pick up a copy here, or read free on Kindle Unlimited.
The Dragon Kings of Broken Light: