I like long stories and I have a passion to tell you this one. I have a lot of different dreams, so I wrote this story to appeal to a variety of interests. If you love adventure, I have large battles, small fights, assassinations, and exploration. If you love anime and games, I think you will enjoy this story. If you like strategy and tactics, if you wonder about where the heroes suddenly find all of their supplies and friends just in time, if you wonder how long it actually takes to build and army to save the world, this story might be for you. I will bludgeon you with the language barrier. I will clash your culture with that of a polite goblin. Give me time and I will show you the joy of a fulfilled slow-burn romance, a risky plan for a battle, two sisters that turn the tide of a war, how bored dragons attempt to entertain themselves, and a lich with arthritis.
This Path and the Way Ahead
The Paetan Chronicle is a series of series. The first series is the War of the Mountains and contains four books:
Book 1: The Witches of Serna
Book 2: Unseen Wrath
Book 3: Winter Fever (planned publication Winter 2026/2027)
Book 4: The All-Consuming Flame (planned publication 2028)
There will be more to come. In addition to working on the rest of the War of the Mountains Series, I am also working on the next series, The Ninth Moment. I am not sure if ‘The Ninth Moment’ is the title of the series or one of the books within it (or both). In all, I think it will take between nine and sixteen books to tell this story, with possible supplementary and side stories that I will publish through the Goblin Bride Press. This will be a journey for me and I hope that you will join me.
A Long Journey
I am a gamer and a nerd. I am a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army. I really liked anime in 2002 when I would watch Cowboy Bebop at 2a.m. while doing my thermodynamics homework, but I really fell in love with it in 2005. I live in the Midwest U.S.
I learned to write from two main influences: being a game master and creating my own campaigns and settings, and from many of the things that I had to do in various duty assignments in the Army.
Fiction influences from my youth to current times are Lloyd Alexander’s Taran the Wanderer series, Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni series, David Eddings’ Elenium and Tamuli, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings (of course), Timothy Zahn’s stories from the Starwars universe, the Starwars movies, G.I. Joe, both the comics, the cartoons, and the 1986 movie, Starcom and Exo-Squad (these last two are fairly obscure cartoons), and plenty of anime.
Non-fiction influences are Guns, Germs, and Steel by Dr. Jared Diamond (the single biggest influence on my view of world-building), On War by Karl von Clausewitz, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard B. Fall, The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945 by Robert Citino, various Army publications and my experiences over those twenty years including deployments to Iraq and Kuwait, living overseas and at various posts around the U.S., many things that I learned while studying international relations, and my short time as a Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) fighter.
In gaming, specifically, the games I would say had an influence on what I am trying to bring to you are: <tabletop> Burning Wheel (this game changed gaming for me), Chronicles of Darkness/World of Darkness, Changeling, Pathfinder (1st Edition), D&D (2nd and 3rd editions), StarWars (West End Games version); <PC Gaming> Mount & Blade I & II, The Sims 4, and Genshin Impact (yes, really), among others.
I should also mention that in this year of 2024, there is such a wealth of information and so many very helpful content producers that made research for all of this much easier than anyone trying to write a book twenty or more years ago. I should like to point out Modern History TV, Shadiversity, Robinswords, Adorea Olomouc, and many others on youtube for their thorough and excellent content. Other resources such as Wikipedia, random hobby websites about making replicas of historical mongolian bows, and various medieval-style clothiers and their online marketplaces have been indispensable.