The Coming of a Strange Beast
The oncoming release of a new body of work is a surreal vine creeping up the trunk of the literary landscape. An author hopes their fledgeling leaves reach the sunshine beyond the canopy, to burst in harmonious accord with the oaken greats scattered about. Thin as our vines may be, we hope for some wintering magic to solidify our foundations, and root us enough to grow tall.
The Judge of Mystics Saga has been a long and metamorphosing haul since its inception in flash fiction back in the MacroMicroCosm days. Before 2012, where I wrote a flash piece about a magic book calling a cleaning lady by name for rescue from the mildew infested basement of a damp Vancouver special owned by an old sorcerer. A decrepit elderly man asleep in the easy chair upstairs. ‘Rust’ led to the world exploding.
Would I write a book about Stana discovering how to use the magic she’d been gifted by an innocently hopeful Book of Knowledge? I tried at first, to write Stana’s story.
It wasn’t in me, cut out like a paper bag damp from the rain.
What whispered to my exhausted mind was not to write some rebellious anima, but animus. As Carl Jung theorized, an inner masculine portion of the female personality. Where ‘anima’ is often defined as the word for ‘soul’, and ‘animus’ as spirit, the idea of this masculine force became both an investigation into my own gender struggles and an ideation of the father I knew by negative reputation and absence. So I dove into the oceanic salt waters of Caleb Mauthisen, a deity born of a milkmaid and laid on the Altar of the Axis Mundi as an interdimensional peace child.
Adulthood fit atop his shoulders with the weight of the Mystic Realms, his one task to keep peace between the Hellenes, Kehmeti, Immortals, O-Kami, Aesir, Vanir, Theosians, Fae and other Realms spanning what we know as a reverentially mythpunk take on world mythologies fictionalized in the work. The means for this Council-minted Judge were both guiding glove and firearm. Keep the peace, with a bullet or five if he must.
Keep the Human world of Midgard from a second bought of millennia long collateral damage from warring mystic folk & gods.
A tired, but diligent defender, we meet Caleb in Char & Ash surging through the Realms to keep peace or track down the ones who would spoil it. Love sets a timid smile on his face, his polyanitsa lover Tuija a warrior in her own right, older and more battle tested than his 163 years. All is not idyl, but Caleb carries on.
We see self-exiled Olympian Ares, who bundled up his consort Aphrodite and their family, and ran from Olympus to make Midgard their home. Wisened with years and time in Asgard as the adopted Tyr, he protects the humans of Midgard, by continuing his retirement from acts of war. With Aphrodite as his polyamorous spouse, and a resurrected Leonidas I of Sparta to bond with, there’s always the kids to look after.
And we see Stana, the originatrix of what became the Judge of Mystics Saga, after copious conversations & cups of tea with my editor Tegan, a petulant and austere force for her own ideals. Deep and mighty and swathed in a hatred for the sacred and obscene.
All this wrapped in the first novel of a series I attempted to start years prior and learned the error of my novel-naive ways. Better acquainted with the term ‘novelist’ after NEON Lieben’s release in 2021, it’s time now to slough off the rust and the dust, and introduce everyone properly to Caleb Mauthisen, the Judge of Mystics…
This July 31st.
