It's free starting right now! "Lost Atlantis 4: Prodrome" on Kindle

For the next five days, Lost Atlantis 4: Prodrome is available as a free download on Kindle! Get it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Prodrome-Lost-Atlantis-Book-4-ebook/dp/B0BB8MLLHC 

*Free downloads end on 9/5 at 11:59 p.m.

"Lost Atlantis 4" giveaway for Kindle! This book is short and sweet--only 121 pages. (news, dream)

FREE Kindle giveaway dates: 

9/1/22 at 12:00 a.m. - 9/5/22 at 11:59 p.m.

Link to eBook

I changed the style of the covers after book 3! I don't know that they're better or worse, but they're unified. I hope they reflect the somewhat literary style of the writing.

Hello to anyone still out there,

For the first five days of next month, you can download my latest eBook for free!

I just want to thank you for reading. It's been a while. I've really been questioning whether I want to continue writing here in this format, and I've been experimenting with other creative outlets. You're not missing much during this pause in blogging. The last dream I can remember is a guy sleeping with a daughter and her mother, then sealing them both into a trash can with a live rat. 

It's very hard for me to describe the feelings I've been wrestling with. They've been overwhelming at times to the point that I lose sleep and lose my appetite. My feelings about writing revolve around anxiety, identity, and ego... not knowing how to handle conflict, and not feeling as though I can trust myself to do the right thing when it comes to what I should and should not say. I have a poor understanding of the right firmness which is required to go through life. I don't know how to handle all of these feelings yet.

But I have written Lost Atlantis 4 in the meantime. I am only planning five books at this point, so... one more left before I can die happy! I literally have dreamed that I've died and the only thing I can think of in the afterlife is how I didn't finish this series. Have I already blogged that dream? 

I'm in my bed, and I realize that I've died. The afterlife isn't quite what I expected. It has the old, regular human life in it, but it's somehow outside of it too, and the senses one uses and the beings one interacts with are different. I can go throughout all of the Earth and no living humans can see me. There's a totally different set of other beings like me meandering throughout this alternative layer of reality alongside me, and I can interact with them, and they seem nice enough. They're quiet. But what I can't do is go to heaven--all because of one thing: the regret and other emotions I have over not finishing the Lost Atlantis series. There's nothing else in my life that I regret but that, and that's enough to keep me stuck on planet Earth. I keep ruminating about it. I don't know why it's keeping me on Earth instead of heaven. 

I have other dreams about needing to finish this series all the time. For example, I dreamed the other day that I was clicking through the previews of these books on Amazon, and I thought to myself, "Oh! This was written by a person that hasn't been born yet!" And it felt as though I meant it chronologically rather than spiritually.

I have quite a few other story ideas, but they don't give me persistent dreams and nightmares like the Lost Atlantis series has over the years. I think I can die happy without writing those, thank goodness! (Because it really does take away time from more financially-profitable efforts!)

Anyway, this fourth installment is a really, really short book. It's novella-length. I felt as though the characters were well established, the setting is well-known to us, and the main character has matured, so there is less to say. I'm rereading the 1st book for republication, and the intensity of emotion is shocking, even to me. But I think that the writing style and plot is okay if one can tolerate the powerful emotions. This 4th book is quite different though. It's fast and simple. In this installment, I talk about Sandi as a superhero--what her superpowers are and how she got them. It's also a romance. 

This book has been plotted out in my mind for at least a decade. Everything that came before is in service of this installment of the series. I think it's still basically understandable even if it's the first Lost Atlantis book you've read. So please check it out! It's free to pick up a copy for Kindle on the first five days of September, and it's $2.99 USD as its regular price. It would really mean a lot to me if you were to read it, and hopefully enjoy it! Thank you!

Some of my struggles with writing the last book in the series: Lost Atlantis 5... (rants)

I've really been struggling now that I've finished all the Lost Atlantis books except the last one. The thing that I get out of writing all of these books is some kind of answer about how to heal from developmental trauma. 

When I started on this journey 10 years ago, I thought for certain that I would be completely healed of all my past traumas, and I would have some kind of sage wisdom to pass along about complex PTSD and its symptoms, like emotional disregulation, not being able to trust people, low self-esteem, hopelessness, etc. But now that I am here near the end of this writing journey, I find that I actually can't really comment on what it's like to be really deeply healed at the core. 

This series is a complete fiction, of course. It's about a ninja assassin. And I just have to imagine what a thing would be like, and don't actually have to experience it. But I do feel as though I should have some kind of ability to imagine a time when I have felt the way a plot point would feel, and I just don't think I know what it's like to really, truly be healed from developmental trauma. 

This is a spiritual and psychological crisis for me. I've been buying up books about trauma, conflict management, and anger management, and, unexpectedly, Buddhism. I've been increasing my therapy sessions. And as I go over these materials I really hope that I find some insights that I can offer in the conclusion of the series. 

If I don't find a way to describe what healing from c-PTSD is like, and how to do it, I think there will have been no purpose in my writing any of the series. I mean, I created a character that was so hurt, and broken, and dysfunctional, and hard to tolerate, and now, I've brought her to a place where she's able to integrate, socially, very well, and form relationships, and self soothe. That's good, but it's kind of superficial. Where is that really deep change of the heart and mind that I was looking for? I just don't see how that's going to play out right now. As extreme as I went with just horribleness in the first book, I want to go that extreme with the other side of human nature with this character: what goodness, and peace, and rationality, and love look like. How am I going to do that? I don't fully understand right now.

I guess my greatest fear surrounding all of this is that I will read and watch and listen to a bunch of stuff and come up with something kind of cheesy, but okay to finish off the series, but that I won't really dig up something that gives me a sense of meaning about suffering through childhood trauma, or give a sense of appreciation for what post-traumatic growth is. Will I get those answers by the end of this series? I'm really not sure right now.