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Lost Atlants 5: Saga is FREE to download, from midnight 9/15/23 until midnight 9/19/23 (Pacific Standard Time): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CGKSK4B3
This is the end of the Lost Atlantis series.
I do recommend reading the prior books in the series before reading this one since this last one references a lot of things from the earlier books, but the choice is yours! You can always download a copy now and read it later.
***
I've sacrificed a lot for this series. Not only have I spent about 11 years writing it--it's also one of those artistic choices I've made that shocks people. A lot of people in my life dislike this series, which is fine. People have the right to dislike whatever they dislike. But I have the right to make my art anyway. The system has its balance.
Still, it would feel nice if everything I wanted to make was art that people always like. But that's just not the kind of artist most artists are, especially if they're fine artists and not commercial artists.
I'm sometimes surprised when I hear about an artist (audio, visual, written, etc.) getting enraged about jokes or criticisms made at the expense of their art, because I wonder how they could have made it this far without having the stuffing beaten out of them by audiences and gatekeepers already. I do understand those upset feelings, but I'd think you'd just get tired of feeling them and numb them out eventually.
I think this upset reaction comes from the fear (or the factual understanding) that all the love you've put into the world through this passion project of yours has been misunderstood or mishandled. In darker times, I have been afraid that I live in a world without love. But as I've kept going down my Buddhism journey, I've noticed that at the very least, every morning, there are thousands--maybe millions of people that are praying for my (and your) happiness and wellness. For a week or two, I've been meditating daily to this one video, and it is a wonderful reminder about the love inside of me, and inside of the world, if I remember to look for it:
I'd say that if you're an artist of some sort, just try to enjoy the fact that your self-expression is at the center of someone's attention, when they could be doing a million other things. I try to have a sense of gratitude for that whenever someone reads what I write, regardless of what they think of it.
With Lost Atlantis, I wrote whatever I felt like writing for eleven years, and it felt wonderful. I experimented with different techniques for writing, played with different styles, made different choices, read different books about writing, learned weird things for the sake of researching these books, and I did almost all of it with a coffee beside me at some cozy cafe--just living in my imagination, going on this little adventure. So in this sense, it's been extremely personally-fulfilling. I'm really not at all sure that anyone else would enjoy it though.
As I said, jokingly, to a friend: I've finished Lost Atlantis. I can die now. I was scared that I would die before finishing it, but now it's complete. And that's satisfying.
