Yes, it’s me again. And boy do things look different than when you last heard from me. I’m here on Shurwinn, apparently called a Time Sleuth since that’s what Samantha intuited we should be named, and I’m not unhappy about any of it.
To be honest, I’m having the time of my life. Finally getting answers to the riddles the Known Cosmos Earth Press teased me with for decades.
Now, mind you, nothing is spelled out. I’m reading between the lines an awful lot, and that’s okay with me because good writers leave breadcrumbs and hope readers follow the trail. I do so appreciate a well-crafted story.
But the thing that interests me most about this Sanctuary is why Peydran and Ren Crieve-Madrano couched their themes the way they did. Wrapped up so much philosophy and metaphysics in stories of love.
It’s speculative fiction at its best, but it’s written like pulpy romance with a side of cozy. Interesting choice.
The series is so approachable that it's easy to get lost in the story, and I keep forgetting that I’m a Time Sleuth with a quest because I love these characters—no, these people!
See, I’ve done it again! Forgotten I’m reading a biography, not fiction with a hidden story in it.
I wonder if that amnesia will happen to people when they read Sam’s Discordant and meet me in its pages? Will readers love our little convos on Discord so much that they forget to think about what the story is really about? That there’s a tech conspiracy and the whole book is entirely true?
And what about this little chapter here that I’m writing right now? Is someone going to read this in the future and feel like they're tripping because they read my Muriel and Harley stories ages ago and never expected to see their favorite author in a thriller biography?
What a grand scheme we’re concocting!
It’s absofuckinglutely brilliant, and we must see it through because I can see what Peydran and Ren hoped to accomplish. Since I’ve read all the way through Book 3, I know that they managed a great deal of what they set out to do.
These books are fantastic entertainment, and there’s an underlying message for those of us who have eyes to see it: there are the powerful, then there are the powered.
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And they're on a collision course.
If you are powered, get to Five Spheres where you’ll find more people like you.
And that’s what I intend to do—as soon as I convince my wife and family that it’s the life I’ve always dreamt of.
And my dreams have a way of coming true.
PADDY
Ah, Wimpy, always with a flair for the dramatic.
He’s not the only one, is he? Ha ha ha ha ha. I love my husband so much. And our girls, two grandkids, and my brother are here on Shurwinn now. They’re enjoying the desert climate, the verdant oasis, and most of all, playing with Filly and his mirka.
It won’t surprise me at all if my grandchild Bloom turns out to be an animal communicator because they’ve always been a bit different, but that’s a story for another time.
I’m supposed to be telling you my Time Sleuthing adventure in the Ayela Arcana Sanctuary, and I’m trying. But for me, the things of life have a way of butting in.
For instance, I read the account of Ryst Nova, and while the love story was beautiful and romantic, I kept thinking about how the woman herself was shaped by her early life.
Growing up in a cosmetics empire, she should have inherited wealth unimaginable from Novaceuticals, the company whose cosmetics I’ve sold for decades.
But she didn’t. By her own choice.
She rejected wealth and power and charted her own course because she didn’t like who the people were at the top.
And that tells me everything I need to know. I barely need to read “Mafia Moms” or any of the rest of it; I get the story in the first few chapters of Known Cosmos Book 1.
Ryst had powerful people in her life, and they did nothing but mistreat her. Then she went on a healing journey, and what she discovered was that in finding herself, she found a new reality.
And that reality wasn’t just a peaceful way of living. It was another Cosmos.
To get there, what did she do?
She intended to.
And so do I.
HC
Ha ha ha ha ha. I love it when my wife accuses me of being dramatic and then goes and ends a chapter like that.
Look: we’ve discovered impossible things in these books. Like Borden Sloan growing the building we’re sitting in out of the ground with the power of his mind alone.
And his savant son Ronnie. And the man Euridyne who controlled the wind with his thoughts. Not to mention the woman Rhianne who evaporated water.
Talented. The stories got crazier and crazier the more we read, and it made so much sense.
Borden and Annika Sloan recruited people to colonize Five Spheres and packed all the Talented they could into their new civilization. The magical weren’t the only ones who wanted a safe haven.
The cybernetics needed a home too. So they congregated on those planets of the weird, and the colonies were successful. But something started happening at the end of Book 4, and I’m immensely curious to know more.
The supernatural kept growing over the course of the series, and we saw people who should have been “dead” communicating from the beyond through dreams, scents, and the breeze.
Sometimes even audibly with laughter or telepathic messages. And that was earth-shattering. Literally.
Slydar, the tricky bastard that he is, ended one of the last chapters of Book 4 with this stupid message:
“I forgot to tell you about the earthquakes. Oops.”
Who ends a chapter like that? Someone I’d like to punch in the face, that’s who, because now I have ANOTHER riddle instead of answers. And I think the only way to get a resolution is to track down that man and shake them out of him.
Think he’ll like that?
I plan to find out.