Coming: Verse 2 Goes to Print

Hi everyone!

So stealthily, the year has reached its midway point. 

I believe it's high time I talked a bit about what's next up on the menu.

The next project I have already under construction is continuation to earlier this year, a physical edition of the second part of A Hero Past the 25th, the web novel series that I imagine has brought most of you here in the first place.

The first book didn't exactly become a bestseller, but I'd like to, at the very least, get the first three parts of the series printed. Let's call it The Imperial Trilogy, since the stories all revolve around the threat posed by Tratovia, more or less, and form their own arc separate from the rest of the saga.

A Hero Past the 25th: Paradise After goes to sale in late summer, this year. I'm unable to give any specific dates at the moment, so that I wouldn't once again contradict myself later. I've had some health issues since spring, which has made my work schedule quite sporadic, but I have faith it won't take forever. I learned a lot since part 1, so there's a lot less in the prose itself for me to fix.

Collectors will again be able to choose between the “Hard Mode”, laminate hardcover, and the more economic paperback edition, with graphics and layout by my own hand.

As last time, the web novel is fully re-imagined and edited from the ground up to give you the most dynamic, most entertaining, most thrilling version of the story.

I believe you all know the legend. 

Continuing directly from where Royal Banquet left off, the second episode is where A Hero Past the 25th comes into its own, as a commenter once beautifully described it.

From a very young age, I’ve had these recurring dreams of being chased by terrible monsters that disguise themselves as normal people or animals to trick their unsuspecting victims. Too deadly to be fought, all you can do is run and hide from them. In the dreams, I’m the only one able to tell who is a monster and try—often in vain—to warn other people about them.

After another one such nightmare in 2017, I had something of an epiphany. If I couldn’t be rid of the bad dreams, then I’d at least make productive use of them as material for my stories.

That was how the idea behind Verse 2 came to be, and my work on this story also set the course for the series as a whole, as we have later seen.

We’re drawing from nightmares, so it was clear from the start that it wasn’t going to be a pleasant story. I worried many, many times that I’d gone too far and would only weird out people instead of entertaining them. But in the end, rather than producing one more aimless wish-fulfilment fantasy, which we already have to a gross excess, I wanted to write a story that is remembered. A story that ultimately makes its reader an experience richer and stronger for having gone through it.

In Verse 2, our heroes make their first contact with the armed forces of the Empire of Tratovia, spoken in rumors in the previous book. But instead of a direct enemy, the Empire ends up becoming our accidental companion on the quest full of even greater perils.

As an avid enjoyer of anime and manga, I have a particular pet peeve in regards to this kind of stories. And it’s how female military officers are always portrayed basically as no more than “high school girls in uniforms”. 

Maybe tough at first, but with no real practical knowledge or experience to show, they melt like butter when meeting the manly 15-year-old protagonist. The characters’ romantic affection for the hero often becomes their defining character trait instead of their professional calling. And I’m be immensely disappointed to see that every time, because that's just not my thing at all. I think competence is a lot sexier!

I have some personal experience with military, I’ve met and known actual commanding officers who direct companies and divisions in the field of battle, and I’ve seen from up close how they behave, how the job shapes their person, and the heavy responsibility they must shoulder every day.

There’s the pressure of not only successfully meeting given objectives, but also that of maintaining the necessary personal credibility in front of the troops. A commander is essentially squeezed on both sides, between friend and foe. Can there even be greater mental load on a person? And that burden is even greater when the person is a woman expected to lead men and viewed as being in an inferior position from the beginning. There’s twice the psychological hurdle to cross. Whoever pulls that off cannot be a hyper-emotional teenager, who breaks into tears upon a few gentle words from the isekai'd schoolboy.

So one of my goals for Verse 2 was to show the audience a competent female commander. That goal became personified in the character of Miragrave Marafel. More than a passing antagonistic force, she’s the Captain Ahab of our story, obsessed with hunting the “whale” at the cost of all else, while aware that it’s either one or the other. She became a character of distinct strengths and flaws, which made her very interesting to write.

One of the most prominent changes to the web novel version is, as you can see, the title of the book. Why is that? 

Well, as I trust you all know, the original title, Paradise Lost, referenced John Milton’s (1608-1674) epic poem by the same name.

The original epic is a romanticised retelling of how Satan tempts Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, leading to their bitter banishment from the garden of Eden by God. In the same vein, the quest to break a taboo with terrible consequences forms the core of Verse 2.

Interestingly, the Bible tells us there were two trees in paradise. The tree of knowledge, as well as the tree of life. Had man eaten from the tree of life as well, he would’ve acquired immortality on top of knowledge and become “like God”, which was the primary cause to his banishment.

In Verse 2, it’s that tree of life our characters pursue—or the rumor of such—and the rest is history.

Now, I obviously couldn’t publish a book by that title in a massive store chain that also lists Milton’s original work.

Titles may not be copyrighted, but ending up in the same search results could get mighty awkward, so I adjusted it somewhat. What we’re diving into in the forest of Felorn is the backyard of one paradise long, long after the downfall.

Incidentally, “Paradise Lost” was also the title director Ridley Scott originally wanted to give his horror movie Alien: Covenant. An utterly disappointing mess of a movie. I secretly wanted to one-up Scott and the writer John Logan by composing an alien-esque horror story—but better.

I personally believe the ideal horror movie isn’t simply a jumpscare marathon, or a barrage of guts and repulsive things, but is a work of another genre first, such as adventure or action or drama, and the horror is simply an element that lurks in the background, only to emerge in set key moments.

Everyone’s idea of what counts as “horror” differs, naturally. For example, I wouldn’t call any of Lovecraft’s stories particularly “scary”, many of them are rather funny, but he is considered a master of horror all the same and nobody would think to dispute that. You are entirely free to make up and retain your own opinion on this!

Long story short, I hope knowing a bit more about the background of this book will give you an additional perspective into it and perhaps enhances your enjoyment of it.

Through the print release of Paradise After, the story from five years ago is brought to an unprecedented level of detail and refinement that I hope even the long-term fans of the web novel can find fresh and enjoyable.

That's all for now. Thank you for reading! 

More news later!

Enjoy the summer and don't eat too much ice cream!