[I wrote this as a backer update for my Inkshares campaign of Asteroid Made of Dragons — and I kind of liked it. I’m always trying to express my goals in some fashion or another, and I liked the word-shapes I came up with this time, so here you go.]

Good afternoon you feckless rabble, you hard-hearted convoy of bright-eyed adventurers.

We’ve picked up quite a few new followers – shamans, bladewalkers, puppeteers, guys named Chuck. My army grows with potency and I sip from a goblet of purest obsidian in vile pleasure.

Because this is the secret – this is the thing that books do, the invisible machinery of Purpose. It brings human minds together – across space and time and race and rhyme. It brings them together like little fireflies – little droplets of human energy floating in the dark. The more we gather the brighter that light becomes – doubling and redoubling like a dynamo, like thunder rumbling its way across the heavens.

The big Books? The ones out there with thousands or millions of readers – they burn like tiny suns, whole skies full of fire. Flame that sings across memory and dreams, powering the machines, turning the drill.

The drill? What drill? The drill that turns, breaking down the wall between our old gray world and the brighter worlds on the Other Side.

That’s my job, every author’s job, really. To walk along the edge of this world, tapping at the wall. And when you find a crack – when you smell something sweet or dark or evil or bright – some color on the other side you put your hand on it. You put your hand on it and you start to holler. Because you don’t want to lose it! Anything but lose the scent, the tiny little weak place in the dimensional barrier. And then you write – you write what’s on the other side, and if you’re very very lucky – readers come. With the real power, the real human energy — and if you get enough of them, you can break through.

We can break through. One day… one day. The Other worlds are out there and I can see mine — one day we’ll break on through and slip away.

Maybe this is a weird goal to post here? Chuck looks like he’s having second thoughts.

So thank you – is what I’m kind of saying – thank you for this small bonfire that we’ve built. May it guide others to our banner.

Have a great El Seis de Mayo! If you were unaware, it is officially the Greatest Day of the Year.

Sic Semper Tyrannosaur,

Derek