A Spirit of Cooperation Works Best

Attention, All Subscribers!

     Greetings and salutations, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to The Storyteller’s Corner. Today, I write you all not to share another of the odd fantastical or horrific tales that come flitting through my mind, but to make an announcement of intent. Beginning shortly, this space will not be where I primarily focus my storytelling efforts in terms of new and forthcoming material. Allow me to clarify, please. You see, the weekly presentation/posting I’ve been participating in for Warrior Wednesdays, dedicated to the sharing of my tale, “A Hunter and His Prey”, is a simple enough thing for me to do most weeks because the book has been commercially published and available for years, since 2009. It’s an older book, one I completed a long time ago now (at least, it feels like a long time ago), and because I’m less concerned about making sales anymore off of that work than I am hopeful that I can share the weird wonder of the realms of Tamalaria’s 5^th Age with potential readers, I’ve been happily posting it up, chapter-by-chapter, for your consideration and entertainment.

     Likewise, I have a number of Amelia City Stories here on my ‘Stack, divided off into their own Section of creepy tales of terror surrounding that particularly unpleasant fictional region. Those stories that are already up will, by and large, remain right where they are.

     However, some things are changing on my end. You see, some of you may not quite recall what drew my little ‘Stack to your attention in the first place, but some of you will. It was almost a year ago, thanks to the pompous Atlantic news site and their cat’s paw, Johnathan Katz, that some of my readers caught sight of my work in the first place. You may wonder, ‘What has a genre fiction wonk got to do with a journalistic outlet and one of its self-important contributors?’ Well, they, along with several other troublemakers and shit-stirrers, tried to start their own little digital fire in the arena of Substack with a movement dubbed ‘Substackers Against Nazis’, or SAN for short.

     Without revisiting and re-litigating what that whole effort involved, I’ll briefly summarize: it was an attempt at gaining censorship control over contrarian and/or dissident voices against left-leaning progressive perspectives, many of which have already done a fine job of poisoning and dominating every other platform for expression on the Internet, and I, along with many others, called horseshite on what they were trying to do. The Post I ended up writing in opposition to SAN and their contributors’ tactics garnered me an unexpectedly large number of eyes, comments, interactions, and kudos. Among those giving me kudos was a fellow who goes by the name Samara.

     Samara runs a couple of different ‘Stacks of his own here, one dubbed LM, short for Liberty Magazine

(www.libertymagazine.substack.com ) , and another dedicated to Montag Publishing, his own budding independent publishing imprint (www.montagpublishinghouse.substack.com ). Since his first couple of comments on my essay regarding the whole SAN debacle, we’ve had some good conversations both on and off-platform regarding the state of socio-politics in the United States/Western world in general, and shifted to discussing matters of faith, and the publishing/fiction writing scene broadly. While we don’t perfectly align on all of these matters, we share a goodly amount of common ground and perspectives, and are able to enjoy good dialogue, even where we disagree.

     Recently, through Liberty Magazine, Samara has started a new effort at putting out a digital-first series within Liberty’s pages and platform, an effort dubbed “The New Spirit of ‘76”, a series of essays, podcasts, videos, and stories that all share a common bond around the concept of revitalizing a Revolutionary spirit in America, with a core element of touching upon our shared cultural history in the nation as Judeo-Christian adherents. When he started putting together this effort, among the various contributors he reached out to, Samara included myself as a point of contact, inquiring if I had any interest in adding my own humble efforts to the concept as a whole. I replied that yes, I’d be interested in working with him on it, as it would be a new direction in which to focus some of my genre fiction efforts. I enjoy getting outside of my usual comfort areas of writing tales in just the Tamalarian Tales and Amelia City Stories spaces, and this seemed to me like an ideal opportunity to work with someone with whom I shared not only an appreciation for fiction, but also a generally Christian-leaning worldview.

     I don’t often talk about my faith, or how it directs me in my day-to-day life. There are reasons for this; primarily, I wouldn’t count myself as a ‘good example’ of Christian living, as it were. I am a deeply flawed fellow, and my familiarity with both scripture and historical traditions born out of Christian methodologies is spotty, at best. Where I have my greatest knowledge tends to be where Judeo-Christian lore intersects with or influences other mythologies and legendarium throughout the genre fiction world, because something kicks off in my skull when these interactions are shown to me as a member of an audience for any particular media product (be it book, show, film or video game), and I end up sperging out, deep diving into every possible facet that gets presented in the product in question.

     Outside of faith in Christ and a more socio-politically reserved/conservative worldview, Samara and I share one other thing in common: a deep and abiding desire to see expression freed up, rather than denigrated and cut down in the name of control and censorship. It is with this in mind that, despite his knowing full well that my genre fiction works can sometimes brush up against my own faith and history in ways that might make him uncomfortable, he has extended me an offer which, I now inform you good folks, I have accepted.

     Moving forward, I will be working with Liberty Magazine and Montag Publishing as outlets for my writing efforts. Don’t get me wrong, my own personal ‘Stack will still be here, and I will continue to participate in Warrior Wednesdays with some of my older Tamalarian Tales material. Likewise, some of my horror material will also remain here primarily. However, my Storyteller’s Perspective Section will soon be getting shifted over to Liberty Magazine, and I will be continuing to create genre tales for the “New Spirit of ‘76” run there for the foreseeable future run of that campaign. When it concludes, I will continue to produce tales of fiction for Liberty, and will be bringing some future novels and prior works that have contractually been returned to my sole ownership (previous publishers having closed shop) over to Montag Publishing as their new home.

     In light of this, I should like to ask my regular readers and subscribers a great boon, one that might seem self-sabotaging or peculiar; I would ask you to click on those earlier links to Liberty Magazine and Montag Publishing, and becoming subscribers there. If you don’t want to add more glut to an already-full list of publications that you’re currently struggling to maintain or keep up with, I understand. However, if you only want to chose one or the other, I would ask you consider selecting Liberty Magazine over my personal ‘Stack.

     You see, the Art of narrative deserves your devotion, and there is much more over at Liberty and will be at Montag that I believe will benefit you as readers and thinkers, ladies and gentlemen. Certainly, those places will be able to offer you more than I can on my own. I’m just one storyteller, and both the Art of narrative and the Spirit of ’76, which is itself the spirit of freedom, and of faith (however you personally chose to define that faith for yourself) and Western culture, deserve your participation and support more than just one guy.

     If you’re worried at all that this will hurt my numbers as an indie small-timer, just remember this as well, folks; whenever something is to be gained, some good to be done, the chances are that someone has to take a hit in return. It may as well be me. After all, I’ll be fine, you see. I have my Lord, I have my wife and kids and their love, a regular job, and I’m in decent condition, all things considered. I can stand to take a hit to my ‘brand’ in the name of something bigger than myself.

     Cheers!