The bad news is after I produce the third D Generation I’m going to take a (short) break from the series. Originally, I wrote the first book with a complete lack of censorship in mind—both in language and in subject. I was also inclined to do very little research for it which made it extremely fun and easy to write. However, old tendencies (such as my own brand of “perfectionism”) crept in and I’ve found myself doing a ridiculous amount of research to produce the third.
The effect of this research has led to six things: 1) Anxiety for the future; 2) Excitement for the future; 3) An appreciation for people who can find solace and hope in their religion; 4) An understanding that 99% of religion is myths that have arisen out of the miscommunication of primitive science, a few inspired spiritual leaders, and the need of powerful entities to either maintain or gain control; 5) A solid perspective of humans not as the height of the evolutionary ladder, but somewhere around the middle; 6) A need to see in my lifetime an honest factual accounting of world history based on ALL the available data, with a few speculations and no assumptions like “pyramids are tombs” and other unlikely ideas.
So, what’s the big deal right? What does learning everything is false that you’ve always believed is true have to do with taking a break from the D Generation series? If you’ve read the books you know that concept fits right in with them. So what the problem?
Nothing, really, I love that shit. In fact, I intend to read and study a lot more of it to get a better understanding of what the truth is. We are bombarded everyday with noise that supports the illusion within our reality—the present dominate cultural perspective. However, as information technology continues to permeate our lives, so does the potential for people to have access to information outside the “box.” Based on social trends, it appears that people are becoming less religious, which on one level I see as a good thing; let’s look at facts not superstition. On another level, as a person whose spirituality is very important to him, science’s inability to qualify the spiritual experience fully (yes, they’ve begun to perceive its surface qualities, but no more) creates the danger of misleading people in thinking that a spiritual realm does not exist. This is already evident in many scientists’ complete dismissal of psychic phenomenon, and intention based healing arts. In the 1990s when I was looking for scientific evidence on these subjects the information was scarce, but already in the 2010s the data has become overwhelming—so to those scientists who are still skeptical, I say, do better research. You’re a scientist goddamn it; don’t reach a conclusion until the evidence is in!
All that is to say that there is a lot of information I want to look at, but also that the information is emotionally intense and I want to play ostrich for a while and stick my head in the sand—speaking of culturally excepted ideas that are actually false.
The D Generation IV—and yes there is one—is a departure from the previous books. Because of certain circumstances, which I’m not going to tell you, the subject matter is more focused on James’ hunt for truth about his encounters of the fourth kind, and less about surviving in the post-apocalyptic Republic of Vermont. Unlike earlier books in the series which I have simply sat down and written, this one is going to take a great deal of planning to pull off what I want to achieve properly. I better stop thinking about it, because I’m already excited…and it’s not up next. It’s not even up after the next book.
Right. I’m taking a break because I want to write Ardis, the fantasy story of a half-breed pubescent who accidentally kills his teacher when a strange power erupts out of him, and as a result runs away only to wind up a slave. A little intense, but I need to inhabit the fantasy world for awhile. The other “issue” I’m going to run into is that I’m selling The Nanman this year, which will probably mean I need to write a sequel. That’s okay, I have one percolating in my brain, and everyday my kids give me more material for it.