I made it through another week. It seems my posts about handling my stress help me to manage it better. Take my post last week about choosing to be happy, regardless of the outside influences. I wrote that thinking I needed to do better. Like always seems to happen, when I try to improve, I get more challenges. This week has been a rough one to try and stay happy, but because I wrote that post last week, I could think back on it. Even when it seemed that everything was falling apart with projects at work, or struggles outside of work, I thought back to what I wrote last week, and it helped.
One thing I’ve learned about life is that it isn’t always easy. Those challenges and struggles in my life have helped me to understand those I come in contact with a little better. Also, those struggles give me tools when I write my stories. Some of my favorite books have characters who must overcome the seemingly impossible. Science fiction and fantasy are great genres for exploring different challenges because, while some challenges mirror our reality, the settings and action can draw us into thinking through life in a different way. In a good story, either one I write or one I read, I can be transported into someone else’s challenges. When that character pulls through or succeeds, it’s almost like I have succeeded.
I’ve reminded myself several times this week as I outline a new book, that in the same way working through my life’s stress and challenges helps me grow, challenges and struggles help my characters grow. They bring the story to life. No one lives a perfectly stress-free life.
When I find myself having a stress-filled day, I use my writing time that I’ve already carved out to write. I also use a little time before bed to read. Doing both of those things helps me to destress my life. Stories provide a great escape. Remember, good characters are memorable when they overcome challenges. We’re all the main character in our own unfinished novel.
Speaking of writing, check out my next book, Dissonance, is out as a preorder on Amazon Kindle until September 3, 2021. The book is ready and sitting on Amazon’s website waiting for September 3, 2021. That’s just two weeks away. I’d love a few more preorders. In that book, time travel is tearing the world apart, and only those that sense the resonance can feel the changes. Wyatt, Brooke, Aldan, Jeremy, and Avery, have to determine who to trust as they look for the source of the changes. It is a sequel to Resonance, which is my best performing book on Amazon, so far.
My most recent book, an epic fantasy titled, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, was a fun book to write. It is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.
If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.
If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.
If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.
DANIEL R. BURKHARD 