Much like any good story or novel, life comes with choices. Those choices lead to experiences. Thinking about some of my favorite books, which is a list that changes with my mood, I’ve often wondered how the stories would have ended if the protagonist had reacted differently to the choices they had. I’m sure they would have been far shorter and not as enjoyable. Sometimes, at the beginning of stories, the protagonist makes a wrong choice, one that leads them deeper into a struggle than they wanted to be. It can even be something that pulls them out of their comfort zone and makes them see life differently.
Usually, near the end of the book, the main character makes better decisions, but not always. Near the middle of the book, as the character struggles to get through the challenge they face, they’ll fail. It may seem they’ve lost everything. I think I’ve only read two or three books that were tragedies where the main character gave up and died near the end. I don’t like reading those types of stories, because I don’t want to give up.
In good stories, the protagonist can’t succeed unless they learn from their experiences. They may have set themselves on the dangerous path at the beginning of the story, or it could have been an accident that drove them into that place. By the end of the book, their experiences change them in the same way our experiences affect us. Sometimes, the hardest times in life teach us the greatest lessons. Other times, the small, consistent choices prepare us for bigger decisions later in life. Every experience can teach us something.
I’ve finally got a good start to the first few chapters of my next novel, a fantasy novel. Check out some of my other books on Amazon.
My latest book, Collected Lives, is now available on Amazon Kindle and as a paperback. Check it out. This story takes place near the end of the twenty-second century, with vacations and tourism to Earth by off-worlders controlled by major corporations. The largest corporation, Collected Lives, has several enemies. The story follows the events as four people from different portions of Collected Lives’ process are thrown into the middle of a larger problem.
My fantasy, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, 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.
Malignance, my third book in my time travel series that began with Resonance and Dissonance, is on Amazon as a kindle and a paperback. That was a fun series to write, and for now, it is completed. I have also placed all three books from that series into one volume titled The Machina of Time.
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 