Cries of a Madman

"We stared off into the distance together as if we could find answers in the empty space before us. Perhaps the unfocused blur of our searching eyes would provide clarity and by looking to the heavens our uncertainties would be solved in the spellings of constellations. But what purpose did stars and sunsets hold for two wandering lovers? How could the infinite expanse of the universe bestow such knowledge upon ones so young and insignificant? What is purpose and why must it exist? Or is our purpose simply to breathe and provide carbon dioxide for the trees so that they may exhale precious oxygen in return? Is there more to this endless circle?"

This endless circle. Life. Life in so many forms and breaths. Some of us look around ourselves and see overwhelming pain. Others see joy even in the smallest detail. Others still see a world designed to serve them while their counterparts see only bigotry and a lack of opportunity. And some even see absolutely nothing. So much so that they do not even bother to look. We live in a nation, in a world really, where peace and war, freedom and slavery, live in tandem. We are the paradoxical people ever in civil war. So long in fact that many have forgotten what we are even fighting for. 

That is why I write

Albumor Chronicles: Cries of a Madman, first of the trilogy, is an epic fantasy tale designed for this generation, my generation, to come to our senses and realize what we have been marching for. Throughout the story, our three young heroes; Rosie North, Noah Heuston, and Cal DeSagara travel not simply from country to country, but world to world discovering who they are amidst all the horror and pain and, yes, the beauty that we face every single day. Terrorism, racism, police brutality, mental health, the refugee crisis, murder, betrayal, sexism, societal standards, all the way down to the simple things of how do I find my way home.

Cries of a Madman is written in lieu of our favorite classic fantasy novels taking inspiration from Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter all of which I grew up reading. It begins with introducing our main heroine, Rosie North, and her best friend and boyfriend: Noah Heuston, both from our very own Earth. Rosie and Noah are unusual by average teenage standards in the sense that they have been together for four years rather than the four months that seemed to plague all of their peers. But it is a fact merely admired for they are both genial people who keep their noses clean and their humor lively. It is only fitting then that a mysterious force should whisk these two away from their averagely pleasant lives as every good fantasy should do.

But that is where the stereotypicality ends.

Almost immediately things fall apart. The two heroes are caught in a storm that came from nowhere and returned back to nowhere, but not without knocking our protagonists into a lake that should not have been as deep as it was. Confused and dazed, Rosie and Noah surface to find themselves in a lake that is not their own in a world that is not their own. Hardly a day passes and the first tragedy strikes. The two are attacked in the night and Noah is dragged away into the dark leaving Rosie to stumble her way through the trees and the roots and the fear all alone. Until she is found by our third hero: Prince Caldux DeSagara of Albumor. After hearing Rosie's tale he convinces her to return with him to seek help in rescuing Noah from his mother and Rosie finds herself in the presence of the Queen. From this point on Rosie is tumbling head over heals into a world with an intimate relationship with Magic and a burning rivalry with the Southern Kingdom, Nigrum, the culprit of Noah's kidnapping.

Rosie now has a very hard journey ahead of her. One that she does not have to walk alone though. War has begun and Cal has a duty to his country. Noah has now become the tipping point, the grand spectacle, to destroy Albumor once and for all. And Rosie just wants to go home. But despite it all, the outside forces of Fate or Magic or God has other plans. A critical moment, an accident really, plucks our heroes and their enemy out of the battlefield and into a whole different world. Magic has played her hand and Rosie, Noah, and Cal are granted, or rather had forced upon them, a gift that they must learn to harness and use if they ever wish to return to Albumor and finish what was started. If they wish to ever return home.

This journey that they face is designed to challenge them. Hurt them and tear them apart, but ultimately allow them to find their identity, their worth, in the choices they make in each world that they travel to in their quest to return home. They grow as leaders and warriors and lovers as they struggle to find the right and the good in the racism and the terrorism and the loss and the greed that plagues the people they meet. And in the end, whether they succeed or they fail, they will be quite different from when they began. This is a quest after all, and no hero ever made it to the end completely the same. Or completely sane. This is Cries of a Madman is it not?