CORRIDOR OF CRUELTY | THE TWISTED ROOT
Here madness dwells.
This one’s gonna hit differently and from multiple angles. The brimstones are calling for no mercy, just blood. And I’m going to give it to you.
We’re going to make a change this time around. Normally, these posts are for Ko-dons only (Founders). But I’m hoping to show my followers a deeper level, and maybe pick up some new subscribers along the way.
That said, I will reserve some just for the Ko-don crowd. They pay, after all. With the preamble done, let’s get to it.
Normally, these posts are all about lore, worldbuilding, and characters, but this time, we’re finding out which people enjoy my worlds. Why does the sex sizzle, the choices gut us, and why a character death destroys us? If you’re expecting a quick read, this isn’t it. This will be long and in-depth, and by the time you read it, I’ve probably been working on it for over a month.
Who usually gravitates towards my books:
Right out of the gate, I can definitely say—per the Myers-Briggs—if you’ve got an N or a J in your four-letter personality type, you gravitate the strongest. which shouldn’t be a shock as I’m both the N and the J.
I’m an INTJ writer. My personality makes up roughly 2–3% of the world, and I feel damn special about that, but I’m also an oddity that most folks don’t know how to handle. Either way, right out of the gate, my stories are filtered through my perspective, so it’s going to hit different. N-types read for meaning, not necessarily escapism, but you’ll get plenty of that, too. My writing is rewarding with inference, metaphor, and subtext. To be fair to the S-types, they often either miss this, or think it’s too heavy-handed. Sorry, S’es.
The Ns are drawn to the symbolic layering, and I deliver mythic and psychological architecture, philosophical dialogue, existential subtext, and patterns across my works. Trust me, there’s a lot of patterns, or as George Lucas once said: “It’s like poetry, it rhymes.” Bottom line: it resonates because Ns want to interpret my worlds, and I don’t spoon-feed them.
And this is normally where you hit the paywall…
For the J-types, myself included, there’s a craving for structure, coherence, and consequence. I hate it when people break the rules and there’s no consequences. Damn those slow drivers in the fast lane! My worlds operate on morality and metaphysical laws with cause and effect, and that’s why very early on in the series, I wrote in duologies: cause and effect There’s always a cost, and it’s often brutal.
You’re drawn to systems that make emotional and ethical sense, structures that punish laziness and rewards discipline, not to mention sound logic inside chaos. It’s like those people at work that just fall into a promotion and they really don’t deserve it. Where P-types (Perceivers) like open endings with a moral fog obscuring the scaffolding holding everything up, you like the lack of transparency as long as there’s rules.
For the cross-section of the NJ-core, you guys get the sweet spot. You see the pattern, and you get the structure.
The readers who resonate the most are:
INTJ/INFJ: Philosophical strategists drawn to moral architecture and psychological realism.
ENTJ/ENFJ: Commanding personalities intrigued by power, consequence, and control.
INTP/INFP: A secondary group that loves meaning, but they tire out if there’s little to no emotional pay-off.
The shape of the reader:
You guys love the moral quagmire, wondering if choices were justified, a character’s emotional exposure, and pattern recognition within the greater framework. Also, most casual readers will miss details, but you’ll pick up on it, and you’ll be rewarded down the road when it pays off.
Let’s take a gander at all the readers who might be drawn in, what their core drive is, and why they stick around. Please note: I realize this is a sweeping generalization, and it won’t account for everyone.
INTJ/INFJ/ENFJ/ENTJ/INTP/ISFP/ISTP/ESTP—these are the personalities that most often resonate with my worlds.
The Analysts (INTJ, INFJ, INTP, ENTP) seeks meaning like philosophy under scrutiny or a damn good debate where both sides make valid points, or stories that are stress-tested and you can see where they fracture. Hope isn’t doled out, it has to be earned, and these readers respect the cost.
The Commanders (ENTJ, ESTP, ISTJ) crave order and consequence. Things like power, shame, control are dialects of the languages they ingest. They want a structure that punishes weakness and rewards will. Meritocracy isn’t a bad way of life. Sex and violence are languages they understand. Get with the program, or get out.
The Empaths (ISFP, ENFJ, INFJ) stay for psychological realism, dignity under pressure, and for intimacy that reveals more than what’s written on the page. Choices mark people, and consequences don’t get erased by a magic wand. It’d be too cheap.
What all these readers are not looking for:
None of the above is looking for sanitized intimacy or a fade-to-black. You’re not searching for optimism without a down payment on an amortized loan, because hope is earned through costs. You want meaning. Shock for the shock’s sake isn’t on your checklist, but you enjoy a damn good shock when it makes sense.
Adjacent Fandoms & Tastes:
So, who else might like to read my work? Well, let’s go down a list, and if anyone you know likes the following, then they’ll probably like the Dark Legacy Series (DLS).
Books: McCarthy, Bakker, Lawrence, Abercrombie, Morgan, Sapkowski, Muir, VanderMeer, and Martin.
Games/Film: KOTOR II, The Last of Us, Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve’s Dune, The Northman.
Music vibes: Dark ambient, post-metal, neo-classical (searching for mood first, and lyrics second).
How can you recruit these wayward followers? The people who watch these shows, read these books, or play these games, like:
Consequence-forward narration.
Intimacy with grammar: sex and power obey rules.
Myth, not nihilism: the world is cruel, but ordered; gods are bound by the same law as you.
Precision over spectacle: no spiraling sprawl.
My works:
Now, let’s switch tracks from the audience to my writing. I always have a very hard time finding books I like that are similar to my writing, and I’ve concluded that there are no books out there like mine. Yes, they have elements, and no, I’m not 100% original, but they don’t hit all the pillars I enjoy. Some have come quite close, but they always fumble the ball at one crucial moment or the other, and it’s quite vexing.
Most writers chase categories, or general audience appeal, or specific genres with guardrails. I don’t write for the masses. Those are chains to break, like the Sith—am I right?
I write where four layers intersect: psychological realism, moral ambiguity, erotic candor, and mythic architecture. Most books trade one or two of those away. I don’t. I want them all, not only in my writing, but in books I want to read. My work is too raw for standard epic fantasy, too philosophical for erotica, and too bloody for literary fiction.Plus, I actually have a plot, so it’s too in-depth for smut.
Psychological Realism:
My fiction starts with psychology. Characters aren’t pawns; they’re haunted people reacting to consequence, trauma, instinct, and self-deception. I intentionally make them flawed from the get-go, because flawed people are real people. I write emotion with motives, and to wound, not only them, but the reader, too. Every choice emerges from necessity, and most are backed into corners they didn’t choose. Consciousness is fractured and layered. That realism makes impossible things feel believable, so when an angry chick with a penchant for destroying buildings starts sucking the life out of you, well…you were warned. That, more than anything, is my takeaway: Character over plot wins every time!
Moral Ambiguity:
What’s the worth of virtue if there’s no cost. Sins happen for a reason, and often times, it’s because people suck. I refuse moral shortcuts, so betrayal and sacrifice hits harder, and yes, that includes self-sacrifice—which admittedly, is rare in my worlds. My characters oscillate between damnation and duty, and when one sorry soul seeks redemption, it’s rarely clean. Faith, politics, and war are labyrinths to navigate, and most get lost along the way. The question isn’t “who’s good?” it’s “what did this choice cost, and who paid the ultimate price? Please, gods, don’t let it be me!” And sometimes, and never the person we want it to be, the answer might be someone who got suckered.
Erotic Candor:
I once had a problem with writing sex, and that’s because I was afraid that my mom would pick up my book and have a heart attack. There was no swearing, no on-screen deaths, and I didn’t even hint at sex. But to be honest, it was holding me back, and eventually I learned the art of not giving a fuck. She’s an adult, the same as me, and just because I write something doesn’t mean I’m that person. If I write about a serial killer, that’s not me. If I write about a millionaire, clearly I’m not one. So, she’d just need to learn to separate the author from the art.
Back to sex …
In my worlds, sex reveals the character beneath the flesh: choices, consequences, and betrayal. It’s not titillation, exposure for the sake of reading about a woman’s ass and a man’s baby arm, but if I write it for you to read, I want it to sizzle. Plus, shit happens in a sex scene and if you skip it, you might read a later chapter and go, “What happened?” I couldn’t care less about the measurements of Tits McGee; what I really want to know is what parking bad boy Johnny cost her, and if it destroyed her or strengthened her.
On paper, sex reveals several things quietly, hierarchy, shame and friction, and the need for control. Intimacy in my books is both confession and confrontation, and sometimes it’s the easy way to kill someone. I treat the erotic as another battlefield, one that fights over dominance, identity, and maybe even morality. Every gasp is a brandish sword, and an orgasm is swinging that sucker wildly. What I will say is that even though I write these scenes with painstaking precision, that intensity isn’t pornography, though some might grab their petticoats when they read some scenes.
I’m not one of those readers or writers who say, “Sex isn’t necessary on the page.” I say, put it in there. I’ll read it. It doesn’t bother me. You guys know where babies come from, right? Besides, if we go that route, then nothing is “necessary.” I write about real-world shit that you and I have probably experienced, and if we haven’t, we may know someone who has. Characters need to be real on all fronts, including when they’re on all fours; that’s the story I want, so why would I deliver less to you? So, yes, I write sex without innuendo or fading to black.
I could say a lot more on the subject, but we’ll move on.
Mythic Architecture:
Under the grit and grief, there’s a structure of discordant but equally-applied harmony, it’s just not pretty. Each saga belongs to a larger order: primarily gods. I tend to fuse the intimate and the epic so that a single human act can echo through a world and wake up angry gods, and that latter part might have people defecating in their britches.
What separates my universe from most grimdark stories? It’s not nihilistic, and it doesn’t reject religion outright as meaningless. Religion, whether you’re a believer or not, is better for a society than a society without it. But my worlds are tragic, ordered, and self-aware, and when gods enter the fray…well…shit gets real. I try to make my stories read like history written long ago, and that’s always been my goal. We’re glimpsing their lives, and they’ve lived, breathed, and died, leaving their mark on the world, and hopefully, without getting sentimental, in your heart.
Theology:
I treat divinity as structure, and an important one, as it binds mortals and gods. You know how in stories they always mention the gods but they never show up? Yeah, you won’t find that in my Dark Legacy Series. Faith in Ermaeyth isn’t nostalgia, and it’s not front and center like most theologies of our world. Those who believe in Ermaeyth, it’s their personal journey, and it underpins everything. As in our world, belief varies by each individual soul, some corrupt and others are not. So, every belief system could be genuine or corrupted in Ermaeyth, because mortals have always been known to be decent, upstanding individuals with no ulterior motives what-so-ever. I hope you read the sarcasm there.
But back to the gods. The divine is bound by the same restraints as mortals. More over, divine law keeps the gods from overriding free will and mortal agency, and honestly, that’s really important, both in my story and outside it. Of course, not everyone adheres to this doctrine, and some try to circumvent it, and it’s those bastards you have to worry about. And when you’ve got a world teeming with tyrants, monsters, and magic reeking unholy hell upon everyone, well … theology gives the world a touch of gravity. It reminds the characters and the readers that sin, sacrifice, and grace aren’t metaphors.
Wrap-up:
To give this a nice bow and shorthand, let’s give these one-sentence summaries.
Psychological realism gives the how.
Moral ambiguity gives the why.
Erotic candor gives the truth.
Mythic architecture gives the arena.
Theology is the law of all.
Philosophical Lineage:
What I’m about to say might raise some eyebrows, and you can just lower them right back down. I’m about to compare my works to others, not in the sense that I’m on the same scale. Some you may know, or at least heard of, and some you may not. I’m not putting myself into their arena as a way to laud myself, but rather to draw parallels.
Comparisons:
Nietzsche—creation through destruction, will as the hammer forging in the hum of defiance as everything collapses.
Jung—psychic realism; shadow and archetypes; characters as mythic expressions of interior conflict; stories as eruptions.
Homer & Milton—epic in scale, a theologically tragic, mortals and gods. If you haven’t seen the gods yet in my books, you will. Or maybe you have already and just don’t know it. Perhaps you should go back and read…
I point these out to give you a wider view of what I’m going for. I don’t imitate them, at least not intentionally; I extend their projects and change their template to suit my style. My wars aren’t over Troy or Heaven; they’re fought by mortals who might have to tangle with gods from time to time, and if they don’t, they have to contend with their malice. I mean, what would you do if the devil was trying to escape hell?
Why there’s nothing exactly like the DLS:
Most books don’t hit my pillars, and if they hit some, they drop others. Remember those guardrails we talked about? Every once in a while, you get mold breakers: Abercrombie, Martin, Tolkien; these writers forever altered the way we read books, much like Lucas did for movies with Star Wars. Authors drop one or two things of my four pillars, and I never find a book that I’m 100% satisfied with.
That’s why what I write doesn’t slot neatly beside anyone. I’ll be honest, this list I had to research with AI, cause I don’t have a wide tangent of authors I read. I typically stick to what I like and never stray far. My closest thematic neighbors (not style-identical): Cormac McCarthy (mythic violence, biblical cadence), R. Scott Bakker (psychological realism and epic theology), Mark Lawrence (self-condemning protagonists), Richard Morgan (erotic candor with existential grit), Andrzej Sapkowski (humanity under monsters), Tamsyn Muir (genre-bending necromantic wit), and Jeff VanderMeer (consciousness under collapse).
Even some of my favorites, Martin and Abercrombie, only share a cul-de-sac with me, and I love both of their works. And I come away feeling like, “Damn it, they were so close to perfect!” Martin digs into moral consequence but stays human-scale with politics, tragedy, and emotion. The mention of gods is ethereal and distant, and you’re not really sure if it’s real, or just some crazy lady in a red dress talking about how the night is dark and full of terrors.
Abercrombie nails cynicism and cost but avoids the heavier implications of gods and myth. Though I will say, the Logen sex scene in the First Law Trilogy was pretty funny. Anyway, I go further, fusing the story with psychology, myth, and making intimacy itself a wildcard.
Call me dark, or call me unmarketable, but I call it real, and I’d rather be real and live in obscurity than die in infamy by forsaking what I feel makes a damn good book.
Well, this is the part where we draw to a close for the free readers. The rest lives on for the Ko-dons and Members. But you, dear readers, you got to see the architecture of my writing, how it hits, and my storytelling pillars. For those who came for this ride, I hoped you enjoyed it, and for my Founders, let’s pick up where we left off. Go find your post and continue reading.
If you haven’t read my books but are intrigued, here are the first three of the series. You can find them on Amazon, and soon, world-wide on all major platforms.
Founders, let’s pick up where we left off…
