Welcome to the outset of a journey. Though I'm not certain exactly where it will lead, I hope you'll come along with me to find out.
My name is Ryder, and you've found my blog. I'm a husband, father, and child of God. I want to bring meaning to the truth.
We all seek to do this, consciously or not. We all seek that meaning in our ways, be it through our careers, our families, and perhaps most notably through the deep passions within us, be them latent or awakened, that drives us to bring something new and good into the world.
I've always loved creating. Pulling new imaginings the cognitive aether is a uniquely human endeavor, and one of the most gratifying.
I've always loved stories. The ability to lose ourselves in a world hitherto unknown is also a gift granted to humankind alone.
It's only been in the past couple of years these two things have coalesced in any meaningful and consistent way, at least since my academia years. To be clear, by 'academia', I mean high school and a year and a half of college, and that year and half was scattered and unfocused at best. As a professional musician, I've composed and arranged songs and written lyrics through the years, but written prose hadn't been part of my regular creative diet.
Two years ago with the matchstick of a single image and the spark of a lone character, I began developing a series of epic fantasy novels and several other book ideas. Many of these are set in the same connected universe that has spiraled out of that first flash that drew my fingers to the keyboard. What they have in common is human struggle illustrated with elements of the fantastical, supernatural, and uncanny. This is a natural consequence of my love for and consumption of many stories through the years with the same kind of threads throughout them.
This blog's name, 'The Light Below', is derived from a critical element in my primary fantasy series. We associate light with the preposition of place, 'above' rather than 'below', and for a good reason. The celestial bodies that illuminate our world hangs far above the stratosphere, over and heads, and beyond our reach. In addition, nearly all religions and faiths associate the heavens with the afterlife and the spiritual realm to some degree. I won't go into detail just yet as to the nuances involving the powers at play in the world I've built for this series, other than to say this:
Hope is often hidden, an invisible but most potent force.
And it will always rise.
Via this blog, I plan to share updates, writing snippets, worldbuilding lore from these projects, poetry, and even some short stories that haven't seen the light of day.
In addition, you'll be privy to some of my musings, wins, losses, and whingings.
With that, I hope you now have some idea of what to expect. As for when to expect it, look for updates on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
This inaugural post is going up on the first Monday of 2023. So standing at the outset of something new here's to the year ahead, the words to be written, truths to be told, and meaning to be mused together in the comments.
Cheers!
- RHJ
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