Another Year, Another Chance
Happy 2012 to everybody out there! Sidney here again, wishing y’all out there the best year yet!
I’ve been going through a lot of changes and hard times over the last year, and have done precious little on this site. But that does not mean I have been doing nothing at all! I’ve been getting more active again, socially, politically, and artistically–and have been writing more and more, sharing the stories with others, and learning more about my friends, my world, and myself through the stories we’ve shared. I just got done updating the Page on this site called “Spithra Game”–please check it out! I believe I’ve finally gotten enough work done on the Fantasy Series I’ve been writing to begin sharing it with folks outside my circle of friends. And what I’m calling “Spithra” is my offering to folks out there on how and why to “weave” your own gaming and story worlds, to connect those role-playing experiences with a mythos you are free to play with and craft your own stories in–and, to share those games and stories, to sell them to others for your profit or the profit of your circles of friends, to buy and support other folks who are sharing this world, and to help forge a new “bardic tradition” which is not hampered by archaic and selfish copyright laws which are (in my humble opinion) helping to ruin the planet. This is because the Fantasy Series will be licensed under Creative Commons–an alternative licensing to traditional copyrighting, which allows for other folks to use my stories, character, themes, and adventures in their own creative enterprises–provided all of us creating in the world of the Fantasy Series and the Fantasy Game-World allow other folks to do the same thing. This is a clause of the licensing agreement called “Share-Alike.” Check out www.creativecommons.org to see how this new, exciting approach to publishing and art-creation works!
“So, what is this fantasy series yer talkin’ about, Sid?” I hear somebody out there ask. Well, lemme tell ya. It is, right now, five books, the first two of which have been completed, with two more on the way, and the fifth one being “written” by a group of my friends I’m currently playing a fantasy role-playing campaign with in the world of “T’luria.” (The last book may not be the FINAL word on the Series–but a helluva lotta loose ends from the previous four books are sure gonna be tied up by the time it’s done.) Let me tell y’all about “T’luria.”
It was inspired by the first home-games I played with my partner, Kathy, and a group of our friends back in 2007 (for what a “home-game” is, check out the “Spithra Game” page)–a kind of “revolutionary wish-fulfillment” fantasy world, where we all could do battle against an evil empire–which has a lot in common with empires, past and present, a little closer to home. My friends played out what many gamers play out–things they want to do in the world, but don’t have the confidence yet to do–people they’d like to be, and/or an exploration of who they really are–and sometimes, just for a challenge, playing out “bad guys” they’d never want to be, doing things they’d never want to do. A lot of the world as it’s developed has to do with working out our madness (the hard things, and the blessed things, that we experience by being what society calls “mentally ill”), playing with our differing politics and differing sexuality, understanding our gender, racial, class, and religious identities, and projecting both our fears and hopes for the future of our world, in a fantasy, “shadow-world” we all co-created during the years we’ve played in it.
The story-arc of the Fantasy Series has gone through at least a hundred fifty years of the life of the world over the time we’ve been playing it. It starts out, in my first novel of the Series, called “Chameleon’s Morrow,” in a world of high fantasy (elves and dwarves and other “mythic” races, magick being real, and gods being plentiful and running the gambit between good and evil)–but a world of high fantasy meeting the Industrial Age. Our heroine, the elfin sorceress Aurelia of Rasil’yon, comes from an erudite, beautiful, and technologically “primitive” society of elves who live in the Great Forests of the Continent. She goes on an adventure that takes her far from her ancestral tree-village, all around the world outside her Forests–at first in the cause of war against the orcs–ancestral enemies of the elves. But early on, through hard tribulation, she learns the folly and the evil of racism, befriends an orc named Neeva, escapes a rapist orcish chieftain with her, and goes on to see how the world is being “modernized” by the High Dwarves of the great city of Kharahdjo. The dwarves are the most “civilized” of the peoples of the world–and also, by far the cruelest. Their railroads crisscross the Continent, their gunpowder lets them dominate all who stand against them, and their government combines religious orthodoxy with totalitarianism in a mixture that makes them effective conquerors.
But even here, the lesson that racism is one of the key blights on the consciousness of “hominine” kind is evident–and Aurelia befriends a daughter of one of the highest families of the High Dwarfish empire–Loomla of the Untkharahds. She also befriends gnomes and other wee folk, humanish people, and dragons along the way. But she runs afoul of an even greater evil than she could have imagined–one that takes the next books to fully map out. A conspiracy of powerful forces that is intent on nothing less than making themselves God!
I will be posting a few chapters of that epic elsewhere on this site in the next week, and letting you know where you can go to read more. So, stay tuned for that!
Now, while I have been working on this world of stories, I am still publishing fiction and non-fiction with a more traditional publisher (viz a viz copyright)–a wonderful publishing organization that i urge you all out there to patronize, called Chipmunka Publishing. They are the foremost mental health publisher in the world–part of the Mad Pride Movement in the UK, a country where madness and madness issues are being dealt with that inspires those of us here in the United States to keep working toward. A wonderful person named Jason Pegler has shown how folks dealing with mental health issues can triumph over both the negative aspects of madness and the social stigma many mad people still face by becoming authors, and telling their stories. He himself deals with mental health issues, and has written several books, including “A Can of Madness,” “Curing Madness,” and “The Ultimate Guide To Well Being.” I have to date published three books with them, one long essay dealing with madness and civilization called “An Ethics of Sanity” and two historical novels, “The Wobbly,” and “It Will Not Last the Night.” Jason told me a while back that he was not interested in my fantasy series, for reasons of copyright, and this is why I am not publishing them there. I am committed to Chipmunka, though, and donated the profits I’ve made on my books with them back to the organization, in support of their mission to give mad people like me a voice, and to see their stories in print. Jason did not ask me to do this; I volunteered to do it, because I appreciate what he and his company have done, not just for me, but for hundreds of folks like me around the world. Mad Allies are welcome to publish with Chipmunka, too, and health care professionals, family members, and other loved ones of Mad folks have been welcomed by Chipmunka as have Mad Authors and Artists themselves. I highly encourage you all out there to check out their site, www.chipmunkapublishing.com, check out their ebooks, support the writers, and donate some money to them if you can. They are a wonderful organization, and I am proud to be a part of it.
Other things in my life are finally coming together after a roller-coaster of a year. 2011 saw a lot of changes in the collective house I live with my partner in in my hometown of Chicago–fights, factions, hard words and trauma. It all took a toll on my mental health, and I’ve had to face challenges I thought were years behind me all over again (another reason I’ve not kept up with this site much in the last year). My relationship with my partner had to go through some growing pains, too, as we begin our sixth year of being together. But now, finally, I think things are starting to go well. There is peace in my house again, and I am deeply in love with Kathy, and look forward to spending the rest of my life with her. She is truly an inspiration to me, and to all in our house. Her work with our garden over the years, her spearheading projects here, and her help with what we’ve all been able to do in the last year–building a chicken coop from the ground up, and providing a healthy, happy environment for the “newest members” of our collective–seven wonderful hens!–is truly a joy for me to share. We continue to work on building a sustainable, urban farming project in our wonderful neighborhood on the Westside of Chicago, with new plans and projects all the time.
My neighborhood is an inspiration, too. I’ve met some wonderful activists here involved with Communities United Against Foreclosure and Eviction, a group among several in the city that fights to keep people in their homes, defying the predatory mortgage policies of big banks who have single-handedly created the current housing crisis that hurts not only folks in Chicago, but around my country, and around my world. I will be putting links up on this site in the next week to Communities United (CUAFE) as well as other good organizations who are fighting the same fight, like The Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, and Take Back The Land. I will continue to inform y’all of developments in this beautiful Movement.
Well, I think I’ll sign off for now. Please come back to this site, and share it with your friends and anybody you know who might be interested in the fight for mental health and all disability rights, the creation of communities of love, based in sharing madness spaces and art, and anybody who wants to write stories or play role-playing games that are enriched by the frank and open discussion of these issues, and the respect and love that can bring.
My Love to You All!
Thanks for reading.
Sid Prise
