The Epone epoch

Go on son, walk…

You see, I have never published, or even tried to publish, a book before, so I am in the process of entering the unknown. Will anyone like it? Will my dreams of being published crumble away and leave me hollow? Will people laugh at me?

Will I fail?

Will I change the world?

Am I a fool?

I am currently in my mid-thirties, very much in love, and happy with my life. But I was not always this fortunate. At twenty-nine I was bored, single, and dissatisfied with my existence - I had made the mistake of becoming comfortable with my world. I had a job, a house, a car, a good wage (but not too good), and then one day my mother touched death and returned - thanks to the NHS -, which woke me up. I sat and evaluated my life for value: what had I achieved? Will anyone remember me? What did I have left to do that I was putting off?

Is life just one long list of questions?

!

I am not a father or an inventor of something meaningful to humanity. I am not a war hero or a revolutionary. When I die I will be dead.

DEAD.

Obvious, but relevant too at the time I think.
I was working for a company, had been for five and a half long years, doing the same thing over and over and over, day in, day out, profit this, profit that; my soul was already dying. Yeah, I had managed to climb up the career ladder a bit, just one or two rungs, but to where? Nearer to my own death! This was my life I was wasting, not the bank’s, my employer’s or Tony Blair’s. As my bank balance was getting larger my lifespan was getting shorter. Like most people I was destined for a solid gold coffin. What good is money in your old age?
In my younger days I had been a traveller, rambling over Mother Nature as a voyeur of different cultures, living on air, making memories. I had nothing, wanted nothing in fact. I was enlightened and positive, enriched with spirit and full of laughter. What I saw and experienced during my early journeys fuelled my passion to create the Epone epoch. Although I had no material wealth, I had heart, vision, and confidence that a race so geared for self-destruction had infinite pockets of hidden beauty just waiting to be explored, physically and mentally. There were people who genuinely cared about other people’s well-being walking the planet. Life wasn’t all about money, oil, big fucking cars and packaged holidays. What had I done? Where had I gone wrong? What the fuck was I doing? Putting more money into the pockets of rich people who sat on wealth like it was an egg; that was what! So I decided to leave the land of air-conditioning, strip-lighting and deadlines, escape the monthly payroll, business deals and bullshit talking, and run away.

Don’t we all just want to do that sometimes?

I sold, gave or threw away everything I owned - my home, my widescreen television, my bed, a cuddly toy, all the stuff we collect to keep our minds active when our roots are stationary -, and I left. I cancelled my easy-to-set-up direct debits, gave up watching Eastenders, said goodbye to my annoying neighbour (who filled her empty life with animals) and went and lived inside an ex-Royal Mail postal van on the Cornish coast of England to finish what my heart started in my early twenties - the Epone epoch.

Why?

Because I want to leave a legacy. I want a blueprint of my thoughts downloaded onto a dead tree so people can read my head after my death. We all have something to contribute to humanity, even me, although I am nothing special. I would love to solve the world’s problems, cure cancer, end racism, or find life on another planet, but I never will. What I can do is entertain a mind for a week or two with an interesting, thought-provoking story about the good and evil in all of us. Not much, but it is something. Maybe I will change a reader’s outlook on life. Maybe not…

I used to loathe reading as a child; I was sixteen before I even finished reading a book cover-to-cover. In my English classes I often pretended to have a cold or a sore throat just to avoid reading out loud in class. Then I discovered Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and I found that reading could be fun. Literature could make me laugh! Once I got the hang of immersing myself into someone else’s mind I realized I needed more than comedy to stimulate me; I had evolved. I moved on to real fantasy, but this genre, although my favourite, was tame compared to the reality it was based in. I knew that mankind was more vicious than these books portrayed, more sick and twisted. I tried Sci-Fi and then modern fiction for my fix, and found it, but fantasy was always my thing, where I wanted to travel to in my head.

So I decided to write a book just for me, one that I would enjoy reading - the Epone epoch. I describe it as pulp-fantasy: provocative, extremely violent and sexually perverse, but tender and caring at the same time, carrying love and hate, good and evil as the two sides of life.

It gave me a chance to explain myself to the world…

I have recently moved back to the UK from America - the land of capitalism. Although I am an anti-capitalist, I found that America has some of that hidden beauty I mentioned earlier, and her name is Megan. She has completed my dream…

…and dreams are more important than anything.