Last Words
This story does not belong to me.No matter what U.S. copyright law says, stories don’t belong to anyone. Since we began talking, humans have told stories and passed them along—embellishing, improving, summarizing. Sometimes they change the name or how the hero looks. But the stories are the same.
This story belongs to you now.
And we are giving it to you. Officially.
If you think the OAA is a cool idea. If you like the idea of wizards that use guns as well as magic. If you think action-movie spies are sweet, and they can only be better with demons and werewolves and magic swords and shit. If you think you have a great idea for an OAA story. Show us.
Just like some computer software, we are publishing this book as “open source,” sometimes called “copy-left.” You have our permission to write your own OAA stories using all of the background in this book. You can publish it. Make money on it. Call it your own.
There are just a few simple rules.
One, you must include the open source license in your publication. Anything you add to the OAA mythology immediately becomes open source and other writers can build on it.
Two, you can’t make a feature film or television series based on the OAA. If you are going to do that, we want cash.
Three, you can’t represent the characters Christopher Yan or Michael Smith in your story. They are ours. We will be telling their tales. You can mention them. You can have them do a walk-on. But you can’t have them doing stuff in your book.
Wait, you say, I need to write a chapter that involves dialog with Topher. Don’t sweat it. If you email me at james at jameslwilber.com and ask permission, I’ll probably let you. All the other characters—Johnny, Eddie, Jimmy, Nooria, Vromm—are free to use.
To help you out, we are building a wiki page at arcaneaffairs.net.
Why not Michael Smith you ask? Because fellow Mid-World writer, Shade OfRoses, is currently working on Archangel, Michael Smith’s first book.
So, go share this story, and make up some of your own. Don’t worry, Topher will be back, and he might actually learn something.
James L. Wilber
March 14th, 2014