I have some confessions to make.

I’m not a member of the “typical” tumblr age-group. I grew up in the 80s. Yes, I’m that old.

Confession two, I love 80s action movies. Especially ones where the action is way over the fucking top, like Die Hard. The more impossible the better. You see, a long time ago me and my friends came to the conclusion that John McClane, Martin Riggs, Snake Plissken—all those guys were wizards. No, not the “Do as Thou Wilt,” Aleister Crowley, type of wizards. The Jedi, movie Merlin, Kung-Fu action type of wizards.

Add in a dose of James Bond and you have, Christopher Yan, and my new book Chasing the Wyrm.

So, for the sake of an old 80s guy, give it a look. It’s only $2.99 at Amazon until March 22^nd.

And please re-blog!

Chasing the Wyrm: Christopher Yan – Office of Arcane Affairs

To protect its interests, the U.S. government projects its power militarily, economically, and magically. It leaves the last to the Office of Arcane Affairs.

Christopher Yan didn’t ask for the job. A wizard born with the power to warp reality, the OAA calls on him to neutralize all arcane threats. Part spy, part fixer, part assassin, Topher searches for a way to make his unique gift serve both his country and his principles. When he makes an enemy of a rogue wizard serving a dying insurgency, he learns the limits his conscience can bear.

Chasing the Wyrm: Christopher Yan, Office of Arcane Affairs

To protect its interests, the U.S. government projects its power militarily, economically, and magically. It leaves the last to the Office of Arcane Affairs.

Now Available on Amazon!

From the afterword of Chasing the Wyrm

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

From the writer

Okay friends, this is the only apology you’re getting. On March 15th, I release my next novel–Chasing the Wyrm: Christopher Yan, OAA. Find out more about it at jameslwilber.com

First, it is like My Babylon in that I wrote it and it’s my style. But the stories are very different. It’s an action oriented urban fantasy, not a deep philosophical novel. It does not feature “real” magick. The magic in Chasing the Wyrm is of the fantasy variety. This part isn’t really an apology, because one of the reasons I self publish is because I don’t give a shit about my “brand.”

Second, this blog is about to be inundated with posts about the book. It has been literally years in the making and I am proud of it. I think it’s a great story.

You have been warned.

We have a cover!

It’s getting exciting now…

Every human language secretes a kind of perceptual boundary that hovers, like a translucent veil, between those who speak that language and the sensuous terrain that they inhabit. As we grow into a particular culture or language, we implicitly begin to structure our sensory contact with the earth around us in a particular manner, paying attention to certain phenomena while ignoring others, differentiating textures, tastes, and tones in accordance with the verbal contrasts contained in the language. We simply cannot take our place within any community of human speakers without ordering our sensations in a common manner, and without thereby limiting our spontaneous access to the wild world that surrounds us. Any particular language or way of speaking thus holds within a particular community of human speakers only by invoking an ephemeral border, or boundary, between our sensing bodies and the sensuous earth.

[ … ]

The shamans common to oral cultures dwell precisely on this margin or edge; the primary role of such magicians is to act as intermediaries between the human and more-than-human realms. By regularly shedding the sensory constraints induced by a common language, periodically dissolving the perceptual boundary in order to directly encounter, converse, and bargain with various nonhuman intelligences, and then rejoining the common discourse, the shaman keeps the human discourse from rigidifying, and keeps the perceptual membrane fluid and porous.

David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (via dialoghost)