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 22nd. 

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. 

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. 

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.

Chasing the Wyrm Sneak Preview

Chapter 1

October 19, 2009

NSA Headquarters has its own exit off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway labeled “NSA Employees Only”. When you come off the highway, past a screen of trees and hills, you run into a friendly wall of sniper posts and barbed wire. I don’t work for the NSA, but I visit often, so they gave me an electronic beacon for my car. When someone without one of these nifty encrypted radio devices takes that exit, a nasty surprise waits for them at the end of the ramp. All of Ft. Mead goes on a heightened security alert. It annoys the battalion of Marines that guard the place to no end, and they don’t mind taking it out on you.

The base sprawls across the rolling green countryside, but all eyes focus on the sinister, shiny, black boxes, reflecting the massive parking lot that surrounds them, like alien obelisks from a sci-fi movie. The main NSA building consists of two attached structures, one short and long, the other taller and more square, both composed of black mirrored windows. No, not intimidating at all.

I stopped at the security building and some smart looking MPs checked my ID. “Christopher Yan, ODNI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” that’s the head of the entire U.S. Intelligence Community. The picture shows a smiling, half-Chinese, half-American male in his mid-twenties with high cheekbones and a spiky haircut. Perhaps handsome in that skinny-nerd Asian kind of way, I let others be the judge. All I know is that the girls in my high school never made a fuss over me. The guards gave me the once over and waved me in. I was on the guest list.

I gingerly rolled my agency issued Impala over the tire spikes and they directed me to visitor parking. Like your average stadium, those parking far enough out from the main buildings need to catch a shuttle to the front door. Visitor parking spared me this indignity. The number of people the NSA employees is classified. The parking lot could accommodate the population of Delaware.

One of things you’ll notice about guys like me, that is, intelligence officers, special forces guys, police in high-crime areas, anyone who often finds themselves in the unfortunate position of seeing the people they shoot up-close and personal, is that they are extremely aware of their environment. I don’t claim to be a bad-ass in any way, shape, or form, but I do have a knack for knowing where I’m going, and where I’ve been. I remember people and where I’ve seen them before, and I rarely get lost. I may not work at the NSA, but it’s fun to act like I do. I flashed a big smile and gave an enthusiastic “good morning” to all the receptionists I passed. I stopped to tell Miranda she looks good today. She’s tall and lean, with dyed red hair, cut in a bob at the shoulders. She wears glasses, and has freckles, very cute and self-conscious. She pretends that I don’t impress her.

After chatting up Mirada, I made my way through a maze of corridors to the elevators. I was about ten minutes late, not serious. Johnny waited for me there with a fake scowl. Johnny, and everyone calls him Johnny, but not to his face, looked trim and perfectly coiffed as usual, a nice GQ haircut with gray at the temples. He was wearing one of his impeccable tweeds. He goes to Scotland once a year to see his tailor. He plays golf for a week and has a dozen suits made. I’m very good at Nintendo golf, and was told just recently I should be wearing suits to work.

“Good morning Chris-to-pher,” he said in a lilting tone that only a gay man confident in his sexuality can achieve.

Jonathan Strange holds the title of Chief of Operations, under the Deputy Director of Intelligence, in the Office of Arcane Affairs. You have never heard of us.

Harry Truman created the Office of Arcane Affairs with a Top Secret Presidential Directive shortly following WWII. Apparently, we got a hold of a lot of Hitler’s occult research from the SS Ahnenerbe, officially the division of “Ancestral Heritage”, but they were the ones looking for Odin’s Spear and all that crap. Spielberg didn’t make that shit up. They really were looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Just like everything else, it scared the shit out of Truman, and he formed the OAA to research and combat arcane forces for the good of the ‘ole U.S. of A.. It wasn’t long after that the government found out that wizards walk amongst us and decided it was prudent to put a few on the payroll. Like Johnny and me.

Later, during the Kennedy administration, we found out that the KGB had some wizards doing a bang-up job as field officers. Not to be undone, Kennedy ordered the OAA to provide trained practitioners in the arcane arts to any intelligence service that asked for one. That’s my job. So while technically I work for OAA, I am bitch-boy for anyone under the ODNI. The CIA finds out that al-Qaeda has a guy who bends spoons? Call the OAA. Send Christopher. He can take care of it. ONI has a report of a strange, glowing, giant squid? Hey OAA, can Christopher scuba dive? Nothing worse than spooked spooks that don’t have a clue what they’re dealing with.

Wizards, however, are not dime-a-dozen. You get born with the gift – you do not get made. Our reports estimate the odds at about one in a million. That’s around 300 wizards total in the U.S. Rarer still, a wizard that the government knows about, and can cajole, harass, or coerce into working for them. So you see Johnny can wear anything short of rainbow colored bicycle shorts to work. They need us. This particular economics of scarcity is what saved my bacon in the end, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

We rode the elevator to the 7th floor in silence, and followed the twisting corridors to an office tucked into the corner, room 12370. Johnny hit the button for the intercom, “James, its Jonathan Strange.”

Jimmy buzzed us in.

The only light in the room came from the computer monitors, about thirty of them. Jimmy sat in the middle of them all, strapped into something that looked like an ultra-modern stainless steel and leather dentist chair. Three keyboards on swivel perches sat in arm’s reach. The whole thing could recline and swing about on a track so that the operator could view another monitor, or input on another device, without getting up from his chair. He gave out a, “What-up Topher?”

I approached his throne and we went into a minute long gang handshake, mostly to annoy Johnny. Jimmy looked like he hadn’t left his lair in days, which was probably the case. He wore a black stocking cap stitched with a picture of Curious George on the front, a testament to the temperature in the room, maybe about 60 degrees. A t-shirt, two sizes too big draped his skinny frame. It said “NSFW” in large red letters. No glasses though, Jimmy’s eyesight decided not to be cliché.

He loves it when I visit. We’re the same age, and all the guys in SIGINT/IMINT (signals intelligence/image intelligence) secretly or not so secretly idolize all of us in HUMINT (human intelligence). James Bond is the shit. Jimmy’s role is analysis; he combs over data collected from all sources and looks for certain patterns. Those certain patterns being occult activities. It’s a grueling thankless job. The few people in NSA who know what he does think it’s kooky or a waste of time at best. We could– probably should–be going through Jimmy’s superior, but Johnny likes his information straight from the horse’s mouth. Besides, we treat Jimmy right, and in return he takes care of us. The higher-ups give us the brush off.

Johnny gave an exaggerated sigh to feign his annoyance, and to move the meeting along. “How have you been James?”

“Can’t complain,” Jimmy shrugged. “You know how it is Doc; they keep us shackled in this cave until we dig up somthin’ massa’ likes.”

“Well I like what you showed me yesterday.” Johnny said, priming the pump a little. “Why don’t you tell Christopher about what’s going on in Sao Paulo.”

“Shit, I wish you were my boss,” he said to Johnny, and then turned to me. Using a bad Chinese accent he said, “The boys from Brazil have sent us something very, very, interesting.”

Jimmy let out a strained cough before continuing in his normal voice. “We’ve been working with ABIN, the Brazilian agency. Every year Sao Paulo hosts the finale of the Formula One racing season. Lots of rich Euro-trash and South American bankers flock to it.”

“Yeah, I follow Formula One,” I told him.

“Oh, from the tea and crumpets set are you? Anyway, so you know that big wigs and playboys crawl out of their hidey-holes for the event.” He turned back to his monitors. “You remember Super Bowl XXXV?”

“Tea and crumpets set, remember? Besides, why should I?” He waited for the question. It was all dramatics, but Jimmy likes to tell a story and we let him, since we’re his only human contact.

“I’m not a football fan either, but the Federal Bureau of Intimidation did something interesting during the game. They set up cameras with the latest in 3-D face recognition software. Faces are like fingerprints, each one is unique, and features can be plotted out into patterns recognizable to a computer, and searched through a database.” Jimmy was used to explaining the tech to Mr. Flintstone and the rest of his superiors.

“They were able to pick out 19 perps in the crowd with outstanding warrants which were scooped up by the Tampa Police. The ACLU went ape-shit about invasion of privacy, and we stopped using it here.” Jimmy made quote marks with his fingers, meaning that we just don’t tell anyone now when we use it in the States.

“Police in the UK still use it.” He went on. “So we teamed up with ABIN and they allowed us to install the system at Interlagos, the race track. We’re giving them the bad guys they’re looking for, and we’re keeping track of international players. Apparently a whole lot of Bond-types are Formula One fans, especially the European guys. I think half of MI-6 are there.”

This started to sound sweet. A spring weekend in Brazil watching the race and hob-nobbing, playing friendly spy-vs.-spy with my peers. All in all, not a bad gig. But my dreams of box seats, beautiful women, and expensive cocktails faded with the invasion of my common sense. They would never send me anywhere without a real mission.

Jimmy just kept talking. “Of course, we just use ears now. Each person’s ear is as unique as a finger print….”

I shook my head, “Wait a minute, they only opened the track to visitors yesterday. You saying you already found something?”

Jimmy smirked. “Oh ya.” He made a few keystrokes on one of his keyboards and the bio came up on the largest monitor.

I saw the picture and went stone cold.

Chasing the Wyrm – A Christopher Yan Agent of the OAA Novel

Top Secret – Eyes Only by Presidential Authority

From the Office of the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman

Executive Order 12334C For the Creation of the Office of Arcane Affairs (OAA)

By virtue of and pursuant to the authority vested in me under the National Security Act of 1947, and of all other authority vested in me, it is hereby ordered as follows:

I. I hereby establish within the Government a new agency, and prescribe its respective function and duties, as follows:

(A) To further U.S. interests in matters of the occult, including those pertaining to (but not excluded to) industrial production, economic manipulation, and military and intelligence applications. It shall be the duty of this agency to ensure U.S. superiority in all arcane matters and to protect Americans and their interests at home and abroad from arcane threats.

(B) The Office of Arcane Affairs shall be composed of:

The Secretary of Arcane Affairs

The Director of Interior Affairs

The Director of Foreign Affairs

The Deputy Director of Investigations

The Deputy Director of Commerce

The Deputy Director of Diplomacy

The Deputy Director of Intelligence

© The Office Arcane Affairs shall be responsible directly to the President, and be held accountable for providing knowledge on all matters of the occult, and remain vigilant to all threats, reporting them to the President as necessary.

To this end, the Office of Arcane Affairs shall have the following powers and duties:

1. To establish and operate a division responsible for investigating occult threats from within our borders and from our own citizens.

2. To establish and operate a division responsible for research and development of arcane processes which further U.S. economic superiority.

3. With the approval of the President, to act as diplomats to extra-dimensional beings.

4. To establish and operate a division responsible for gathering intelligence on arcane matters from foreign powers, and to conduct espionage and counter espionage using arcane practitioners and means.

Getting Over My Babylon

I think I’m getting over My Babylon’s spectacular lack of success. It was, from it’s conception, a book that only a select group of people would fully understand and enjoy. It’s a genre book, yet it is completely unlike most commercial fiction. It has no car chases or explosions. It’s not a thriller. It’s not about how “cool” the character’s powers are. It’s almost a character study. Combine that with esoteric symbolism known only by a few and a perspective that can be viewed as anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, and anti-American, I should have fucking known better than to expect anyone to read it.

The problem is, My Babylon was so much more emotionally satisfying than what I’m working on now. And I worry that the few readers I have picked up will be disappointed that the magic in my next book lacks the K.

Not that I’m ashamed of my next project. It’s more fun to read, and it’s a lot more accessible. If you like urban fantasy, but hate the mamby-pamby fairy aspects of it, Chasing the Wyrm is for you. If you’re ready for an urban fantasy that does not have your standard of melange of vampires, werewolves, lycans, shifters, faey, re-hashed-crapola, Chasing the Wyrm is for you. If you hate how most urban fantasy ignores modern society and the world going on around them, Chasing the Wyrm is for you.

So maybe I’m setting myself up for failure again. I wonder if what people want is the same old shit they have been given all their life. I refuse to do that. That’s the reason I decided to self publish in the first place. Yeah, insulting the readership is gonna earn me points I’m sure.

So here I go again, through the Abyss. Chasing the Wyrm is coming soon.