Introducing the Stormcallers

Ah, colonialism.

Anti-colonial texts are hard to write, especially when you yourself are a colonialist. In a very real way, anti-colonialism is not my wheelhouse. It is the purview and right of the colonized to write powerful and sweeping tales of overcoming colonialism, patriarchy, and religious bigotry.

Of course, it is hardly exclusively the duty of the colonized to do all the heavy lifting. Allies must share and uplift the voices of the persecuted, not subsume or claim their words as one’s own.

And naturally, it’s all a spectrum. And boy howdy did I hit the wrong end of the spectrum on my first draft of The Stormcallers.

A tale about a native girl taken by slavers and “pale devils,” who finds and claims an ancient spiritual magic that is at once feminist and collectivist, and would use this power in later books to begin a revolution that overthrows the capitalist and theocratic empire…well, lets just say I fell into some unpleasantly bad tropes. I tried to tell a story that wasn’t my story to tell.

But capitalism, theocracy, and imperial colonialism does not just hurt the colonized, it hurts the colonizers as well; it twists their minds into seeing people as things, rejecting wisdom as superstition, and encouraging stagnation in both society and personal growth. So…I do have a story to tell about colonialism, feminism, and collectivism, it’s just different and I needed to find out what that story really was.

Did I manage to keep myself in bounds? Is this story less claiming someone else’s story for my own? Is “No, it’s not European colonialism, it’s Herathian colonialism” a sufficient cover? Not really. I can never know for sure, but success or not, I think there is value in sharing my failures as well.

And when I’ve learned a bit more, and wised up a bit, I will be coming back to the Cloud Sea and its denizens. I am still enamored with the setting, and there are stories worth telling here. I already have ideas on how to turn this into my story to tell, and a different story in mind that is better suited for the “sitting ‘round the fire” narrative style.

But until then, I’ll post my shame¹ for all to see. When a new and better story comes out, I’ll probably shove this draft behind a menu somewhere. How to handle old posts/work after posting revisions is something I haven’t worked out yet. I may even delete the old draft from my website, if

Okay, enough stalling. Next week I start posting The Stormcallers.