C1 Foreword

Ashrej – Path of Hope is my first little publication and I am equal parts excited and proud as can be to release it into the wild. Will it be praised or torn asunder by the dear reader I cannot possibly foresee nevertheless I wanted to express my gratitude to you for picking it up. It was a hell of a ride and many a sleepless night was spent either thinking about some plot point or actually writing it out. Well, now we’re here and that shows that it was worth it. Let’s get the boring part out of the way and quickly give all the credit before I let you to the actual meat of the book. A big thanks to Amara, my beta-reader and living, breathing quality control. Thank ye to the Novum staff that actually had the patience to go through my book, short it may be, and get it into a readable state. Finally, a pat on my own back for actually strapping myself behind this project and getting it finished and into your hands. Now with the obligatory words said it would be nice if you could spare a further minute listening, or reading if you so like, through my ramblings giving a little backstory to how this booklet came to be. The name Ashrej that I chose for the protagonist is in reality the Hebrew word for hope and the name of a popular prayer. To be perfectly honest I chose it purely for the sound it made but the concept of hope had something intriguing about it. In so many fantasy/adventure novels the role that hope plays is just blandly portrayed as an excuse for the characters to do something, then achieving it through the power of friendship or some other means. It’s rarely if ever employed as an organic part of the adventure that it is. Even the smallest hope of achieving something thought impossible or the bulwark of faith that allows one to tackle every problem head first in the inner reassurance of coming out on top against the odds is immensely powerful, yet almost always subconscious. Hope is that little thing that makes the body act even when the mind is in doubt. If you read a bit closer into the characters you will come to realize that each one of them carries at least one little hope inside; The same idea is what ended up being portrayed in this novella and I admit that it wasn’t planned. Initially it was envisioned as a satire of the pop culture portrayal of vampires. Sparkling beauties that are superior to humans in every way except for sun resistance, yet still live in hiding because they haven’t heard of sunscreen for whichever reason (parasols are also a thing). From there it has kind of evolved into a more realistic and less stereotypical portrayal of such creatures while still keeping them sufficiently different from regular humans. I would have loved to expand this story further, to make it a 300-page brick instead of the 100-page pamphlet it ended up being but to artificially stretch it ad infinitum would have come at a cost of quality and pacing. The same way one should not wake a sleeping man, one should not tell the story in more pages than is necessary, or something like that.

Perhaps this leaves me with the little hope of one day expanding on the tale of Ashrej and the world she resides in.