Since 2022, I have been writing a character-driven gritty fantasy novel called The Book of Fentes.

The story follows a warrior named Fentes, who marches with his tribe in the light of a vengeful Sun God named Natun. A zealot for the new religion, Fentes must navigate tribal, religious, and family politics over the course of the bloody crusade. Can a future of light and life be wrought through blood and death?

Read More Here

Sample:

The din of the dying battle faded away as he submerged himself in his worship. He brought himself to kneel upon the muddy ground, tilting his head to search for his God above the mist and leaves and blister-colored clouds.

His flesh was prickly with hate. The bodies of many men lay around him, some of whom he had taken for himself, others taken by his people, and others, still, stolen by the enemy. It was no matter, all were sacrifices to Natun, whose power welled with every soul returned to him, whose benevolence made the ground sweet with grain and runny with water. He felt the viscous heat about his face, the warm and wet air, the gift worth slaying an entire people for. He searched for his God in this air, in the cloud-strained light above, in the blood that seared his hands and the mud that cooled his knees. Where was He?

Where was that rising feeling? The soaring rapture that found him when he isolated the pure power of his God and let all else fall away, when the kernel of his soul rose up and out of his eyes to swim in a burning sea of life and light. He had experienced it so many times at home on the farm, sat amongst the ranks of green stalks that were Natun’s greatest gifts. Now he kneeled amongst the most potent of sacrifices: the corpses of friends and enemies, the blood-memory of clans and tribes spilling out onto the unshackled ground.

And yet he felt nothing.