Your Happy Hour - The Stack Series ~ "The Threadbreaker Trilogy" ft. Brian J Bork

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

Welcome to The Stack Series! ✨The Stack Series features new books and emerging authors sharing their stories, inspirations, and journeys with us. In this special episode, we celebrate the launch of a new book into the world published by author Brian J Bork who shares with us his inspiring journey - from tragedy to triumph - leading to his debut novel, 'Threads of Rebellion,' part of The Threadbreaker Trilogy. Discover the power of love - to rewrite the journey, to embrace the creative process, and uncover the philosophical themes of rebellion, fate and world-building. Check out Brian J Bork here and the first book here.🎧 Stay tuned for stories that inspire, uplift, and spark your abundant life!The Stack Series is produced by swartkat.co - captured via riverside.fm & shared via rss.com.

And welcome back to the Fields Podcast, and this is a very special field session episode. It's called a Stack Series episode, and a stack series is a new series that we've started where we are interviewing authors about their books and their journeys about being an author. And it's really a privilege today to invite a special author to the Stack series, to the Fields podcast, and to come share in all the fields and happiness in launching your new book. So a really big welcome, Brian, Bork, to the field space and the Stack series. Thank you, Nicole. It is a pleasure to be here. So tell me a little bit about this book that you've launched now and that's out in the world.

I know that you are busy promoting it and we're really privileged to be able to also do that on here. but I'm really curious about a little bit more about the journey behind this and it's also a trilogy. So your trilogy is called the Threadbreaker Trilogy, which is really interesting. And I know that there are three books. So the first book has been released called Threads of Rebellion. It's available now on Amazon and Goodreads, I think, as well. And we can tell people a little bit later where to find it. but tell me a little bit about the backstory.

How on earth did you end up becoming an author? And where did the idea for this book come from? That is a question I think probably most authors get. Where do you get your ideas? Where does this come from and things like that? And especially with somebody with my years of both age and experience. It's not very common that somebody starts so late in life becoming a, or I shouldn't say late in life, I hope that I'm not too late in life, but where they become an author and

want to really put something out into the world. And the problem is, is that people don't realize that sometimes dreams take a while to accumulate, or hopes. have a way of taking time to accumulate. At one point in my life, I was between jobs. I was dating my wife. And we were just, you know, we were getting by. And I said, you know what, I think now is the time. I'm going to become an author. Now, this is in my late 20s. And I didn't have any of the discipline. I didn't have any of the life experiences. I had rarely traveled and I just didn't, I couldn't sit down and just write because the blank page was like a tease. Here, fill me up with words and you put words in and then you go, but that's not really a

story or that's not even a chapter. So I just didn't have it in me. Now, advance that to a few years ago. And unfortunately, the book is sort of born out of tragedy. My son passed. And everybody always says, oh, I'm so sorry. And I do appreciate that. But his passing was very difficult because it wasn't the type of passing where you could hold somebody's hand and say goodbye to them and know that they were there. So I got so angry. I didn't get sad. I got angry. And I got angry. And that's where the seed for this book began. And that's, like I said, it's a couple of years ago. But this book has gone through, in my head, before I even started putting words on the paper, has gone through like five different revisions.

And there was a time where this person was going to be a pauper and then he becomes like a leader of a small army, a reg tag army, and then rises up and becomes a king and then takes over the world and becomes a god. and then it was just all of this acceleration stuff. And I said, you know what? That's too much story to tell. So in its essence, Threads of Rebellion is the beginning of a man's journey to to sort of claim that just because God might create us or God might give us life, that doesn't mean you have to only believe in God. Sometimes you have to believe in yourself.

And I think that's the big message of this. is I finally got to the point where I was like, I wasn't angry at the world or society or any of the things that might have led to my son's passing. But a lot of that rage and stubbornness and just as my wife said, he's very pig-headed. My main character is very pig-headed. And that leads to everybody saying, so do you wish you were this main character? The main character's name is Edwin. And I say, no. I don't want to be anything. of these characters, I love having these characters sort of tell me what they are and then, you know, allowing me to write about them. Authors often say that you often don't know what your

characters are going to do in a given scene until you start writing and you go, oh, yeah, that's something they would do. Or you start writing and go, no, that's not something they would do, but it's really cool. So you take it as an idea and you put it in a little notebook for maybe a future book or something like that. Maybe it's a cool line or maybe it's a cool line or maybe it's a cool way of describing a battle. You put that into something else later on. And I'm not going to do any spoilers for the book, but

the book does not end on a cliffhanger, but it also doesn't resolve the entire story. And as you mentioned, I always envision this as being part of a trilogy. And the reason it's called the threadbreaker is because there's this myth

in this world where somebody essentially breaks their threads thread free of the loom, which is sort of like fate. The loom is the sort of can see everything, can do everything in the world, but it doesn't actually interact with a physical world other than record what everybody does. And so that was sort of a, I don't want to give it a religion, but there is certainly a religion around what this loom does and these threads of life and what your thread does and how you weave together and all that other kind of stuff.

That's all very cool. But then there's a separate religion about the gods. And I didn't want to have just like the Roman gods or the Greek gods. But all of the gods that I created, I decided, you know what? They didn't get created first by the loom. and then, you know, they created the humans, which is normally what happens in mythologies and stuff like that. Instead, humans were around and they were scared, and like lightning struck a tree and they saw fire, so they worshipped it. And that became eventually the god of fire whose name is, in this book, is Pyrros.

So the gods were formed by mortals. And so they're sort of on equal playing grounds. The gods have all the power, of course. but at one point there was this person or this threadbreaker that broke free and gave people free choice. So they didn't just have to follow what the gods said. Their free will could say, I can choose to believe or not to believe, and then the gods got worried. And so this book kind of picks up at the point where the gods are very worried about what's going on, and the loom is just doing its thing, and the people are starting to rebel.

And that's where the threads of rebellion comes from. of that was a long-winded way of saying how this book came into being. I love that. And I'm now so intrigued to read the whole trilogy. Thank you so much for explaining all of that. And I find that fascinating because I mean, I also saw on your website when I was browsing around a little bit that your, let's call it like the slogan of the book, is says, challenge the gods, shape your own fate. So now that makes a lot more sense to me and what you explained. And I find that fascinating because I do believe that as humans we have forgotten how divinely powerful we are.

And I often talk about that on here, but maybe not so much as I'd like to. And I think that there is this really interesting interplay between being a spiritual being and being a human and kind of aligning those two to understand that we're not at the mercy of things happening to us. You know, we actually have full control. and we are able to, like you say, create something, alchemize and actually create a world that we'd like to live in. So I love that.

And I know that your books have kind of all these themes that we've through, and I want to chat about some of them. And so some of them are a little bit about, like you said, rebellion, and then there's a bit of power and the sacrifice. So tell me a little bit about these themes that you've woven through the book and how that was for you writing about each theme. Maybe we can start with rebellion. So I think that the basis of the themes of threads of rebellion is really about going from grief

and despair and moving up to quote-unquote fighting back. And if you think about it when you are talking about like the stages of grief, so there's, you know, the like, no, I'm not. not going to deal with this. So you got that denial. So I tried to work those kind of stages into this as part of the book, but also as part of the healing process for me writing the book. Now, I don't want anybody to think that this book is meant to be religious in any way. It is neither religious or atheistic. It is very much about a foreign place or a completely different world. And so when I was imagining it, I was like, oh, if I do something about God's, people will be like,

well, aren't you a Christian or aren't you this? And what I believe has no bearing whatsoever on the book. The book is this completely separate world. But I think there is such a thing as devotion and love and hatred. But all of those are emotions that are ours. I don't think Any higher being should have those, and that's the problem. When you give a higher being the ability to be retaliatory or being just mean or, you know, you see a fire burning a tree and you're like, I needed that tree because it had fruit on it. And you see that fire and you think, gosh, that's horrible and I'm mad at it. That just gives that fire more power in this particular sense. But I do believe, like you, I believe that if you believe in yourself, you are truly believing in however you came in to be, whether it's a God or whether it's God is, gods or goddesses.

Whatever your personal philosophy is, you come from somewhere. And you could say your folks, you know, your parents are where you come from. But there's more to it than that. And I think that the people who have the most impact on the world are the people who acknowledge. that. That there's something of a spark, there's something of a thread, there's something of a

belief, and it isn't just in those around you or yourself, but also how you're interconnected. I mean, Star Wars had the force, and you know, there was the good side, or the light side, and the dark side, and all that kind of stuff, and I always

thought that that was a very cool way of being able to express a religion without it being too religious. And so that's what I was shooting for when I was making the book. So while the themes are all there that you mentioned, they're not necessarily focused on, like, you know, here's where we go from being denial into acceptance. I know where in this book do I have those stages spelled out like that. But Edwin as a main protagonist and unlikely hero really doesn't want to be a hero. He doesn't have a birthright.

He doesn't have a divine destiny. All he is is stubborn. And, you know, there's a line in the book where you're just too stubborn to die. And that is what makes Edwin such an interesting character is because he's just a common man. Sure, he's built and rugged and stuff like that because, and he carries a big hammer. I don't want anybody thinking it's Thor. But, you know, it's a blacksmith's hammer. It's not truly a weapon.

It's meant for him to bend metal because he's a blacksmith son and he was apprenticed to become a blacksmith. But when tragedy happens, that's where sort of enlightenment begins. If you want to look at it that way, he begins to realize, I'm going to fight back. There's a couple of places where he just goes off and he's just like, I hate the loom. I hate the gods. And I want them all to burn and stuff like that. And that's that anger and not denial. and not acceptance.

So I think fate and how you challenge fate are probably the key themes of the book. Because everything keeps trying to steer you in a certain direction. If you keep fighting it, then eventually you break free of what everybody else is doing. And now you become this symbol either for good or for bad. And I should also mention that just because all of this is happening doesn't mean that there aren't other people who are trying to pursue the same goals as Edwin. There's another character, and we don't get to learn a lot about her, but she's called the Mirror Mage.

And her goal is the same as Edwin. She wants to take the gods down a notch and say, you can't keep interacting with the world, and she wants to take control of the loom. And that's where the two different sides, and I don't want to call it light side and dark side, because they're really not. One is about doing what they believe is right for because of the belief in themselves. And the other one is doing what's right because they believe they're the only person who can do it. And when those two meet, there's going to be trouble.

Now, unfortunately, because of the length of average fantasy books, I didn't have time to really delve into that. But I can tell you that everyone willing, in book two, you're going to start seeing a lot more interaction. between the hero and who we call the villain, but they're really just two sides of the same coin. And I don't want to have a, we're not so different, you and me kind of conversation. I want them to stay different, and they will ultimately have to butt heads and resolve who might actually be able to take control of this prophecy and become the threadbreaker, as it's called. Wow. Well, that's a lot. I'm really fascinated by this and I kind of as you were talking, some

ideas were coming up for me and I have to now keep my head together and remember all of them. But one thing that struck me is, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned about emotions because they say that we are the only race that have emotions as humans, you know. And so that's really interesting to me because it's almost like, you know, we don't. always understand what to do with all these emotions and like you were saying going through the process of grief and i'm so sorry for what has happened but i'm also really glad that you could take that and turn it into something beautiful that you could share with the world you know and that to me is what books and films and media and art is about and and to me it's like a process of alchemy that

transforms and transmutes you know and so i find that really amazing that you could do that and I think it's a lot easier in fantasy. I think it's easier to take ourselves out of the reality of the life that we live and go into a world where we can express these emotions where it's kind of okay to be as angry as you want. And like, you know, I think it's so hard in today's society to do that. So first of all, amazing that you could let that out and then write all of that because I know bringing a plot together is not easy.

So that's really good. And I'm very curious about, you know, also what you were saying, when we resist things, like when we say, hey, you know, this fire is taking my tree or whatever it is, we give that power. And so it also talks to a lot about what we experience and our humanness in the world, that the things that you kind of focus on is what fosters more in the world. And so it's really where do you lead your thread, you know, where do you take your energy and what do you do with that? So I feel like from what I can hear,

you've obviously brought in a lot of what we experience as humans in this world, and I'm really interested to read where this evolves to. But what I'm also curious about for you is what it felt like to write the book. I mean, what did it feel like for you as you went through your process? And also did you like get up in the morning? Was there a certain time that you wrote? What did it feel like to be an author, you know? But in the pre-publishing process, yeah.

You know, what's funny is that everybody assumes that putting the words on the paper is the hardest part. And in all honesty, I had been working with this for so long in my head when I finally started to put the pieces together on the page. and the the I don't have my notebook anymore because I've already essentially worked all of it into the electronic forms but just I have databases of here's a character I came up with and you know so that I can call on that if I need that for for a scene or whatever but like keeping track of the towns and keeping track of all that that's the hard part that's I found myself because there's there's a portion of the book where it's kind of time sensitive, meaning I want everybody to feel the clock clicking down. So I keep referring to what day it is and what time it is and stuff like that. And it progresses through until it reaches a sort of, I don't know, second act climax where you actually experience what all of this has been leading up to. But keeping track of that time was actually as difficult as writing down what was going on during that time. So I think when authors do world building,

and I put that in quotes, because I'm not sure that everybody understands what that means. What that means is that not only do you go, all right, this is what the world's name is, and here are the few things that we're going to reveal in this particular book. But then what's bigger than that? How does this fit into the big, bigger world. And so, you know, when we start off in this book, we are in a very small village that has been destroyed. And then we move to sort of a fantastical forest. And then we move from there to a big port city. And so you have to be able to remember not just we have to go here and then go there and then go there, but which characters are going to go where. And so as I'm

building up the group. And I'm going to go into a little sidebar in just a second about that. But when these people are coming together as a group, they really don't start to form a group until about halfway through the book. I mean, they're still, they're all traveling together, but they really don't depend on each other and work together until they get to about midway point of the book. And I hate to, especially since we were talking, so philosophical about religion. I hate to bring in the dreaded Dungeons and Dragons. But a lot of people, when they play Dungeons and Dragons,

there's like, all right, you're sitting at a bar and you're sitting next to somebody, and those guys all of a sudden you're like, yeah, we're going to form a group. And that always felt like too serendipitous for me. I always thought it was, yes, there's some spontaneity, but how do you make somebody leave behind the only place they've known and go someplace else. And in Chapter 2, in Chapter 2, how do you get somebody to go someplace else? And so you have to do things. You have to give them a motivation for moving. And so I keep trying to keep the characters moving. But not so much that they feel like chess pieces where they're just moving all over the board,

but actually experiencing things like, you know, anger or exhaustion. One of the things that they're doing is in the middle of the summer, and they're traveling to these lands that are sort of volcanic, and they have these giant kilns. And so that's how they make all their pottery and stuff like that. Because this isn't super advanced. This is not like, you know, you've got archers and crossbowmen and cavalry. These are guys on foot with maybe a sword, maybe a shield, or in my case, a hammer or a staff. but this is very, very reduced down to, you know, we don't have tin mugs or aluminum mugs or any of that kind of stuff. All they've got are these clay things and they break real easy so these kilns are, you know, really important. I want people to feel that emotional roller coaster of we're a found family, but why are we together and what are we actually trying to accomplish?

that D&D feeling is our group didn't start to come together until about halfway through the adventure. So some people are sitting on the sidelines waiting to come in and they don't have anything to do. So yeah, so I really do feel like the path that is taken. There's a reason for why it's taken. And I also don't believe in describing everything through exposition, which is why there's a very long preface or preface in the beginning of this book. And some people might get turned off by that because it's very mythic, it's very legendary, you know, the text is sort of flowery and poetic. And it changes from preface to the first chapter.

I don't want to have to go through and explain why the humans are upset with the gods or why humans have free will and the gods don't and stuff like that. I wanted all of that to be covered in the preface so that if you choose to ignore the preface, you can still read the entire story and you won't lose anything, but you're not diving into the pool, you're sort of dipping your toe in and then slowly working your way into the pool. That was sort of my reasoning for putting what I did in the preface,

and then also changing the language to be as descriptive as possible, but not as necessarily flowery. Edwin is a very grunt kind of guy when he talks. You know, yeah, or no, that kind of thing. So I wanted to make sure that I wasn't necessarily being too... And obviously, I would never compare myself to this man, but like, Tolkien. Tolkien, or Tolkien, I'm not sure exactly how people pronounce it, wrote great stories, memorable characters, but spent infinite amount of time describing details that weren't necessarily important. How many feathers are in a fletch and an arrow?

That is a nice detail, but do I really need to know that when that arrow never actually gets fired? You know, that kind of thing. So I tried to make sure that everything that I wrote was descriptive, so you knew what was going on. But I think that the illustrations, the artist renderings of various scenes, I think those really help people understand that this is what happens here or this is what it kind of looks like. and the artist's interpretations are great. Some of them, you may look at it and you're like, well, Edlin looks different in this one than he does in that one. Well, that's true, but that's because different artists did it,

and it's all supposed to be like, you know, not exactly what's going on, because you don't want to have a spoiler in a picture, but sort of a representation of what's going on. So you've got an idea of what the council, the mantle council and threadmere, what their interchambers look like. And so you see that when you're, you know, get to that chapter. I tried to use less tokenesque and much more, I don't know, maybe like Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson, I remember one of the times I read one of his books,

and I can't remember if it was missborn if it was a different one. And I'm like, you know what? I have no idea what these people look like. I've got a rough idea of what they're wearing, but I don't have any idea in my head of what they look like. And some of my friends are like, well, you're crazy. They look like this. And I'm like, well, after you get the illustration, in the book, yes, you get an idea of what things look like. But if you don't see those illustrations, you've got no idea of what that particular character looks like. So that's why I included illustrations in my book.

Even though it increases the cost of the book a little bit, I think it's truly worth it to have those artist renderings of what the scene might look like. I love that. And I actually am such a fan of the Miss Born trilogy and Brandon Sanderson. So I also really love, I never actually got into talking, to be honest. like it. I still have the series sitting there. I haven't read it. But I appreciate it. I don't know if you can have a book called In the Stacks about and not at least mention some of the classics. You have to. But you know, I wanted to actually say, and I'm glad you brought in the images that are in your book,

because I think what's really interesting between film and books is that film often has the opportunity to paint a little bit more of a picture. You know, if it's a moment, a split second that you see something in a movie and it gives you an instant idea and instant feeling of what something feels like or looks like or look that somebody gives another person. But when you're writing, it's a lot more complicated because you have to script that world, you know, you have to explain what that smirk looks like on somebody's face, you know. And so I think it is really intricate that you, you know, especially when you say world building, fantasy, it's a lot different than, for example, like a thriller or something like that.

So that's amazing. I mean, again, kudos that you, like, created this world for yourself and allowing us to share in that is really special. So love that you put the images in there and excited to see them. And I also believe that it's sometimes nice

to not always have the images. It'd be, like you said, exactly the same because it gives you as a reader the permission to also be like, I remember when I read Harry Potter and then I watched the movie and I was like, it's quite close, but it's not really what was in my imagination. So I think it's nice that you did that because it does give you permission to also kind of have your own view. And it's not exactly the way it is in each scene.

And how do you feel now after you've written the books? I mean, I think it's obviously been a huge transformation, not just the writing, but for you as in yourself going through that. So it's very unique. in my mind, I completed writing the release draft, meaning what I gave to the editors, right after Thanksgiving of last year. So that's approximately the last week of November. And again, I think a lot of people think that putting the words on the paper is the hard part. Editing is by far and large the hardest part. You have to reread your story so many times and you almost become blind to the

mistakes. Like, you know, did I put a comma here or did I put a ellipsies here when it should have been an end dash or something like that? You know, you're just, you're constantly looking at things. And I do have an interesting note. And this will be one of those, those hidden treasures that the bloopers that are left in. my wife was reading my book and I this is an interesting process. I didn't want her to read the book before I sent it to the publisher because I was afraid she's not a big big fantasy reader but she reads a lot of books and there are fantastical books that she reads

as well. So she ended up reading my book and at one point when we were just about completely done with all of the edits and we were going through final approval to get it ready for the London Book Fair, which I should mention a little bit later on. My wife said, you can't have fossils in granite. And in one scene, when the mirror mage is talking about what the walls look like,

and it says that has granite with eel fossils in it. And she said, granite is metamorphic. It's not produced by the same thing that causes fossils. You'd find fossils in limestone and stuff like that. And I said, aha, but I could make them lava eels and then they would be in granite. And so I tried to change it and it didn't get changed in the first edition. So if you do have a first edition, you will see that there's an error in there about saying that there's fossil eel fossils

in the granite. But if you see version, I guess, 1.1, you will see that it will say lava eels. fossils in there. That was the only change that I made because I only wanted to make like a one word change. I didn't want to do anything else. So anyway, yeah, so I was saying that the actual editing process and publishing process took a lot out of me because that, you start that in beginning of December and we just released the book officially on the 21st of March. So that's a good three months or so of constantly reviewing the story and do I want to move this? Do I want to move that? And just lots and lots of thinking about your book. So now I'm deep in the outline and first draft of my second book in the series. And as I'm writing it, it's so much easier now because I know

what the editing is going to look like. So I know here's what I want to put here and here's what I want to put there. And so I think the editing process for the second book is going to be a lot easier. I hope it's going to be a lot easier. But, and that is through no fault of my publisher, Parker Publishers has done a great job. Their editing team was phenomenal. But I did feel like, oh my God, I got to read this again. And the other thing is, is that once the book was officially published, I didn't actually have my hard cover in my hands until after many of the people who I told about the book, ordered theirs, and actually had their. So I was getting pictures of people holding up the book and smiling. And I'm like, you've got the book even where I do. Once I have

the physical hardcover in my hand, that's when it felt like, oh, wow, I actually have done it. Up until that point, it really didn't feel like it was complete. So once I got it in my hand, it was definitely a big moment. I don't think that I feel transformed because I'm still working a day job. I'm still doing, you know, very few authors on their first or even, you know, second, third, fourth books can make enough money to be able to support themselves or a family unless they do it full time and they're, you know, they've got great publishing deals and things like that. I'm very happy with what I've got and I'm looking forward to putting more out there. But there's a whole big world out there in publishing. So, you know, there's an agent, there's legal teams,

There's all sorts of other stuff that you don't want to have to consider until you get yourself into a trilogy with copyrights and intellectual property and all that other kind of stuff. There's sort of a whole business behind this that if you want to get good at being an author, you can't just be good at putting words on a paper unless you have a team around you that are going to help you. And so far, I have that. So I'm very happy with that. That's amazing. Yeah, I think that's a big misconception that a lot of people think about art. You know, I put writing in the realm of art, but even as a musician or singer-songwriter, you create the song, and then that's just the beginning, you know.

There's the royalties and there's the admin and then there's marketing and there's this and that. And actually, that takes quite a lot out of you. So I'm glad for you that you have a team to help you with this. I think that's really so worthwhile and that you could finally hold the book in your hand. That's amazing. It's such a good feeling. I mean, I feel like it's been such a journey for you. in completing this, and especially the seed of where it started into where you are now,

and now you're writing the second one. So do you have a date in mind of when you're going to publish the second one? You know what? Any date that give you would be so flexible that it wouldn't make, I will say this. I anticipate it coming out by 2027. Okay, fantastic. We will look forward. Maybe January. And I don't want everybody to think that, The only ideas I have are the world of Aurelia and all of its citizens. I'm actually, I have an outline for a sort of noir detective book that takes place in on a different planet, but told with that same kind of gritty, you know, hard-nosed detective and a small child who needs protection. And so there's some good stuff in there.

It's sort of a riff on like the Golden Child or something like that. But we'll wait and see what worlds may also count. I've got 13 different outlines in different worlds. So whenever I get stuck writing a scene in book two, I just close it down and then I open up one of my other books or one of my other outlines and I'll just start working on that just to get some sort of fresh perspective and then I'll go back and finish up my scene. I love that. I think it's so important because I think you do kind of need to like fill your creative cup in some way. And sometimes that is writing other things or like painting or walking in nature, whatever it is.

But if that's helpful for you to be able to further some other work, that's amazing. I mean, we're really excited to see all the things that you're starting to create and that you're journing into this author realm. I think that's really beautiful. I know you said that you do something else. And I think it's also you, you know, a lot of people might feel that, you know, I can only say that I'm author if that's the only thing I'm doing. But I think in today's world, we allowing ourselves the flexibility to be a lot of things. And that's wonderful. And sometimes it does take a lot of time management and energy management. But it seems like you're doing a good job at that.

You would have to ask my wife, because there were times during the editing process where I just was so busy. and she's like, what are you working on? Nothing. But it does take a little bit every day. That's really all it takes to be an author is a little bit every day. Eventually you'll get there. But you have to keep at it. And that's what I was saying.

I'm not saying that there aren't people who are wonderkin who can go out there and just write anything. and all of a sudden you're like, my God, that's wonderful. There are people that are like that, but you don't have to be like that in order to produce a book that you feel comfortable with as well as hopefully others will enjoy. And I would like to encourage anybody who's listening to the podcast or watching podcasts to make sure that if you have read the book or if you're interested in the book, to go check it out. I'm sure that Nicole will give you plenty of links later on in the post or whatever. I definitely will. I'll make sure everyone knows exactly where to find your book and to find you and to go give it good reviews and to listen and subscribe and follow all the things as well as the feel space.

I just have one quick more question for you. Sure. And before we wrap up, and I know that this book you spoke about kind of the transformation, but it's one thing I noticed that I really love. And maybe this will come through the trilogy. Maybe my question is a little bit early. But you spoke about the power of love to transform. transform and reform. So what does that mean for you, like the power of love?

I think most mistakes in life are made when you're in love. And I don't mean that as a negative because there are such things as wonderful mistakes. And I used to work for a man who believed in fail fast, fail forward, meaning if you're going to try something, just go and try Don't plan it out. Just go and try it. And then if you fail, get back up and try something else. And that makes great sense if you're in love or if you love whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. So I think giving Edwin love was meant as sort of a, all right, now, what are you going to do?

You've got these ideals that you believe in. will you change due to love? And so I really didn't go into it in this book because he just fell in love in this book. But I think you'll see as he moves forward that marriage is great. And especially if you're, you know, if you need somebody to lean on and I'm not going to do any spoilers or anything, but if you do happen to fall in love and make your mistakes, you might find wonderful mistakes or you might find mistakes that could be very costly. So we'll have to see what happens in book two. But I do think that giving Edwin love was part of getting past all of the anger.

But I think just because you love somebody and something horrible has happened, just because you love somebody doesn't mean that that automatically fixes things. And so I don't want this to be clean and, you know, oh my goodness, they're in love and they're going to always be together because maybe that isn't true. And again, I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm not going to say who our main characters are at the end of book one or at the beginning of book two. But I can say that there is a sense of camaraderie, even though each of these people is individual. And I think by the end of the trilogy, everybody is going to experience love in one way or another,

including Brand, who I think needs love more than almost anybody, because he's way too stuffy. I love this teaser. I'm glad I asked that question. And I'm excited to see where this all leads. And I think I want to end off what you, to add on to what you said, that, you know, as much as we all, as humans as well, and everything we strive for with the field space is we are all individuals. We are kind of all on our own paths of experiencing emotion and experiencing. what it's like to be human in this crazy world that we're in. But we're all a group. We're all collective of souls, you know, I believe. And we're here to inspire each other to make the journey easier and hopefully go from

darkness to enlightenment. So thank you for inspiring us to do that. And yeah, thank you for sharing so much about your journey on this podcast today. And it's just been such a pleasure to chat through it all. I couldn't have spent time better doing anything else. So it was really great to be here. And thanks for all the great questions. It's such a pleasure.

I'm so excited to read more about this. Keep us in the loop. We're here to celebrate all the feels with you as you write. And yeah, for anyone else listening out there, go check it out. And let us know what you think. Happy reading and happy feels.