Don’t let the title of this post fool you. Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon proves yet again that the man must be keeping Calliope, the Greek Muse of epic poetry, hostage in his home. How in Hades one author continues to write successfully in so many genres is beyond me, but he keeps on doing it book after book . . .
Eyes of the Dragon is King’s other fantasy story; the first being his Dark Tower series. This one, I feel, has much more in common with the Brothers Grimm than the book he wrote in 2022, which he actually named Fairy Tale. Eyes of the Dragon is charming and whimsical, with an omniscient narrator that throws you right into the action, and given King’s propensity for having “diarrhea of the typewriter,” this was quite a delightful surprise. You won’t find any heavy-handed world-building here (King’s dislike of The Wheel of Time is well known) nor any of the blood, gore, and rape so common to the “edgelord fiction” made popular in the ’90s. He isn’t trying to show up Tolkien or Martin, and the novel is all the better for it. Eyes of the Dragon is intended for younger readers, and people like me who appreciate old-fashioned fantasy, the kind that made The Neverending Story and The Last Unicorn so memorable. It may not be the greatest modern fairy tale to be put on paper—a few glaring implausibilities drag it down—but Eyes of the Dragon remains a joy to read throughout. King manages this, I think, because an author of his caliber is free to ignore the inane suggestions from agents and publishers who rarely understand what makes for lasting fiction. In other words, King earned the right to put storytelling first.
This leads me to the sorry state of publishing today. Now, I learned long ago never to post “woe is me” articles on my blog, because doing so tends to attract internet trolls. Still, as an author who has yet to be discovered, I am occasionally compelled to use this platform to express my frustration. It’s not that I feel my work doesn’t measure up in some objective way—far from it. My fans tell me my books bring them to tears (in a good way!), and that I’ve even changed their lives. Yet I continue to hone my craft, as I have for three decades, maintaining the rather unique position among indie creators that getting your book into major brick-and-mortar stores should be harder, not easier, and that we should all strive to raise the literary bar, not lower it for mass-market appeal.
Publishing has always been about BIG business—I am not so naive to think otherwise—yet there has always been some cigar-smoking editor-in-chief who cared enough about the medium to invest in the occasional work of art. But like every other industry nowadays, profit has become the only priority and the only measure of success. It’s the reason why McDonald’s leads the world in burger sales, modern Star Trek seems to be written by middle schoolers, and Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Fourth Wing make billions despite being universally panned by anyone with an English degree. For every original idea, for every Project Hail Mary, say, there are ten young girls learning to use their magical powers as they choose between potential lovers.
We are being inundated with books empty of caloric meaning—I call these popcorn books, cotton candy books, Big Macs of the written word—titles you’ll forget the moment you turn the last page. But publishers aren’t entirely to blame; they are simply responding to the economic forces keeping them in the black. In an age of information pollution, in an age of NETFLIX and AI, readers expect books to cater to their every guilty pleasure. They pick paperbacks like they’re ordering at Subway, which is a trend I call the “sandwichification” of literature. I see it all the time at book fairs: indie writers hawking their latest novels by listing off tropes like sandwich toppings: “It’s a vampire romance about a high school girl with a dab of alien abduction.” None of these readers seem interested in writing quality or whether the author knows anything about storytelling. They’ll purchase a BLT from a gas-station vending machine over a dish by Gordon Ramsay, so long as it satisfies whatever they’re craving. One YouTube critic gave my book, The Princess of Aenya, one less star simply because she really, really wanted more romance. This is how art dies, folks, because art isn’t a product that can be mass-produced, much as the shareholders of Disney and Paramount wish it could be. I don’t visit a museum looking to satisfy some urge, some desire, some want. I go hoping to be challenged, inspired, possibly even transformed. Yes, great storytelling can do that! Great storytelling gives you what you didn’t know you wanted in the first place.
I struggle to elevate the craft because I believe story matters, and because there is no greater expression of our shared humanity than storytelling (and if you think I am being overly melodramatic, you can fuck right off). I am not saying we can’t or shouldn’t enjoy our guilty pleasures. If you can’t get enough of Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Mass, more power to you. But we need to open our minds to MORE, because storytelling can offer so much more than distractions and titillation. But when the ONLY thing that seems to pass the gatekeepers of the literary world is books copying books copying other books, we are impoverishing what it means to read and write. I can’t imagine something like Watership Down, Dune, or The Once and Future King getting published today. What agent is going to represent a book about violent rabbits looking for sex? Or Arab-coded, drug-addled aliens riding giant worms? Or the tragic tale of the Christian knight tormented by the guilt he feels after losing his virginity? This isn’t speculation on my part. Agents will tell you, “We are looking for gay romance,” or, I kid you not, “stories with adult spanking.” And all I can do, all any aspiring writer can do, I think, is to smuggle meaning into what would appear to be just another read-it-and-forget-it popcorn book. And THAT, my friends, is my goal with THE MAGIQ OF AENYA. But that’s a subject for another post!
OK. Rant over. Bring on the trolls!
The Art of Storytelling 
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