An interesting aspect of writing different fiction series is that writers change along with their series. Looking at my three fiction series — the Waldmeer Series, the Nanima Series, and the Enanika Series — there is a clear progression in how I use fiction to explore and express ideas. It wasn’t consciously planned so much as it intuitively unfolded.
Story as the Vehicle
The Waldmeer Series was my first fiction series. I was experimenting with a basic question: How do I carry spiritual ideas inside fiction while holding the reader?
My answer was to give the reader plenty of story. A lot happens in Waldmeer. There are many characters, relationships, families, crises, separations, reunions, changes of place, spiritual communities, love affairs, personal transformations, losses and new beginnings. The spiritual ideas are everywhere, but they arrive through what happens to people. There is usually a concrete human situation carrying the thought.
That gives the reader a strong narrative rail to lean on. Even when the books move into less conventional territory — karma, healing, consciousness, different realities, spiritual traditions and other dimensions — there is generally a person, relationship or event anchoring it.
The movement of Waldmeer is:
life → relationship → event → spiritual meaning.
I was playing with the notion that fiction could carry the ideas I wanted to write about.
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