Just as important are my friends, who help me keep my insanity in check (you read that right) without whom I would while away the hours stuck in my own mind, or browsing YouTube. They are of course Cory Hanks, Jon Cleven, and Michael Nangle; these friends have put up with me and killed monsters with me for quite a few years now.
Now for the people who make this a beautiful book (hopefully): my cover artist Jeanine Henning and my editor Victoria Crim.
And of course I’d like to thank everyone who bought this book. Unless you pirated it somehow, then you can thank me by buying it or dropping me a donation! I’m poor too, you know!
Obligatory: About the author section.
Brent Lee Markee was born in Washington in 1983, and has been moving around the Northwestern part of the United States for most of his life. He has moved over thirty times in his life, but has come to rest (for now) in Anaconda, Montana, where he spent several of his younger years.
As a kid, he was very interested in dinosaurs and mythology, which probably had a hand in his later love of fantasy and character driven science fiction. After high school, he joined Job Corps and learned how to be a chef. It didn't take long for him to realize that he was not inclined towards the profession physically, mentally, or emotionally. However, it was not all a loss, as he picked up some very valuable cooking skills. He also developed a greater love of fantasy during this time. Shortly after finishing his training, Brent decided to try his hand at college, but due to circumstances beyond his control he lost his funding and had to go out into the world.
Right around his twenty-first birthday, he found out that the depression he had been dealing with for the majority of his life was not what everyone else had to deal with. After a lot of internal fighting and after trying several different medications, Brent found that laughter was indeed the best medicine, and has since come to a truce with his brain.
Brent started writing during his first term in college and finally got around to finishing his first book in 2008. Shortly after he finished, his father developed lung cancer and passed away. The next several years were spent trying to figure out what he was going to be when he grew up, before finally deciding that he was happiest when reading and writing. In late 2013, he pulled up the files for the book he had written and began the laborious process of editing his earlier work. Now, he spends his time trying to figure out how to write his Author Bio in the third person. As for what the future holds, we'll see!
Not So Obligatory: More about the author section.
Wow, what a wild ride. First thing I would like to do is to apologize to those of you who waited an extra five months past my initial guestimate of when I would be able to get this book done. I learned a lot by giving myself that arbitrary deadline, however, and shouldn’t make the same mistake again. From now on, I’m going to tell everyone it is going to take a year to get the book out. Not only will this give me some leeway (and a little downtime before I start), but it will also give me some more room to work with my editor and cover artist so I don’t feel like I’m pushing them.
And what a crazy year it has been. I released my first book last July and watched as it climbed the charts slowly but surely in those first couple months, and then positive review after positive review came in and I thought, "Wow, these people think I’m an author." There were of course a few of the lower ratings (most of which were totally deserved, as I realized I am an abysmal editor), but even those were pretty positive about the contents of the book.
Then, after a few months of the book doing way better than I thought it was ever going to, the numbers started to steadily drop. At the same time, my doctor prescribed me a medication that had the happy side effect of making every muscle in my foot tense to the point where I thought something was going to snap. I finally got my right foot to stop trying to imitate a vise when my left foot decided it wanted to play, too. All-in-all, I was pretty much useless for nearly two months. I tip my hat to anyone who can deal with that and write a book at the same time sans medication.
In January, my left foot had a relapse, though not nearly so bad. Luckily, it cleared up by the time I went to Seattle to talk to some doctors about bariatric surgery. I learned quite a bit from those doctors that no other doctors had ever been able to tell me before. They put me on a diet (YAY! Another diet… but wait…), and to my surprise it actually works! In the four months since then, I’ve lost over 50lbs. I’ve had a few weeks where I’ve fallen off the bandwagon and stalled my progress, but it is still coming off. To some of you I’m sure this is nothing, but anyone who has been big all their life and has never been able to find anything that actually helped to lose weight short of starving (which is the absolute WORST thing you could ever do to yourself), they know how big of a deal it is.
I weighed 180lbs by the time I was in 5th grade, and all the doctors we went to just said, “Don’t let him eat so much.” I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating it is to eat the same amount of food as everyone else around you but to gain weight every month anyway. By the time I was in high school, I weighed 420lbs (sophomore year). I played football, worked out with the wresting team, and did track. This helped me not gain any new weight, but it didn’t help me lose weight. Everything I tried from the doctors during this time didn’t work, or they made things worse.
Those of you who read my first ‘More about the author’ from book one know all of the other things I was also dealing with during this time and the years to come. Suffice to say, after my funding for college fell through after Job Corps, I pretty much gave up trying to fight my weight and focused all of my efforts on getting my mind healthy.
Now, you might be saying… so what? Ahh, a pity party for Brent! NO! That is not at all why I’m sharing this. I want people to think about the thoughts you have about random people on a day to day basis. I know you have them, because I have them too. I’ll see someone even smaller than me and think ugh, if only they’d put in a little effort they wouldn’t be so disgusting. Now, in my defense it is usually more about their personal hygiene and appearance, though not always!
On those occasions, I’ll think, "Alright, how much do you know about that person’s life?" I have absolutely no idea what that person goes through on a daily basis, but I’m jumping to condemn them after a two second glance. I know there are some people out there that don’t think like that, and to those people I would just like to say, you are awesome! To the rest of humanity, however, know that I see those looks even if you don’t mean to let me know what you think about me, and yeah, they hurt. So, if next time you see someone and think ugh, that fat slob needs to go on a diet, or go get a job you bum, you think, wait… what do I know about that person’s life? Well, then that’s a win in my book.
Wow, that was quite the rant, huh? So anyway… I’m now going to try to lose the weight without resorting to surgery since I have finally found something that works. Now, I still have a long way to go, but for the first time I feel like I’m on a downward slide mentally and physically.
To move away from the heavier side of life (pun definitely intended), another thing I learned while writing this book is that I cannot stop reading books or my times per week that I write plummets to nothing. I love fantasy, and if I don’t read a good fantasy or sci-fi story once a week my brain gets distracted by the wily internets.
On the other side of that token, however, I definitely cannot play any computer RPG’s while writing or absolutely no writing gets done until the thing is finished (and I play the really long ones). So, guess what I’m going to be doing over the next month and a half before I start work on book 3? Dragon Age 3, Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity, and Fallout 3 (heavily modded so that it is pretty) to get me jazzed up for Fallout 4 (which I probably won’t be able to play when it comes out because I’ll be writing, grrr).
I do, however, try to get some D&D in at least once a week (sometimes up to three times a week), so if you go to Teamdemihooman.com and join a group, you might get to play with me. It is a D&D group find that
started up because of the Geek and Sundry Twitch show Critical Role, and if you love D&D or fantasy in general, you should try to check it out. At the time I am writing this, the show is on every week on Thursday nights and features nine awesome voice actors playing D&D—what more could you want out of life than that? The last 10+ weeks of that show have jazzed up my creative juices and helped me finish this beast more than anything else (when my internet works).
So, I will leave you with this message: Love yourself, love each other, and love whatever the hell makes you happy (as long as it doesn’t harm others).
Contact Info
Alright, so you read the book and loved it, hated it, or some mix in between, and want to tell me about it. The most direct way is to send me an e-mail at [email protected].
You can also find my author page on Facebook by searching Brent Lee Markee—I'm the only one, so it should be easy.
I am also a member of Twitter, @BrentLeeMarkee. I will be using it, along with Facebook, to give updates and to communicate with anyone who wishes to do so in the future. (Mostly though, I just use it to do the #Hashtag wars on @Midnight when I’m lucky enough to watch a show the night it airs.)
Last but not least, you can go to BrentLeeMarkee.com, which will someday be a good place to read about my books and whatever else I’m doing. As of now, it is simply a good place to sign up for the newsletter that will let you know before when the next book will be coming out before anyone else finds out about it. I am also slowly putting more about the world of Terrazil on there, so if you have any questions about the calendar or want to see a really rough timeline of events, that’s where you should go (the timeline even includes information from outside of the books).
Thank you once again for purchasing my book. If you liked it, please leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (or anywhere else you can think of) and tell your friends about it. If you found something terribly annoying or you didn't like it, you can always e-mail me to tell me what you think—I'm always glad to get constructive criticism.
Vitiosi Dei (Heritage of the Blood Book 2) Page 39
