The Kickstarter for The Sapling Cage is live for one more day. If you haven’t backed it, here’s your chance to get a signed copy of my new novel. If you have backed it, I just want to thank you. The campaign has gone so well that the publisher has increased my budget for book tour, and I hope I’ll be announcing dates and plans soon enough.
If you’re in or near western North Carolina, I’ll be tabling this weekend at ACAB: Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair. Catch me at the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness table. The bookfair is open to everyone (well except Nazis I suppose) and it’s a good place for the anarcho-curious to find books and get involved.
This week’s post is a personal one, so it’s for paid subscribers. It’s a bit of memoir about my love for roleplaying games, what they’ve meant to me.
Hey Dragon
or: my life as a D&D nerd
When I was in elementary school, I had friends. It was barely the 90s, and there four or five of us, a close-knit little clique–all proper Stranger Things style. One kid, he had a “cool” step dad. An Army guy, younger than the rest of our fathers. He read Hustler and Playboy and talked about sex frankly with his kid. He played Dungeons & Dragons with his army buddies.
He also didn’t let us fart in the house. We had to go outside or into the bathroom. But that’s a different story.
We were in 4th grade when I got invited to start playing D&D in his basement. A couple army guys, adults in their 20s, and a few of us kids. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, second edition. (Technically the third edition of the game, if you want to get pedantic).
I rolled up a character, probably a paladin, a holy warrior who back then had to be Lawful Good, and we went down into the swamps, into the lair of a basilisk in a forgotten temple slowly disappearing into the mire. One of the adults who was playing had rolled up a new character too, and we soon learned why: their last adventure, his character had been caught in the gaze of that terrible lizard, and we walked past the statue that remained of him.
To this day, I can’t sort out if that was a pre-written adventure module or something the DM had written. Also to this day, I remember the sense of awe, almost terror, at realizing: you can die in this game. You can be frozen for all eternity into stone, trapped in a sinking temple.
When I myself was in my 20s, I picked a different sort of adventurous life than those Army guys. I was a wandering anarchist, going from social movement to social movement, helping out however I could, living against the law.
A friend of mine had a letterpress, and I got to handset type (in Garamond, naturally) with my name and my blog. I had to pick a job description. I didn’t have a job. All I did was travel and throw myself into social struggles.
Never the modest sort, I typeset “Adventurer.”
Ever since I’d been little, I’d known I wanted to wander and help people. I wanted a life of adventure. As a kid, I’d played characters who carried lockpicks. As an adult, I carried lockpicks. Fiction is often how we create our sense of who we are, who we can be.
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