About the Author

C.A. Fox has taught skiing, sold books, encouraged critical thinking among college students, and raised two free thinking kids, not always with appreciation for their independent thoughts.
Home is a place that requires high-elevation modifications for baking and the expectation that it may snow on any day of the year. Like the fictional poet, Featherfetch, Fox casts nets of words to catch the downy bits out of the wind.

Author’s Statement on the Paradox Trilogy

Lord of the Rings just about killed me. I spent most of my adolescence convinced that I should have been born in Middle Earth. After years searing my elven soul in the asphalt savannah of sunny Southern California, I moved to the mountains where the shadows and silences harbor
magic.

The mountains are full of Olympians, and even those who aren’t divinities are crazy athletes. People here love a good workout. I think the term “good workout” is an oxymoron. It took me years to realize why yoga class (that always went on for an extra 20 minutes or so) made me cranky. The fact is reading is what relaxes me. Sure, I do love the dance of skiing or the
meditation of a good hike, but I tend to enjoy these pursuits during daylight and only for a few hours at a time.

A good therapist once told me that it takes more energy to keep creativity bottled up than it does to pursue your art. She said I had to make time to write. This was one of the fundamental paradoxes that changed my life. How could adding something to my already over-programed schedule make me more sane? I have always been a writer. When I don’t have time
to write I am cranky and I have dreams about being pursued by wild beasts or mass murders. Brené Brown said: “Unused creativity is not benign.” Use it or you will go mad.

After Lord of the Rings I went on to read every book with a dragon on the cover and quite a few with spaceships too. I loved Star Wars, the Deryni Series, Harry Potter, and everything written by Lois McMaster Bujold.

But eventually the genre seemed a little played out. There was always a quest; usually evil was irredeemable, and the story always seemed to end with a final definitive battle. The challenge for anyone writing genre fiction is how to keep it fresh. I have a few ideas.

Fundamentally, I am still drawn to the idea of a quest. If we pay attention, we can learn about ourselves when we venture beyond our own culture. More importantly, we can see our own assumptions for what they are.

Too often fictional villains are so evil, they cannot be redeemed and so killing them is justifiable. I think this is dangerous. Few people wake up in the morning wondering what evil they can accomplish. Most of those who do are discovered and constrained pretty quickly. Real evil is more insidious. It happens when people rationalize their evil activities as some kind of good. It’s dangerous to mistake the true nature of evil. We miss it, mistake it, and even condone it.

I have lost all patience with Final Battles of Good versus Evil. History demonstrates that wars rarely solve problems; they just kick them into the future for the next generation. What if war wasn’t an option? What if we had to figure out how to get along rather than just kill people who wanted to try a different economic system, worship differently, speak differently?

Here is where speculative fiction can truly shine. We can build worlds that are not bound by dumb things from our past. How about we liberate sex from vampires? The association of sex and death might have been valid in 19th century, but we no longer value people by the state of
their hymens.

How about we value something other than the strongest arm among us? Changing the gender of the strong arm doesn’t change the value. Why are we still reading about women in tight outfits who out-fight the larger, stronger men? I know it’s fiction and all, but why is brute strength still the ultimate value? That’s how we got the Dark Ages.

It’s time for a hero who succeeds not because of the strength of their arm, but because of the compassion in their soul. It’s time for a hero who understands that responsibility is the flip side of privilege. It’s time for a hero whose mixed heritage is both a curse and a blessing. And it’s
time for a fantasy that takes place in a world not bound by toxic patriarchy. Past time, actually.