Hello friends!

It's been a little while, but I've decided to make a special post here for you all. I'm sure many of you have been wondering 'who the hell is this SJ guy', and others of you are probably wondering 'gee, hasn't SJ decided to start doing something useful with his life yet?'. Well, today I have the answer.

I've been working on a little something that I've been umming and ahhing about doing for the last 20 years (and which many XWF alumni over the years have said 'Jesus can you hurry up and finish it already?'), and it's arguably what my XWF career itself was a training ground for - yes, that's right, SJ has finally started writing some damn non-efedding fiction.

As the XWF is home to the people who believed in me and supported me from the very beginning, I would like to invite you all to take a first look at my fantasy world in which I will be basing novels and short stories (the SJ Cinematic Universe, if you will), the Odysseys of the Calinan Sea.

The Odysseys of the Calinan Sea is a sword-and sandal / heroic fantasy world in its Bronze Age (think chariots, the Trojan War, ancient Egypt, Conan the Barbarian, the earliest parts of the Old Testament and the like). It's built around big empires, magic, intrigue and exploration. I won't bore you with a massive spiel of exposition, because there's plenty of that in my worldbuilding notes. I want to eventually make a novel series based in it, but novels are damned hard work and take forever, and I really need a few wins under my belt right now, so I've decided to return to my RP roots and start rolling out short stories based in the world before getting ready to take on the big one.

I finished up the first short story yesterday, A Desert Rescue. It's very much me finding my feet, and that does show, but I'm already feeling confident to take on new challenges with more details and more elaborate stories. I feel it has a bit of a hint of the SJ RPs of old, but taken to the next level and purely narrative-based. A 3500-word story may not seem that out of the ordinary (especially anyone familiar with the monstrosities we used to do here!), but to create something original in a world that you built yourself is quite a labour, and I battled through a lot of executive dysfunction and impostor syndrome to get to this point! (To give you an idea, there's probably about 20000 words of half-finished stories that got me here, and the worldbuilding wiki has a whopping 100000+ words!)

I would love to hear what you all think - while I'm excited to see what a lot of the veterans I've worked with for years think, I would love to hear from any and all that have thoughts on it. And don't be shy on your opinions - I need to know what works and what doesn't and I'm always going to have a soft spot for my own work, so your honesty helps.

You can access the story here: A Desert Rescue

If you like, you can also view all the worldbuilding I've made publicly available: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/annyrion-corsairaquilus

I plan to do several more short stories before tackling the main event, so if you like these, I'll share more!

I hope you like it, and I'd like to thank you all for contributing to this ongoing journey!

-SJ