A Good Thing Never Stops

Have you ever had a dream so vivid that you re-visited it each and every day? Can you imagine the pleasure of growing up, re-working and re-crafting that dream into a story that can be experienced as well as read? The result might turn out a lot like A Good Thing Never Stops - James Simone’s sci-fi / fantasy fiction epic starring Raven, who accidentally sets in motion a series of events to be played out across countless ages for him and his companions in his quest for immortality.

It’s the story of the Lieutenant and his crack team of medieval fighting specialists as they embark on a dangerous mission into uncharted territory in a universe filled with parallel worlds all accessed through portals.

It’s the tale of the Outfit - the distant-future version of the military - and their response to the threat posed by a group of pseudo-dictators that call themselves the Swords.

It’s the bildungsroman conclusion to seven years’ worth of work on the subjects of modern philosophy, adventure ethos, and the potential value of martial endeavors in a post-modern setting - a story scratched into journals while on rock climbing trips, with plot notes hastily entered into phones and random scraps of paper.

Interested? Here’s a little excerpt to whet your appetite:

Interlude: Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny ¹

Just let me suffer the way I want to - Raven

I stepped behind the rain and paused. Each time the journey was a bit more fraught. Sometimes the rain lifted as easily as a curtain. Other times I held a glacier overhead. To go behind the rain is to live a new life - to die and be reborn - to pass annealed in fires that do not burn; to become consecrated; to destroy all that is holy; to run without hiding; For some, the rewards far outweight the risks.

I stood on a hill and watched the land burn around me. I stood on a hill and it did not talk to me, nor I to it. In silence, the flames roared. In silence, it rained. I lifted up the rain and stood behind it. The curtain of precipitation fell as I strode from the hill into another realm. Sometimes to make changes, you have to start fresh. Sometimes, a new beginning is better than a new chapter. I turned my back on my creations - I turned my back on the flames. My creations are also my mistakes. ²