Here we are a week out from the release of my third novel, Blessed is the Rot. I would say it’s high time for a post on what inspired this wild story.
Seed
I love recounting the details of when that initial spark of an idea for a novel came into my mind. There’s something about that moment that’s electric. A wealth of potential stares me down. A world is born and just waiting for my fingers to type it into existence. With that in mind, let’s dive into the seed for Blessed is the Rot.
I was in Karlsruhe (Germany) circa July 2024 attending a radiation safety training course. As an aside, I’m a scientist and laboratory manager in my day job, hence the need to take the class. During a lab practical, one of the instructors uncovered a gamma emitter (source of radiation) and commented on how some people claim they can sense the radiation. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I swear I felt a kind of unease coming from the emitter. I was smitten with this idea that some people, maybe myself included, could have a sixth sense for ionizing radiation. Around this time, I also randomly got sucked back into reading about Bloodborne lore while commuting to the training class. If you aren’t familiar with it, Bloodborne is an award-winning video game from 2015 with a Victorian aesthetic and lots of cosmic horror elements. It’s one of my all-time favorite video games.
Now, while these topics might not seem to be related, my mind, being the strange beast that it is, kind of forced these two new obsessions to sit side by side and then stew. A few days after my training ended, while sitting in a hotel relaxing after a train ride and mentally prepping myself for a techno festival, the central premise for Blessed is the Rot was born. Radiation as distortions. Afflicted as Lovecraftian horrors. A tortured hero and heroine. A love story. Secrets. Sacrifice.
Subgenres
I wanted to do a lot with Blessed is the Rot, and from the early days, I didn’t even know what to call the genre myself. My Alfom shared universe, which this is a part of, is science fiction, but Blessed is the Rot isn’t pure sci-fi. There are clearly fantasy elements. The beginning of the story feels like fantasy, albeit of a different flavor. Then there are the horror elements, of the cosmic variety. Lastly, there’s the love story between the two leads, a seemingly doomed romance that drives the plot and dictates the choices the characters make time and time again. Eventually, through much help from my beta readers, I settled on a fitting label. Blessed is the Rot is a dark science fantasy with a bit of horror and a bit of romance.
Math (as Religion? Magic?)
I like math. I like even more the tone of it, the dryness that can so easily morph into a kind of dogma. Religions rely on central tenets, the simpler, the better. Why not then marry these? I can’t claim to be the first to do this. There’s a long tradition of novels that feature math/science-based religions. Maybe a recent reread I did of The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) influenced me subconsciously. Or else, the idea seeped into my mind while doing my daily yoga stretches near a bookcase that sports a copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller). One thing I know for sure, despite readers often linking my works to Warhammer 40k, that universe was not an inspiration. I don’t really know much about it, and I find it endlessly fascinating that two books of mine have now been compared to the Warhammer universe (Nytho and Blessed is the Rot). Maybe it’s a sign that I really ought to check it out.
Wherever the inspiration for a math-based religion came from, I was happy to settle on it. Honestly, it was a bit of a shortcut for the world-building because it allowed me to have access to so many preexisting concepts and terms. No need to create something completely new when I could just dig deep into my memories from my undergrad days (the last time I took a proper math course). Then it was just a matter of peppering some aggrandizing phrasing to give the math a religious bent. The Exalted Sine Function. The Specifications for Harmonious Spaces. The Axioms of the Euclidean.
Speaking of Euclidean and non-Euclidean…This seems to be a common source of confusion for readers. I knew the vast majority of people wouldn’t know what the terms meant, but I’m also highly aware of the world we live in. Everything is an internet search away. I expect readers to look up the terms, read the descriptions, then be confused by what they find.
For a primer, Euclidean geometry describes the universe as we experience it in our day-to-day lives. Two parallel lines never meet. A triangle’s angles will always add to 360 degrees. You know, all the mathematical rules you learned in geometry. Non-Euclidean geometry is weird and only really applies to unusual systems, such as space-time near a black hole. Make sense? No? It doesn’t matter because the main point is that Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries are simply shorthand ways to describe normal and abnormal space-time. Are distortions absent (good) or present (bad)? The Church that runs the city where our story takes place is like every organized religion. It takes complex ideas, oversimplifies them, and, in the process, bastardizes the truth.
Now, why Euclidean and non-Euclidean specifically? Why not more familiar terms? The thing is, I’m not the first person to use these in fiction, especially in regards to how they affect the human mind. Remember how I said there are elements of cosmic horror in Blessed is the Rot? Well, feel free to check out the works by the father of the subgenre, H.P. Lovecraft. Better yet, check out “The Dreams in the Witch House”. (Yes, I know he’s problematic, and it bugs me to no end that he’s influenced my work. At least he’s long dead and can’t benefit from people reading his works). In essence, non-Euclidean geometries are too much for the human mind to comprehend. As such, they tend to drive one insane.
Setting
Despite some varying opinions from readers on what does and doesn’t work in Blessed is the Rot, nearly all the reviewers to date seem to agree that the novel has unique world-building. In essence, the setting was influenced to various degrees by my love of Bloodborne, fungi, and period dramas. The city at the center of the tale is Simetria. It’s Victorian-esque complete with cobblestoned streets, bell towers, chimneys, sad shacks for the poor and grand estates for the wealthy. You might be thinking that doesn’t sound that terribly unique. True, but I suppose what people find refreshing is the combination of elements that make up the whole of the setting. This includes the Church of Impermanence, tasked with safe-guarding Simetria and keeping the non-Euclidean at bay using math-based rituals meant to “remind” reality of its truest form.
The Church also uses some clever symbolism involving rot. Impermanence, rot, death, these are all seen as blessed things because in a Euclidean world (one that follows the normal laws of physics), these are all inevitable outcomes. But in a world consumed by the non-Euclidean, time loses its arrow. Things do not die or rot. They have permanence. How can rot be blessed? Well, now you have your answer. I suspect this play on expectations strikes some people’s fancy.
Narrative Style
Blessed is the Rot represents my first published novel that isn’t written in first person. I adore writing in first person, as I explained in this post, but there’s a time and a place for it. With Blessed is the Rot, I wanted a more coherent narrative voice to ground what was always going to be a weird world. It also gave me the opportunity to channel my early-writer days when I wrote like a Victorian author, all melodrama and purple prose. Of course, the writing in Blessed is the Rot is distinct from Victorian-era literature, but I like to think it harkens back ever so slightly to the young-writer Sheri.
Blessed is the Rot is my first novel with a “clear cut” antagonist. My debut, Nytho, doesn’t offer easy answers regarding morality. It is up to the reader to decide who they root for and against. The conflict in my second novel, Neuen, mostly centers around the harsh planet and the oppressive system of governance at play. Vergil is my first true antagonist. Pretty early on I decided to give him some chapters to add depth and to contrast with those by the leads, Fenrir and Sophie. To my surprise, I absolutely loved writing Vergil’s chapters. To some readers, he’s a “mustache-twirling villain”, and to others, he’s more nuanced. You’ll have to read the novel to decide for yourself, but I will say, my intent was only ever to make him feel real. This is true of all my characters in everything I write. Vergil’s motivations come from very human wants and needs. If a reader hates him, I did my job in making them feel strongly, one way or the other.
Now, beyond the “normal” chapters that follow these three characters, I also occasionally used excerpts to deepen the world-building. These range from things like proclamations about a new tower being built to a letter between a young Sophie and her father to much more interesting hints into the past that slowly reveal how the world became what it is. My idea for using these excerpts came from Wikipedia’s page on Gothic horror which states that the genre can be characterized by “discovered manuscripts or interpolated histories”. Feel free to read more on that page to see what other elements I snagged. I suspect many readers appreciate the world-building in Blessed is the Rot to a large extent because of these little excerpts. I had a lot of fun writing them and challenging myself, as they sometimes required a fair amount of research. I continue to use them for rest of the trilogy and, through them, am able to dig even deeper into the past to reveal more details about the rise of the Church and the fall of the Old World.
The Bit Trilogy and Connections to the Alfom Shared Universe
Blessed is the Rot is the first book in a trilogy. As such, of course there will be questions I left unanswered. I have to keep you all coming back for the rest of the books, now don’t I? Besides, delayed gratification is a wondrous thing that we experience all too little these days. Will I answer all the questions in the next two books? No, but it’s not because I’m a jerk. There’s a reason for it.
Blessed is the Rot and the Bit trilogy as a whole are part of a larger story, the Alfom shared universe. Everything I write falls into this shared reality. There are some very big picture plot points that, if I’m being honest, won’t be answered until the end of the massive series. I hint at them. Book by book. I give a little more and a little more insight into what’s at play on a grand scale. Who/what are the Others and the Lady, what are their goals, are they good or bad, these are questions I will partly answer in the Bit trilogy but only partly. Maybe that annoys you, and if it does, all I can say is, have you read my other novels and short stories? If not, consider joining me for the long haul. We’re looking at a grand total of 16 novels and many more short stories/novellas. It’ll keep you and me occupied for a while yet, and isn’t that really the whole point? Creation and consumption. Writer and reader. An endless spiral. Let’s make some non-Euclidean geometries together!
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