A Special Message From Erik Jensen

Many people, including my parents, have commented on the amount of violence, battles, and sword fights there are in my book, Orphan Mage. Some (not too many I hope) will judge it and my current situation as one. I am in prison for life without parole for murder. Therefore I must be a violent person. I’m not.

Fantasy adventure books have been my favorite books since I started reading the Red Wall series of books by Brian Jacques as a young child. I read everything I can get my hands on, Salvatore, Jordan, etc. I love the worlds they create, the new people and creatures they introduce you to, and the possibilities and choices they offer. What we call magic, they treate as ordinary. And in these new realms, the authors allow us to examine how we treat one another, and how our towns and nations function without the story being seen as political in origin. Animal Farm, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Harry Potter all make use of the same literary device.

But the fantasy adventure I write is not for children. It’s for adults and young adults. Inherent in that genre are battles, wars, deaths and magic. There are battles on the level of the World Wars, and in any war there are bad things that happen. The main point of my first book, and of the other books in the series (not out yet), is that there is always a very real struggle between Good and Evil, whether it is at the personal level, religious, national or world level. Sometimes Evil masquerades and Good and sometimes Good is perceived as Evil. And then there’s that gray area in between. It’s what I call Balance, which is a much more important part of the next two books, but it is basically the means by which the “tyranny of the majority” is prevented from being brought to bear on the minority.

While the story is told in the setting of very old civilizations that regularly mount large armies and fight to the death on every battlefield where they meet, the message is NOT that this is the way to settle things. The message is that Evil conspires to not just exist, but to conquer and extinguish Good entirely. Good must constantly be on guard and actively fight against Evil in its various forms.

The “lessons” from my series of books relate directly to the reason I am in prison. I was a daily witness to the results of years of abuse of my friend by his parents. I saw first hand how Evil can be hidden behind a Good façade, and how that kept my friend from getting the help he needed and asked for. I tried my best to get him the help he needed through my parents, social workers and others. But my best and their efforts weren’t good enough. When my friend finally broke, convinced they were going to kill him that night, I made some bad choices. I acted like the kid I was, stupidly and stoned. I should have called 911 when I realized what was happening, I should have turned around and run for help or tried to stop it. But I didn’t. I will never stop feeling great remorse and anguish for how I acted and my lack of actions that night. It cost my friend and I our freedom, it cost his mother, no matter how sick a person she was, her life, and it caused all of the people who knew and loved any of us years of pain and torment. For that I will always be sorry beyond words. I would give anything to be able to go back to the night and undo what was done.

Because of that experience, I learned how Evil can take over people who might otherwise have been Good. I don’t understand how it happens. Maybe they had horrible experiences themselves as children. Maybe they just lose their way in life and take it out on those around them. Whatever the reason, when Evil invades parents, it recreates itself too often in their children if they live through it. To be stopped it must be identified.

My books show Evil in a fantasy adventure form where Nations are at stake. They show the roots of Evil and the damage it does, and what Good must do to prevent it from taking over the world. They also strive to be entertaining, as well as containing a message. Yes there’s a lot of fighting, battles, swordplay, and other forms of violence. There’s also a lot of magic, which in this genre takes the place of modern day technology, and a lot of different and new species of people in the world I’ve created. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” There’s lots more things in Orphan Mage.