Posted by INTRO:
Jesse Teller is mentally disabled. He suffers from PTSD from an abusive childhood.
He is bipolar, suffers from daily to hourly hallucinations, and has DID (multiple
personality disorder).
He has been a member of the self-published fantasy community for four and a half
years now, has published fourteen books, with plans to publish countless more.
Jesse Teller is not a sane man. He has been declared mentally unfit and is a
certified madman. This blog series is a glimpse into the way he sees a small handful of
his peers and a look into his own mind.
The Excerpt:
The Lunatic
The Lunatic walked into a perfectly reasonable room tonight and sat at this desk. It was wooden. The walls were covered with pictures and notes. The floor was carpet and needed a vacuum. The ceiling was covered in scarves and sarongs. He had a Rottweiler, and a mix breed half chocolate lab, half English bulldog walking beside him. He had a desk chair. He had two comfortable chairs for guests to sit on and the entire room was reasonable. The Lunatic found a music video that would get him through the night, Tech Nine’s “World Wide Choppers.” And after listening to that song about three times, the world of The Lunatic ripped to pieces. It shredded into madness. He was waiting for it to. He is comfortable now. He is home. The Lunatic is back where he belongs. Now he sits at a desk made of iron, and every click of his keyboard is a hammer blow to that anvil. The ceiling has ripped away to a night’s sky. The stars are diamonds.
In the air above him hovers Smear Lord of Ire, and in the gentle puff of his wings, The Lunatic finds peace for the first time all day. One wall is now flaming. There is a wall made of eyes, a wall made of ice, and a wall made of nails. The ground has turned to solid glass ten feet thick that shows the burning fires of hell below, and in this madness, The Lunatic is not alone. Beside him on a throne made of twisted rusted wires sits Shadow. He is smoking a cigarette, but that is not allowed in our house. Cigarettes are meant for outside, but what use does Shadow have for rule or law? At his feet sits a half a can of gasoline, and he ashes near its open lid. Across from him sits the Master of Monsters with his long, oily black hair draped across his chest and hiding everything about his body except his five-foot long legs with knobby knees and sweating pale skin.
The Rott is now comprised of flower blossoms. Her entire coat made of flower buds that will close when she gets thirsty and bloom when she drinks. The mixed breed is now made of solid ice. He steams as he sits in the office and snores. The Lunatic can see Assassin standing near the flaming wall. He can see Shade pacing behind the desk of iron. He knows that at times he will be Prince. At times Adam. The Lunatic is working and the world around him is chaos. When The Lunatic talks about his world, he stops making sense. Everyone who knows anything about literature knows that what he is saying is impossible. No one writer can write 71 books in the same world. Not with this level of intricacy and detail. No one writer can keep it all straight. But The Lunatic does not take notes or they would overcome his office. He does not make outlines or they would come out the scratchings of a madman. The Lunatic keeps it all straight in his own head because he has no other way. He has nowhere to put it all except down on paper. He has no way to sanity except through the steady unleashing of the world. It plagues him always. It tears at his mind and will not let him rest. It is with him when he sleeps. It is with him when he talks to his children. The story never stops. The story never stops. The story is relentless and devastating, and to try to stop it is to get crushed beneath it.
Three acts.
Twenty-eight books to tell the story of the rise of a leader and the creation of a world. Twenty-eight books to show the main characters and build the themes. To create the groups and the orders that will rip the world to pieces, because nothing this mad can last. No world this twisted, with this many monsters and horrors, can be saved, no matter the heroes. No matter how many heroines you throw at it. This world is broken. Acts two and three, forty-three books to break it all and burn it to ash. The gods and goddesses are suffering from PTSD from the war they fought. Heaven is in shambles and the deities are just trying to make it through the day without breaking. The nations are rising and falling. The dead piling up. The greatest masters of terror are getting more powerful and the greatest forces of good are quailing or fighting a fight they can’t win. Hell is restless and boiling over. It wants the world of man and has been plotting to take it. The fairies and other magical creatures that could stand in their way are trapped in a world of bliss, helpless to escape their own gilded prison to fight side-by-side with the people they love. The Genocide is ramping up. The armies are building that will destroy everything in this world. And powers are rising that will either hunt down or slaughter every remaining god and goddess. Soon nothing will be able to help this world The Lunatic is trapped in, and he has just the shred of hope that one girl can save them all. The Lunatic lives here. He bubbles up every now and then, bursting into tears at family gatherings. Raving to himself in a locked bedroom, naked and cowering under a ceiling fan and a torn blanket. The Lunatic is held together by the love of one powerful woman and the helping hands of his two sons. They guide him to the bedroom when he gets lost in his house. They help him find food when he hasn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. They tell him it will all be okay, the work will be done one day and the well-deserved rest of The Lunatic will come. That he will find a castle to rest in and a tower to watch the lightning and the rain. He will one day be saved by the work he is forced to do, and one day The Lunatic might be sane. But that day is far from today. That day is on the other side of horror and hate. Because The Lunatic of Fantasy cannot move around this. There is no way over, or under, the only way for the end to come and peace to be found is through. So, step by step, hammer fall by hammer fall, The Lunatic fights his way through the world he has created and the world he is prisoner to as he holds tight to the family that cares about him, and the friends who will not leave him behind. The Lunatic of Fantasy will find a way. He has survived too much not to. He will rise, fingers pulling at the walls of his hole, as he fights his way to the light.
When The Lunatic meets you at a convention or a book fair, know that most times you do not have a face for him to look at. Most of the time your eyes, nose, chin, and forehead are comprised of smoke. Black smoke that pools around your face. He cannot let himself see your face or he will lose his mind. When you are at a dinner table with The Lunatic, know that the food you see in front of you and the food you see in front of him is not what he is seeing at all. He sees something monstrous that he has to force in his mouth. Once it is there, it tastes like your food tastes, but before he gets it in his mouth it is unbearable. When you talk to The Lunatic know that there are others walking around you. There are others speaking to him that he has learned to ignore. There are others who will step into him to answer questions differently than he would answer them. When you think about The Lunatic, know that he will survive. He has been doing it for so long, he doesn’t know how not to anymore.
Author Bio:
Jesse Teller fell in love with fantasy when he was five years old and played his first game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game gave him the ability to create stories and characters from a young age. He started consuming fantasy in every form and, by nine, was obsessed with the genre. As a young adult, he knew he wanted to make his life about fantasy. From exploring the relationship between man and woman, to understanding the qualities of a leader or a tyrant, Jesse Teller uses his stories and settings to study real world themes and issues.
Esme’s Thoughts:
As another note: I’ve read many of his books and enjoyed myself with them. They will appeal to people who like darker stories, with epic main characters, expansive world building, and weird twists that will keep you wondering what will happen next. They are imaginative, otherworldly, surreal, and well written. Jesse’s covers are master works of art, truly eye catching and professional.
