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A Blog From Fezariu

Looking back on my life I still can’t believe it has become the inspiration for a book. I’ve known many people with stories far more extraordinary than my own yet David M. Brown chose to commit my tale to a novel. It’s a great honour for me but what of my story you will wonder. Is my past really worth a novel?

I’ve never asked for sympathy about any aspect of my life. Everything that has happened to me I’ve always taken responsibility for, perhaps I made myself too responsible for things, I don’t know. My upbringing began with all the love and support I could have hoped for but one day my mother left. At the time I never understood why my mother had gone. I was too young and weak to face up to the obstacles back then and at eleven years old I ran away from everything. It wasn’t an easy childhood but I know people that have gone through far worse. The important thing is I survived and for that I am eternally grateful to the Merelax Mercenaries who gave me my escape route and the chance to begin my life again.

What can I tell you of the Merelax Mercenaries? Well, I can still feel the aches in my muscles from the hours of training, the persistent headaches from intense studying in the university library, the smell of the smoke rising from hundreds of fires in Redemption and the numbing cold of the bloody battlefields in Himordia. The mercenaries changed my life. I needed to be free of my childhood and for a time I was able to forget the past. Well, almost...

I never expected to be close to anyone again after my mother abandoned me as a boy but the mercenaries changed all that. It brings tears to my eyes to think of them all now – Tessera, Vintaro and Arshea. They were my companions in the mercenaries, we were inseparable throughout my time there and I do miss seeing them. I also have fond memories of my tutor, General Bayard, especially the selective hearing that he deployed to keep him out of university politics but more importantly to surprise any recruits that had the audacity to whisper or mutter obscenities under their breaths. Even today I find myself watching what I say just in case General Bayard is eavesdropping nearby. Sometimes I imagine Tessera, Vintaro and Arshea walking through the door and luring me to the nearest tavern to drink ourselves into inebriation but of course they never do.  Sometimes the past is just the past.

Today my story is over but thanks to David and his wonderful wife, Donna, it has been immortalised in the pages of a novel. I’m grateful to them both but especially Donna who is a lot nicer than her husband, believe me! Is my story worth your time? I believe so. If you won’t read it for me then read it for those who were there during my childhood and that fought with me in the western colonies. My mother Jessamine, my stepfather Peter, Alycea, Uncle Edward, Tessera, Vintaro, Arshea, General Bayard and Melea – all of them shaped my life at some stage and their stories are just as important as mine. I hope you will choose to learn more about them as well as me.    

Fezariu's Epiphany by David M. Brown

Available in paperback at Amazon and other fine bookstores as well as in Kindle format

The White Oak, Clarendon's oldest brothel, lured and destroyed men by the thousands. Fezariu was different. He had never been drawn by the White Oak's vices but the brothel had still ruined him when he was just a boy. Salvation came in the form of the Merelax Mercenaries - Elenchera's most prestigious hired hands. They gave Fezariu the chance to escape from his past. Immersed in the world of dangerous assignments in the colonies Fezariu longed to forget everything about his childhood but only in facing the past would he ever be free of it.

The story revolves around the main character, Fezariu, who suffers a betrayal as a young boy that leads him to turn his back on his family. He joins the Merelax Mercenaries, convinced that their way of life will offer him a way to avoid any ties and leave his past firmly behind. In his quest to prove himself, he is forced to forge new alliances in order to survive the dangerous assignments in the colonies but works hard to distance himself emotionally. Despite his determined focus to move on his thoughts are constantly drawn back to Clarendon where the White Oak, an infamous brothel, holds the secret to his past and the childhood friend he abandoned still remains.