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Cernon

The Genesis of Paradigm Lost

by R. Roderick Rowe

Cernon is an ancient deity whose people fled the European Steppes to America thousands of years before the last great ice age. For millennia he and his people dwelt in the western United States. Then came the white people and Cernon's people began to die out.  With fewer and fewer followers, Cernon's presence began to fade in the world. He faded into only an occasional ghostly image for a hundred years.

Then the founder of the Elk Creek Tribe of Oregon built a window between the worlds and invited Cernon through.

In "Cernon" the Sophia Shaman of the Elk Creek Tribe of 2163 tells of a journey Cernon took her on. Tens of thousands of years into the past, likely on a different continent, they meet a small tribe of cave dwellers on the verge of extinction as an ice age approaches. Sophia immediately sets out to help this people. When she finally stops to think, she wonders, did she start something rolling along the waves of time, or did time capture her as a tool to shape the world?

Cernon is listed as the first book of the Paradigm Lost Series. Not because it was the first book written, nor because it's the first in the timeline, but instead, because it's a short novella that introduces two characters who play roles throughout the long future-history of the Elk Creek Tribe. World-shaping roles!

Published:
Cover Artists:
R. Roderick Rowe

Genres:
Fantasy, Fantasy - LGBTQ+, Fantasy - Magical Realism, Fantasy - Mythic, Fantasy – Gods and Heroes, Sci Fi, Sci Fi - Human Evolution

Tags:
author - american, format - book, format - kindle, format - novella 15k-40K, format - paperback, format - series, identity - lesbian, identity - polyamorous, potential trigger - blood, potential trigger - death, what - topic - reincarnation, when - period - prehistoric, where - general - cave, where - general - mountains, who – type – druidic god, who – type – pagan god

Tropes: Evolving Powers, Fated Mates, Immortality, Sex Magic, Wise Mentor
Setting: American Northwest, and ancient European Steppes
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Same Universe / Various Characters
Tropes: Evolving Powers, Fated Mates, Immortality, Sex Magic, Wise Mentor
Setting: American Northwest, and ancient European Steppes
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Same Universe / Various Characters
Excerpt:

About the Author

Full Member, Science Fiction/Fantasy Writer's Association.

Member, Northwest Independent Writers Association.

Author Member, Liminal Fiction, A gathering of Speculative Fiction Authors and Readers.

Rowe had a career in a small district energy plant in Eugene, Oregon before downsizing to the coastal town of Winchester Bay, Oregon where he owned a 51 foot commercial fishing boat called the Ceres. He left the coast after the COVID years due to economic reality. He then worked at a big box home store in Portland, Oregon and now is a full-time author. Retired. That's the word. Retired.

He was a nuclear power plant operator serving aboard the USS Norfolk, SSN 714, in the U. S. Navy.

Rowe says of himself:

I’m writing all of the time. I may not be sitting at the computer with a document open, but I’m thinking about my characters and their issues, and how to resolve their problems all of the time. I started ‘thinking’ about "Paradigm Lost, Jamari and the Manhood Rites, Part I" FIVE years before I ever wrote down a single word. I talked about it with friends and partners. In my life, I relate things that happen to me as a gay man to what those events would feel like to the characters in my novel. When I finally sat down to put it all ‘on paper’, I had the bulk of it completed in three months and then spent the next 4 months polishing, cutting, pasting, etc.

As I have completed several novels, the next one is growing in importance with each passing day that I spend on promotions and the ‘business’ side of this endeavor. The characters are beginning to haunt my dreams at night. “Where are you?” they want to know. “When are we coming out again? When do we get to start the next adventure?” A couple seem to sense that things aren’t going to go well for them. They seem to be offering other options . . .

I have had a difficult time in applying my work to any specific genre. It contains elements of Magical Realism, Post Apocalypse (Dystopian), Science Fiction, Survivalist, Fantasy, Spiritual, LGBTQ and even a bit of Naturalist. What I really set out to do was to allow readers to see culture in a new way; to see sex in a new way, perhaps even to develop their own understanding of the beauty of that very human endeavor. The secondary goal was to make homosexuality normal. In order to accomplish these two goals I had to build a society that had discarded our current taboos and strictures. I had to destroy the culture I was raised up in and then create an entirely new culture from scratch.

How long have I known I was going to write? I thought I would want to write as far back as 7th grade. I enjoyed reading so much that I actually got reprimanded for reading in class at times. I suspect if I had been reading the text assigned it would have been okay, but, I was addicted to fiction early and upgraded to Science Fiction early in High School. I wrote many short stories and poems in H.S. I won several writing contests and was given a scholarship to college based on my writing. The most important thing I ever heard about writing though was that I needed to live a little bit before I would have anything interesting to say. In retrospect, I always could say something accurately and with flair, but, I did need to live a little in order to develop my story-line and know how to present it so it gets the attention it deserves.