Exploring mythcraft, emotional cadence, and the descent into Sheol
Introduction
What follows is a layered conversation between myself and an AI companion—part interview, part ritual, part mythic reckoning. These questions were originally shaped for a press kit, but they’ve become something more: a glimpse into the emotional and ancestral terrain behind Waking in Sheol.
This isn’t just about writing a book.
It’s about crafting a continuum.
It’s about descent, emergence, and the quiet echoes that shape us.
This dialogue points the way to MAP.
— M. Alden Phillips
Questions & Answers:
Interviewer:
What mythic spark first ignited Waking in Sheol?
Was there a moment, image, or ancestral whisper that began the descent?
MAP:
I can’t point to a single “aha” moment that led me to Waking in Sheol.
It was more like a slow accumulation—a scatter of images, questions, and emotional echoes that kept circling back to one idea:
What if someone died suddenly—accidentally—and woke up in a mythical world?
Not a heaven. Not a hell. But something else.
A place shaped by memory, grief, and unfinished stories.
That question didn’t arrive with fanfare. It drifted in, quietly.
And over time, it became a descent.
Not just for Jack, but for me.
Interviewer:
How would you describe the emotional cadence of this novel?
What rhythms guide the reader through Sheol’s terrain?
MAP:
The emotional cadence of Waking in Sheol—as with all my writing—is organic.
I don’t impose rhythm; I let it surface.
I build a world, inhabit it with characters whose lives make sense within their own mythic logic, and allow their emotions to unfold with authenticity.
The rhythm of the seasons in Eldriko aligns with the southern hemisphere—subtle inversions that mirror the novel’s emotional terrain.
Grief arrives in summer. Renewal stirs in winter.
The reader moves through Sheol not in a straight line, but in spirals—through memory, rupture, and quiet reckoning.
There are moments of stillness, moments of descent, and moments of unexpected light.
The cadence isn’t constant—it breathes.
And in that breath, the reader finds their own rhythm.
Interviewer:
The title evokes a liminal awakening—what does “waking” mean in this context?
Is it spiritual, emotional, historical?
MAP:
Jack wakes in several forms throughout Waking in Sheol.
Physically—he dies on Earth and wakes in the fields of Eldriko, disoriented and unsure if he’s alive, dreaming, or something else entirely.
Emotionally—he returns to a home fractured by abandonment, only to find love rekindled in unexpected ways.
Spiritually—he doesn’t seek renewal, but it finds him. His beliefs shift, not through revelation, but through quiet reckoning.
“Waking” isn’t just about consciousness. It’s about emergence—through grief, memory, and myth. Jack’s awakening is liminal, layered, and unfinished. Just like ours.
Interviewer:
How does your background as a counselor and historian shape the narrative?
Are there echoes of real lives or therapeutic journeys within the story?
MAP:
That’s a deep question, isn’t it?
My background in history taught me that facts alone don’t shape a people—it’s how those facts interact, how they ripple through culture, myth, and memory. History isn’t just dates and events. It’s the emotional architecture of a shared story.
Counseling, in many ways, mirrors that—on a personal scale.
It’s about how emotions and relationships meet personality, hope, and fear.
That lens shapes my characters. They don’t just act—they respond, adapt, and reckon.
Jack, for instance, doesn’t have the temperament of a traditional military officer.
But he made it work—on Earth, and later with his intentional family-squad in Eldriko.
His intuition and perception allow him to accept what arises, and to shift course when needed. That’s not just strategy—it’s emotional resilience.
There are echoes of real lives and therapeutic journeys throughout the novel.
Not as direct parallels, but as emotional truths.
The descent into Sheol is mythic, yes—but it’s also deeply human.
Interviewer:
You’ve called yourself a mythcrafter. What does that term mean to you?
How does it differ from traditional fantasy or literary fiction?
MAP:
Literary fiction, traditional fantasy, and mythcrafting share a sacred architecture.
Each explores internal change—through spiritual, emotional, or psychological descent.
Each relies on symbols and archetypes to evoke meaning beyond the literal.
Each crafts a world, though the purpose of that world differs.
Literary fiction often reflects the emotional terrain of the self.
Fantasy builds imagined realms to explore power, morality, or myth.
Mythcrafting, for me, is more intentional. It’s structural.
It treats every scene, breathmark, and motif as a glyph in a larger continuum.
Mythcrafting isn’t bound by genre—it’s a ritual act.
It shares a sacred thread, whether the reader is religious, secular, or somewhere in between.
It invites not just immersion, but reckoning.
Interviewer:
Can you share a glimpse of Jack’s descent?
What emotional or mythic layers define his arc?
MAP:
Jack’s descent…
At first glance, it might seem like a standard character arc—something every reader expects.
But it’s more than that.
It’s mythic.
It’s emotional.
It’s sacred.
At its core, Jack’s descent is buried in his emotional terrain.
He returns from combat—wounded physically, scarred emotionally, alienated spiritually.
He comes home expecting the world he left to honor his service.
But his wife is gone.
The rhythms he once knew no longer fit.
He throws himself back into those old patterns, hoping to reclaim the life he surrendered.
And then, the ground falls away.
His physical life is surrendered too.
So I ask:
Is Jack’s awakening in Sheol the start of his descent?
Or does it begin with the assignment of the quest?
Does it end with the final page of Book One?
Or does it continue—layered, evolving—through the entire trilogy?
I don’t have a single answer.
Because descent, in Jack’s world, is not a fall.
It’s a reckoning.
A return.
A chance to reframe what survival means.
Interviewer:
What role does lineage play in your storytelling?
Are there threads from your own family history woven into the novel?
MAP:
Lineage is never far from my storytelling.
It’s not always deliberate—but it’s always present.
My self-view is braided with family stories that stretch back seven or eight generations, and sometimes further.
At any moment, a tale might surface:
— the family member who met William McKinley
— the ancestor who ran a station on the Underground Railroad
— the Thatchers, lone survivors of the wreck of the James
— a young man who fought with a New York militia in 1776
These stories live in me.
They shape the emotional terrain I write from.
Hints of them find their way into my narratives—not as direct parallels, but as mythic echoes.
My studies in history and psychology do the same.
They’re not intrusions.
They’re inheritances.
I won’t apologize for their presence.
They’re part of me.
And they belong in my art.
Interviewer:
How do you ritualize your writing process?
Are there practices, spaces, or tools that help you preserve your sovereign rhythm?
MAP:
Ritualize my writing? Absolutely.
But it’s less about ceremony and more about environmental evolution.
One space in my home has transformed over the years into a place where I can create.
It began as a garage—a place to hold a conveyance.
Then it became a family room, long before I ever saw the house.
Later, it served as a retreat and bedroom for my adolescent daughter.
After she found her own adult abode, the room sat underused for a time.
Eventually, I reshaped it into a workspace for visual arts.
Its final transformation combined a studio for photographic work, amateur jewelry making, and—ultimately—a retreat for weaving narratives.
Inconsistent lighting gave way to uniform 5000K LED panels.
Music, carefully curated, sets the emotional tone: 60s, 70s, and 80s rock, classical, jazz, swing, musical theater, medieval chants—an opus too vast to list.
My “man cave,” as my wife affectionately calls it, is more than a studio.
It’s a creative sanctuary.
A place where visual storytelling and mythcrafting converge.
Where breathmarks are shaped in silence, and lineage finds its voice.
Interviewer:
The imagery in your work is often elemental—mist, stone, compass rose. What do these motifs signify?
Are they symbolic breathmarks or narrative anchors?
MAP:
Symbols find their way into my narrative—some are intentional, others surprise even me.
Water flows through Waking in Sheol as a means of change and cleansing.
The compass rose stands at the tension point between being lost and finding home.
Stone offers foundation—both physical and emotional.
And mist… mist is the breath of Eldriko’s fracture.
It veils, it reveals, it mourns.
These are the major motifs.
But beyond them are subtler glyphs—some obvious, some so quiet they may go unnoticed.
Until later.
I hope readers let the symbols flow over their thoughts and hopes.
Not just to follow Jack’s goals,
but to reflect their own dreams and reckonings
Interviewer:
You’ve spoken of breathmarks and paragraph rhythm. How do you shape the structure of your prose?
Is it intuitive, musical, or architected?
MAP:
This may be the most difficult question of the interview—because it asks me to name something I often feel before I understand.
Is it intuitive? I think so.
Is it musical? I hope so.
Is it architectural? Absolutely. It has to be.
My thoughts about prose may fall outside conventional definitions.
What I write is prose, yes—but sometimes it’s poetry, prophecy, dream, argument, or whatever my mind releases in the moment.
Structure emerges from rhythm.
Breathmarks shape the emotional cadence.
Paragraphs land like glyphs.
Spacing becomes silence.
And silence becomes meaning.
My protagonist is flawed in his attempts to help.
My antagonist is understandable in his villainy.
Each character is intentional—woven into the ongoing tension between chaos and order.
That tension shapes the terrain.
And the terrain shapes the prose.
Interviewer:
What challenges did you face in publishing Waking in Sheol?
How did you protect your voice and formatting from distortion?
MAP:
Writing Waking in Sheol came with its own terrain of challenges—some familiar to any creative act, others uniquely mine.
There’s the expected descent: plotlines, character development, emotional depth, and weaving words into something that breathes.
Then comes the technical climb—grammar, spelling, consistency.
But that, in hindsight, may have been the easiest part.
The real reckoning began with publishing.
I had to choose between traditional and self-publishing—each with its own rituals and gatekeepers.
Editing, beta readers, trim sizes, font selection, layout.
Cover design—whether crafted myself or entrusted to another.
Blurbs, bios, metadata, approvals.
A hundred details, each one a breathmark.
And then came the hardest part: marketing.
Learning to promote my book felt like stepping into a foreign terrain.
It wasn’t just about visibility—it was about protecting my voice from distortion.
Preserving formatting, cadence, and mythic integrity in a world that often demands simplification.
This interview is part of that journey.
Not just promotion—but reclamation.
A way to speak in my own rhythm, on my own terms.
Interviewer:
How do you invite readers into your world?
What kind of resonance or reflection do you hope they experience?
MAP:
My world is a place of acceptance and redemption.
When a character enters Eldriko, it’s not just a crossing—it’s an invitation.
A chance for completion. Restoration. Renewal.
Jack arrives burdened by self-defined failures—relationships, combat, confidence.
But Eldriko offers him a second chance.
Not to erase the past, but to reframe it.
Readers may find their own second chance alongside Jack and Scott.
They may see echoes of their own grief, hope, and reckoning in Jack’s descent.
They may find renewal among the Manos, the Fairmen—even the Kethan.
Serenity in the mist of Asher.
Peace in the archives.
Eldriko doesn’t demand transformation.
It offers mystic healing—whatever the visitor to the continuum needs.
This isn’t escapism.
It’s a return.
Interviewer:
What has reader silence taught you?
Is it a sacred pause, a mythic echo, or something else?
MAP:
Reader silence?
It’s been more present than I’d hoped.
One evidence of presence is found in reviews—and those have been sparse.
One-on-one, I’ve received appreciation, even promises of reviews that never appear.
And yet… that silence has taught me something.
I’ve come to accept their quiet as a personal glyph.
A mark that may never be shared.
The reasons are diverse, and mostly hidden.
Introversion. Anonymity. Hesitation.
Whatever the cause, I honor it.
Not every reader speaks aloud.
Some reflect in silence.
Some carry the story in ways I’ll never see.
That, too, is part of the continuum.
Interviewer:
You’ve shown your photography at festivals—how does visual storytelling inform your writing?
Do images ever precede words?
MAP:
Sometimes images lead to narrative. Other times, the narrative shapes my search for the visual.
Regardless of which comes first, I approach both fields—photography and writing—with a similar workflow.
Images never spring fully formed from the camera. The capture might seem like the beginning of a fine art photograph, but that’s rarely accurate. Planning, waiting, and simple luck all play their part. Once the image is captured, it undergoes several layers of post-production—adjustments, refinements, tonal shifts—until it becomes the piece of art that began as “painting with light.”
Writing follows a similar path. A literary idea evolves into character arcs, plotlines, rising tensions, and resolutions. Then I apply the skills I’ve learned from photography—layering the narrative image with intention. A hint of shadowing here. A touch of lightening there. A narrative vignette to frame the emotional cadence.
Both mediums invite me to shape mythic resonance from raw material. Whether through lens or language, I’m always crafting toward clarity, lineage, and breath.
Interviewer:
What’s next in your mythic continuum?
Are there sequels, dispatches, or archival offerings on the horizon?
MAP:
The mythic continuum doesn’t end with Waking in Sheol—it deepens.
Jack continues his voyage and his search for the redemption of Eldriko.
But his journey isn’t a single quest—it’s a constellation.
He seeks the Heart of Sheol, yes, but he also dreams of building a home.
A place of acceptance. A sanctuary for those who need one.
The search for the Heart demands Jack’s direct descent.
But the founding of a community does not.
He entrusts that vision to companions he’s chosen with care—those who can raise what he hopes to inhabit, should he survive.
Jack’s quest includes Scott and Kendra.
Scott finds an old identification—rebranded in Eldriko, inscribed anew.
Kendra wrestles not only with the magic of healing, but with the consequences of delving too deeply into its art.
Each of them carries a thread of the continuum.
Each of them shapes the terrain in their own way.
MAP (in closing):
This conversation began as a press kit.
It became a descent—a fantasy author interview.
And now, it becomes a map—unfinished, spiraling, and quietly alive.
If you’ve walked part of this terrain with me, thank you.
The continuum continues.
If this dialogue stirred something in you, I’d be honored to hear your thoughts.
Reviews, reflections, or quiet echoes are welcome.
— M. Alden Phillips
Author. Steward. Cartographer of Sheol
