Andrew Stevens

If you're here, you're probably slightly curious about the writer behind the Cycle of Awakening. While I generally don't enjoy talking about myself, I understand that connecting with someone's art is just as much about the art as it is the heart behind it.

My Origin Story

My journey into writing goes way back, before I graduated high school in a small town in northwestern Oregon in 2004. I don't remember exactly when my passion for creating began, but as it blossomed somewhere around middle school, it started in the form of writing. While I liked to draw early on, I never really had a knack for it. But words were something else entirely. I found I had a way with them, and so they became my tool for creating the worlds I dreamt of.

Over the years, I started several stories and made some decent progress on a couple. I also wrote dozens of short stories, but I never really did anything with them. They mostly stayed in my mind, or in notebooks, and with the rise of personal computers, eventually migrated to the digital.

Along the way, I found myself entranced by RPGs: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Legacy of Kain series, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft. These were some of my favorites, because they all shared one thing in common: story. And not just story, but they brought to life fantastical worlds like the ones I had imagined in my own head. The problem was, while I immensely enjoyed experiencing the worlds others had built, it made me complacent in creating my own.

Fast forward to 2022. We were mostly through the pandemic, and unlike many others, I'd yet to develop a new passion. But then, John came along.

John was a good friend I'd met several years prior who'd found his true calling in life coaching. When he reached out, it sparked something that had been there for years. I knew I'd been shying away from my creative gifts. As John and I talked, it quickly became apparent that I needed to revisit my writing, and as a goal, I was going to write a book. Like actually, really write a book.

I started around March of 2023, one word at a time, one paragraph at a time, until slowly the words became pages and the pages became chapters. In March of 2024, all of that became the first draft of When Blood Burns. The story had actually started a couple of years prior as a prompt-based contest on Vocal. When the time came to pick what I was going to write, that idea stood out to me the most. And I'm so very glad I stuck with it, because I think I've started something really special.

Why This Matters to Me

I don't know where things will go from here. Writing a book and getting people to buy it, much less enjoy it and give you decent ratings, are entirely different things. But I have faith because I know I'm doing what I was meant to do. And even if most of the world never sees what I create, I will be happy knowing I am finally following the passion inside me.

If you find yourself inspired by any of this, I'd truly love to have you join me on this journey. Because, like me, I'm willing to bet that at least some of you are still searching for the passion and determination to do what it is you were meant to do. And if I can help with that, along with bringing you some wildly entertaining worlds to immerse yourself in, then I, at least, will find the joy I hope you find as well.

To the worlds we all wish were real...

Yours truly,
Andrew Stevens