I have an author page. (On Goodreads, but still.)

My Goodreads

Surprising that my indie book made it there. (Honestly, it being on Goodreads was a complete surprise. Apparently Neptune has potential anywhere he goes.)

Apparently, my literary influences are pretty legit.

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The scandalous truth about the small press author, D.N. Lyons...or what passes for scandalous these days.

Nowadays, when a person says "Scandalous!" they mean cruel things like feeding vodka to dogs (a la Facebook) or spamming the world with a book that, quite honestly, shouldn't exist for its lack of talent. (E.L. James? Stephenie Meyer? Christopher Paolini?)

But no one really talks about the truly heartbreaking scandals...like the soldier who goes away to war and comes back to give his daughter the PTSD he dodged. Unfortunately, scandals like that are not only accepted, but glorified. (After all, what happens in someone's house, illegal or not, should stay there...right?)

Don't kid yourself, friends. The answer is no.

It began twenty-seven years ago, in early March of 1985. A little girl was born whose potential had not yet been seen----whose ideas had years to go before they blossomed into a black rose with red runners.

The curtain closed behind her. She spent years on the outside looking in, traveling from Germany to Arizona to Holland to California to Nebraska...and then some. She picked up a fully American tomboy along the way and a dual-citizened blonde whose pet name was "Maus Fürze." And yes, it even sounds silly if you speak German.

In America she had no comfort; she wasn't happy. Then, one fateful day, she discovered the world of fantasy. High fantasy, modern fantasy, fantasy that clashed genres with elves and ninja in the same fighting space.... She thrived for a little while, and then felt the burn.

High school ended badly; if not for her few good classes, she wouldn't have passed. But college, conversely, had a 4.0 in many cases, and only one semester of academic probation. (Certain minds were too closed for her to enter, saddening as it was.)

During the last years of life at home, she found an idea one day, cobbled together from both what she 'knew' of fantasy and what she thought 'should' be fantasy. She didn't see the significance until a Post-It note from her artistic mother told her to continue. But for two years, her idea stayed stock-still at 33 pages. She couldn't focus!

The cause, sadly, was the scandal. Certain 'things' had befallen her at home----things no one talked about, but everyone looked at sadly and sympathetically, when it happened to other people. Her best friend was the first to know about it, and aside from the therapists she bounced off for years after, the only one to believe it. What a shame that every life must have a little rain----for what she found after, the reason for her loss of mental focus, was to be the rainbow.

Her mental age decreased by leaps and bounds now. She was 18, but the therapist told her that her behavior and lack of skills placed her mental age squarely at 6. And so the girl who'd grown up on the outside, but clearly not on the inside, battled for her own skills, for purchase on the glass wall of Life. Only in a moment of shock did she discover her fingers were sticky enough to climb the polished illusions.

Living alone (with added arsenals from therapy) she climbed the wall. She hoisted a line to some unseen ledge----where a man with golden hair and a dark face waited for her. Together they climbed, and soon others joined her.

The story ended. She took the knowledge she'd gained, the friends she'd loved, and sent it out into the world, waiting for an answer.


And there we end our tale. The little girl was not a fictional creation----but most of what she knew became one. 27 years became 13...and she laughed, she loved, she lived in what she knew by heart.... She took her name and shortened it, preferring to own up to her creations rather than hide behind a pseudonym.

The girl? D.N. Lyons.
The friends, the world? Neptune the Briarhearted.


And all was right with the world.