Indie Author Interview - Keon Shore - Progression Fantasy - Fantasy Book

She built a magic system out of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Physicist-turned-author Keon Shore on THE BAD APOTHECARY, book one of The Ninth Path, and the Jungian shadow underneath it.

Keon walked away from physics, then spent years turning integral theory, Jung's shadow, and Daoist inner alchemy into a cultivation fantasy where doing magic wrong tears holes in reality. She explains how a universe with repressed truths became the engine of the series, why she wrote it so none of that has to be visible to enjoy the story, and how Chinese web novels shaped her stripped-down prose. Plus why she doesn't believe in dark matter, what she does when a chapter stops working, and where book two goes when it lands on September 9. Free to read on Royal Road.

KEON SHORE
The Bad Apothecary (Ninth Path) — Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FKNLX67Y

Read free on Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/144290/ninth-path

Follow Keone on Instagram: @keonshore_author
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Creators and Guests

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Jonathan

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Slava

Digital Strategist. Co-Host. Aspiring writer of stories.

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

Today we have the illustrious Keone Shore who wrote the Ninth Path series, first book is The Bad Apothecary. You could just tear open a wormhole. I am Sisyphus and I curse at the same time.

Are aliens real? This is the most intellectual conversation that the SideQuest podcast has ever had. Keone, welcome to the show. I'm going to just dive right in and hit you with a hard question.

In our conversations on socials and before the show here, you mentioned to us that you were working to be a physicist. You hold a free diving record, which we won't get too far into because we don't want to dock you on the internet. You have been a farmer, off-grid, yoga teacher, scuba instructor, author, twice now.

First manuscript got lost, we'll get into that, I hope. But at what point did you stop trying to just figure out what you were supposed to do? Because when I was a kid, I was like, oh man, I'm going to be a magician. I'm going to break everyone's dreams here.

I am not a magician as my main job. It doesn't pay very well. Josh's cousin, on the other hand, different story.

So Keone, what about you? What was that journey like? I think when I stopped being a physicist, I just kind of gave up trying to find a label for myself and just went with whatever I actually wanted to do and made me happy. And was in my ability to achieve. That's great.

When you threw off this label, did you feel a freedom? Yes, yes, very much so. I felt very trapped in the job I was doing, the futures it kind of presented to me, and the idea of having no idea what I was going to be in a few years, where I was going to be, all that gave me a huge amount of freedom. What drew you to be a physicist in the first place? I mean, I love it still.

I love physics. I love the idea of trying to understand nature, trying to understand the universe. I'm still at heart a scientist.

I just really didn't like the kind of university research that was kind of forcing you to look at one very specific thing and even if you kind of realized the research was going nowhere, you still had to keep doing it because the professor was getting money for that specific research topic. I can relate to that, Kian. I spent eight years in seminary, I told you, before we started recording.

Towards the last year of my master's degree, I was figuring out my PhD and I knew the route I wanted to go and it was going to be systematics and that's a very focused field, or it can be, and you know in PhD you have to find the most nuanced little path to go to because you have to contribute something new or novel to the academic world. And I was just done. Like, academia can burn you out.

And then as a side gig, I got a job in digital marketing and I created this platform that within months was making money and had an audience of I think over half a million people, a newsletter of over 80,000 people. I was like, oh, I can do this too. And that kind of set me in a different path, but where I think we really align in some, our journeys align in some way because prior to that, I worked in construction.

You know, I did odd jobs here and there. I worked in retail, you name it. I did some creative stuff here and there and I could, I always felt fine in each place because somehow I was fortunate enough to excel in those things.

I was like, oh, I could do this. Yeah. And then I'm like, maybe road construction is, you know, for me.

So I was trying to figure out how to get onto road construction in the state. And I was like, well, no, I kind of like business too. So let me go take some classes on facilities management.

I'm like, oh, facilities management is kind of cool. Yeah. And in each thing I did well, but I was always either bored, tired, or burned out by the end of my, you know, like, like what's the guy who, Sisyphus who flies too close to the sun.

I would just go straight up to, to excel in either, either a career choice, whatever career choice I was in. And then I was like, ah, this is kind of boring and sucky and stupid. I don't want to do it anymore.

Icarus, not Sisyphus. Icarus flies too close to the sun. Sisyphus is busy pushing a boulder.

So both. So I'm, I'm their son. I am Sisyphus and Icarus at the same time.

I'm pushing a boulder to the sun. I can relate. I'm just going to leave it.

It probably sounds better in Russian anyway. I don't know who either of these characters are that you're talking about. I like try to keep up with Jonathan and Slava with the sci-fi and fantasy world of things.

That's how I'll stay. I try to keep up ancient stories. I'm not familiar with those.

Josh, you got a little egg on your face. I actually, I love the story of Sisyphus because my life has had a lot of struggle in it. And so on one of my bookshelves, I have, my wife got me this Sisyphus like statue and I just look at it and then feel better about myself for a while.

That's you, but it's towards the sun. So Kion, when you threw this stuff off, was that before or after this like label? Was that before or after you had written your first manuscript? That was after I'd written my first manuscript. Okay.

So first manuscript was written younger. Did you, did you kind of always know you wanted to be an author like secretly or? I think so, yes. Even as a kid, I would fill notebooks with like stories or outlines of stories.

So yeah, I've always been, I don't know, at least writing in my head, I guess. Yeah. Is there any story from way back when that is something that you constantly go back to? You're like, oh man, one day I'll get back to that thread, that narrative.

Not from way back when, but from the last 10 years, I have a few where I'm like, I'm still going to write that one. Are they full books or are they short stories or both? I think they're bigger than that. Oh, say more, say more.

What does that mean? Bigger than that? I have this idea of kind of combining several, several books into a, I don't know, kind of universe. So the idea is that there's one character that randomly shows up in various, these fantasy stories and worlds. And later then there will be a book about this one character explaining why they're in these stories and what they're actually trying to do.

I like it. So it's kind of like a super series or something like that. Super series.

I like that phrase. I'm here for it. I love the crossovers, honestly, big fan.

So please, please write that. Any multiverse in an author's work, when they're oubre, I enjoy the hell out of. We've talked about this ad nauseum on this podcast, but Stephen King, his books are somewhat different and some of them are radically different than the rest of his work.

He has sci-fi, he has horror, he has thrillers, short stories, but there's always something tying. It's not a character necessarily, but there's always something, a thread that ties the whole universe together. So if you can build that, you don't have to have the amount of work he has, but even in the series, if you can build that, I think that's, you know, for me as a reader, that's fantastic.

I love that kind of stuff. But I wanted to ask a question, maybe this is the wrong place, so you guys can stop and we can go a different way, but specifically about your writing. I read the first few pages of the first chapter just to kind of get a sense of your writing style and it reminded me a little bit of Kathy Kojo.

She's like a body horror writer and what I mean by that is it's very succinct. There are, there's not a lot of flowery language, there's not a lot of descriptions, unnecessary descriptions, like one line from Kathy Kojo, it's this guy's walking up the stairs and he says, up the stairs, down the hall, you coming in? And so there's no, and then she said, are you coming in? You know, it's very much just to the point and I enjoyed that about the very small section of the first chapter that I read about your book. Can you just talk about like how you got to that writing style or what made you choose that writing style? Okay, yeah, I guess it was influenced mostly by reading web novels, which a lot of them have almost like a kind of comic-like feel to them and they use this cadence of short sentences, short paragraphs, it's very quick-moving in a sense, succinct.

I mean a lot of them are not edited at all, the authors just kind of, they write the chapter, they post it and I actually like that kind of roughness to the stories. So I was reading a lot of them after my daughter was born and I was breastfeeding and basically couldn't do anything else, sit there, so I was just reading web novels the whole time and I liked the style, so I decided to kind of go that direction with writing. That's awesome.

I mean, I like it. I'm also a veracious reader, so if you give me Nabokov, who's known for a little bit more descriptive prose, I'm happy with that too, if it serves the purpose of the book, but these kind of decisions by the author, this kind of prose always intrigues me because there's so few and far in between, at least in the books I read. When I get one, I'm like, oh, okay, this is going to be this type of ride.

I like it. Kim, were there any authors in particular that inspired you? There were. I don't know how to pronounce their names because they're Chinese.

Fair enough. Let Josh try. He's a polyglot.

The resident polyglot. Yeah, like I said, I struggle enough with English. No, there were a few really interesting stories that I found.

One of them is called Lord of the Mysteries. The author calls themselves Cuttlefish Who Likes Diving. I'm pretty sure that's not their real name, though.

I'd say checks out, but I don't actually know. That sounds true. Another one was Reverend Insanity.

They're all really obscure web novel Chinese books that were then fan translated. The stories, though, are really interesting and different and fun. Are they cultivation stories? Reverend Insanity, yes.

Lord of the Mysteries, no. Lord of the Mysteries is more like a progression fantasy in a post-apocalyptic Victorian steampunk world. It's very strange.

I'm sold. I'm there. That's something I would read all day long.

What did you say it was called? Lord of the Mysteries? Lord of the Mysteries. So before the show, we were chatting, and some of you listeners know that I've tried to write a book with a friend of mine for seven years. The genre or the aesthetic, I guess I'll call it, is Victorian steampunk mixed together.

So the fact that somebody else has already done this... It's your friend. He wrote the novel without your knowledge. It's on the web now.

I mean, I'd kind of be okay with that. Steampunk, Victorian era fantasy, cosmic horror, mystery, transmigration. Transmigration.

That's how words work. Yeah. This looks fascinating.

Okay. It's really great. Wait, did they turn it into an anime? Mm, Dong Hua, they're called, because it's Chinese, but yes.

Very cool. Okay. Sold.

This is why... Let me just reiterate for a second. This is why we want to have indie authors on the show. Your experiences are so unique.

So please, friends, recommend your other indie author friends who could be on the show eventually, because there's so much to share, the things that have inspired Kian to get to her book. That's my little PSA. All right, back to the show.

How much of yourself is wrapped up into this book? Because Jonathan's written a book. I'm in the process of writing a short story for the longest time too. And mine's autobiographical.

I know a lot of other authors, at least, if they're not fully autobiographical, they pull stuff from their life, which is almost impossible not to do. But how much of yourself is wrapped up in D.Vu? I think that's the correct pronunciation of the character, right? D.Vu, yeah. I'd say definitely some.

I'd say her mental approach to things is probably mirrored off my own. She's very solitary, which I can relate to. And it's very interesting.

While I was writing, I feel like it was a kind of cathartic process for me. There was a lot of insight into my own emotions as I was writing. But when I reread it now, I don't actually see myself that much in her character.

But somehow writing her still helped me process a lot of my own emotions. So I don't think it's that clear. But there is a lot of me in her.

You mentioned you're a bit of an introvert before we started recording. And what I found in my research of the book, most of it, I think, was your words. So correct me if this is not the case.

But that she doesn't achieve the progression points, let's call them, or the cultivation points by just balls to the wall attacking and fighting. And she's a more strategic and quiet approach, wants to be in the background, doesn't want to be all out in front. So maybe that, and I'm speculating, but maybe that is where it is visible that yourself, meaning in Divu.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, she has these powers that kind of never have been there before in the world. And they're connected or linked to something that the world sees as evil.

So she has to hide them. So it automatically puts her in a position where she needs to kind of protect her own identity. So yeah, I guess that is, though, something where it kind of reflects of me that I don't have those powers.

I do kind of feel that way now. I like I don't want to be in the spotlight at all. It took me a long time to actually show my face on social media or Have you found the writing to be helpful for emotional processing? Yeah, absolutely.

And it's not a conscious process for me. It just kind of like happens the story will get to a point that for some reason reflects something that's that's processing in me, then it can be then it can be very useful. I found it cathartic.

And I mentioned this previously, but I think it's on point here, given what you just said, Kian, is I'm writing this short story. And it's a horror short story. It's partly autobiographical, but I came to a realization, like, because I'm writing about what happened to me as a kid, I came to a realization, like, holy crap, this was a lot more call it traumatic, dramatic, more than what I, you know, often describe it as because, yes, it happened to me.

I'm also Eastern European. So existence is suffering. And, you know, I'm not gonna add too much flair to my story.

So this is what happened. But writing it out, and then having to change my character to somebody who's a little bit more stronger, who has more of a backbone, because otherwise, it's just, you know, like torture porn. I was like, this kid is getting tortured, and that doesn't do anything about it.

So as I made him a little bit stronger, in the story, I was like, Oh, wow, this this thing happened to a kid, and the kid is me. And I'm not like I didn't have like a breakdown or any existential crisis. But that was like a moment where I was like, something came alive is too dramatic of a statement, but I don't have anything else.

Something clicked. I was like, wow, the the only reason I got there is because I wrote it, I reflected on it and rewrote it two times. And then I could like processed it, I guess.

And again, nothing extraordinary happened. I didn't come to any epiphany, because it's still a thing that happened. And I know it in and out.

I was like, Oh, okay. I that helped me rethink the situation a little bit, kind of lift through it as myself, instead of somebody just, you know, hovering around looking at it. So I think back just to back up your question, Jonathan, not Jonathan, Josh, goodness, is whether conscious or unconscious writing helps you process a lot.

If you're in it, and that's Jonathan always says you should journal. So like, it just works. It's I don't know if it's magical or, or what, but it does freaking work.

It is magic. Journaling is magic. That's actually they didn't tell us that in school.

It's true. Yeah, and I think fiction, fiction gives us the ability to to really kind of step out of our own character, and and experience, you know, adjacent or parallel problems to what we're going through. Without having to have that emotional connection to it, we have resonance, but it's not it's not actually affecting us.

And that gives us the kind of distance we sometimes need to, to process or to see it from a different angle. So that's something I really enjoy about fiction. And I know people, some people think fiction is just like entertainment or whatever.

But but for me, it isn't. It's really, there are real experiences you make in fiction. And, and I've always felt that they've, yeah, helped process stuff, but also just kind of broaden my idea spectrum.

That's awesome. Me too. I'm a big fan of using books as catharsis.

Like my, I've mentioned this previously on a show somewhere. My nephew at nine months old, my youngest brother's firstborn had was diagnosed with brain cancer at nine months old. And my catharsis was going through like The Way of Kings.

I don't know if you've ever read it by Brandon Sanderson, where he's like a slave, oppressed, like every life has beaten him down and he's like running towards death every time they have to do a fight or whatever. And like, that was the thing that I'm like, okay, I need just like that escapism. Like I'm going through something that's absolute shit that like, I can't change.

So is this guy. And like that resonance of like, okay. And then like, I'm just on the treadmill, just like running and just crying.

Right? Like when I'm with family, I'm being strong to like help provide for stuff to let them grieve. And then like, I have to get away and like put my audio book in and just like run. So like, absolutely.

And this is another reason I'm just going to like indie author fan for these days, I guess, is like these stories that people like you write help people like me, because you didn't know me, right? Like, but like something about your story will touch someone like me in their lives with whatever they're going through. And like, that's why I want to make sure that everyone that we can have on limited by time and space, your physicists, I don't have to tell you, has the opportunity to hear about these other books and then read them and go, Oh, man, that's, that's gonna help me with like, whatever the thing is that I'm going through right now. And so like, that is my heart behind making this happen, which is why I want to just like spread this to the world.

Like, absolutely. Everyone go buy Keon's book, like right now, pause the show, just go buy it. See what it does for where you're at in life right now, and how it like, helps expand how you look at it.

They don't need to pause the show, they can just open a new tab and go to Amazon and buy the book. Is this where you're gonna call me a boomer again? No. But I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the book itself still kind of have keep the sinew between what we're talking about, but get into the book and eventually get you to do whatever you want, like plug it away.

But like the story as a physicist, the story came together in a particular way, because of your background, you mentioned integral theory, you mentioned in your cover letter that you sent to us. And I think in the synopsis of the book, that you like complex villains, and that the dark side is not just objectively evil, because somebody calls it the dark side. And so if you can, for the audience, if you want to give a two sentence definition of integral theory, and then just bring it all together, how's that? Your background as a physicist, integral theory, the books, your position on epistemology and metaphysics, how's that all come together in this fun little book? Can I just ask a dumb question, maybe for the audience, but primarily for a friend, a friend is me.

What is integral theory? Can we just like start there for my friend? Okay, integral theory was coined by Ken Wilber. I think he's a biologist, but his theory is like a very cerebral way of looking at holism, including spirituality, psychology, epistemology, all kinds of like ways of perceiving the world. And he developed various kind of schemes to explain how we perceive the world and interact with the world.

He has like the four quadrants and different lines of development. He's very into developmental theory. And one of the main points of integral theory is about developmental, yeah, developmental theory, which he kind of took from Piaget, the child psychologist, and expanded a little bit.

There's similar stuff done by spiral dynamics, where it's all about levels of consciousness. It's kind of controversial. Yes.

No, I, okay. That's why it sounds familiar. Ken Wilber has like a graph, right? Like levels of intelligence.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I was like, this sounds familiar, but I don't know why.

Piaget, you're getting more into like, I haven't read him, but I appreciate the psychologist. I was like, that sounds like Jung and his archetypes. So like, okay.

All right. My friend has been answered. Please, back to the question.

So Jung and archetypes. Yes. Jung and shadow work.

This is like, this is how integral theory kind of turned me onto Jung mainly. And the whole shadow work was one of the main things that I wanted to put into the book. So I think two sentences is not going to work here.

That's fine. That's fine. So, okay.

Let's see. When I started with this story, it started many years ago in my head as I want to explore through fiction, this idea of a kind of cosmic consciousness that is basically is a living universe. But what if this cosmic consciousness has psychological issues? Okay.

And these psychological issues are a kind of Jungian shadow. So this is basically the groundwork of my story. And I've been like spinning it around in my head, the world building, what this would look like.

But I didn't have a plot to go along with it until much later. So this is kind of where it came together. And of course, then if it's a universe, it has physics.

So how do I kind of combine the physics with the psychology? And for me, actually, it wasn't physics, but mathematics that came into play there with the Galilean incompleteness theorem, which basically says that a formal system, a formal system is the mathematical language with which you explain things or that can prove certain concepts are true. If you have a formal system that is powerful enough to basically describe your entire system, you're going to have truths within that system that cannot be proven by the system itself. This is the incompleteness that Gödel proved exists.

And even if you change your system to now somehow include enough to prove that one, you're going to create another hole, basically another truth that you cannot prove. And it's always going to be there. So I took this concept and kind of tried to fit it into the Jungian shadow idea of like a universe that has repressed a truth of its own.

And it's still there. It's not like, it's not gone. It's still there.

And it comes back as a shadow that works against the universal laws. It works outside of the universal laws. So that's kind of where it comes together.

I think Jonathan's head, mind is exploding right now. And mine is too, because I like things to be complete. And I'm the only one still here with you, Kian, because the whole thing about ambiguity, not obscurity, but I can't speak English.

I lost my ability to speak after your intro there. Ambiguity. I enjoy that.

I enjoyed the mystery and ambiguity of real life and fiction and all that stuff. So I thought that was fabulous. I have a cursory understanding of all these things because I'm a nerd and I like to read a lot of stuff.

But I was tracking with you. That's fantastic. I like it.

My mind's both exploding and also I love the uniqueness of it because I didn't finish the minor, but I did philosophy in school. I got an A in epistemology and a D in statistics, for whatever that's worth. So I can tell you where knowledge starts, but I can't tell you how to make your business grow.

Actually, don't let my boss see this, because that's actually the opposite of what I do right now. Slava, we're going to have to push this episode back. But just like everybody who took one course in philosophy, he's about to blow your mind.

Hush you. No, but while you were talking, it made me start thinking about something that I am... I've lost my train of thought because Slava interrupted me. What was it? You were talking about integral theory.

You talked about having a psychosis. You talked about... Oh, man, there was a real... That's what it was. Okay.

So you talked about this idea of having consciousness in the universe and then a shadow of working with itself and stuff and Ken Wilber. So the broken system of not being able to prove truths, right? So that makes me think similar to our universe where it's like, okay, if you go back far enough, well, what's first cause? That's a common thing that people use in theology where it's like, well, first cause, something has to happen before first cause happens, whether it's the Big Bang or whatever. And so it's like tying these highly intellectual... I don't even call them philosophies, but just highly intellectual things that we've discovered through the years through people who are real smart, like Ken Wilber and Gershel and Piaget and things, and then putting them into a narrative.

That's difficult. So congrats. And thrilling to me because I like to consider myself a pseudo-intellectual.

So you're talking about this and I'm like, I didn't see any of this on your socials. And I feel like at least people who are like me, which maybe there's only me, that's fascinating. That's the type of stuff where I'm like, oh my God, I got to read this now.

Yeah. So unsolicited marketing advice, Ken, put that on your socials. In all seriousness, I'm kind of kidding, I'm kind of kidding, but behind every joke is truth.

And this kernel is pretty big. I think that would get people interested. We found you interesting already just by what's on your socials.

But I think adding what you have here will draw us, even if it's just a small marginal, it'll bring in people because that's a fascinating narrative that you weave together. And again, I only read a part of the first chapter, but knowing now what's to come in the next chapters, it makes it me more and more excited to read the book. Yeah.

So, I mean, I deliberately wrote the book in a way that that level of the story doesn't need to be seen. So if you kind of resonate with the underlying concepts that are there, you can see it, you can understand it, but you don't need it. So I tried to give it enough, you know, I don't want to say superficial, but you know, like on the surface level plot and story that this like Jungian, Gödelian stuff doesn't, it doesn't take the front and center.

That's great. That's fantastic. That's the way to do it.

Because you're not writing a textbook or anything, you know, overly philosophical, but that's the way to do it. I'll even add this, that's the way to do it because that's what's fueling everything. That's kind of the foundation, or maybe that's hidden in the basement, but the whole story, if we're going to use this analogy of a house, the whole story is in the rooms that the people are exploring, right? So you did that right.

But I still think you could, you can get people with it. You got me, you got one reader, just because of how you explained that. I think that's great.

So I haven't read the book, right? But there's a character that has an injury that no one can heal, right? So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and she trades freedom to survive. Is that something that was purely fictional, or could you expand on that? I'm very curious in that as somebody who also has, I have a chronic illness that, you know, still waiting on healing for. Okay.

I guess it was the idea was to create a predicament for her to get the entire story started. And it developed into a lot more than I initially had planned. I really just needed something initially.

I needed something for her because she's a hermit. She lives a solitary life in the wild. And then she's forced to go into the city because she gets attacked by some person.

And she gets this injury that has a kind of infection inside of it that can't be cured by regular means. So she's forced to go to the city. So that was actually the premise, but it turned into a lot more, as I kept writing, because the place she goes to get help, this also, it wasn't planned like that, that she was going to become part of this oppressive organization.

Initially, I wanted her to become part of an organization, but the more I wrote, the more this organization turned into like really oppressive. And yeah, where you're not sure, are they the good guys? Are they the bad guys? They're doing good stuff, but their methods are very like Machiavellian. The means justify, the end justifies the means kind of thing.

And so I think that going back to the question before whether some of me is in there, I was in a situation of kind of being stuck in a relationship. I didn't want to be, I was living in a way I didn't want to live anymore. And I think that kind of became part of the story then in that way that became very oppressive and her being forced into situations that she really didn't want to be in, things like that.

So I think that's kind of how it developed. The injury itself is not just magical, but it also ties into this cosmic corruption that is basically, if you eventually read the whole series, which is not finished, is the Jungian shadow. So she's in contact with that right from the start.

And so it sets the theme for the rest of the series. Fantastic. Well, I think this is a perfect time because we have a little bit left in this episode, but this is a perfect time to get into the meat of the book.

Just to give you an opportunity to sell it to the audience, you know, to, you know, that sounds so trite, but you know what I mean, just to tell us about, you know, the story in a little bit more depth and we'll hopefully get people to buy more and more copies of it. All right. So Diwu is the main character.

She's the main point of view for about a third of the book. And then a second character shows a second main character shows up who's going to be her partner in this organization. She's attacked in the beginning.

Given this infection, tainted with corruption, she has to go to the city to find help. She's kind of lured into joining the hierarchy, which is this organization. And the hierarchy generally takes care of corrupted magic.

So the world that I built has magic. It's cultivation magic. The magic is cultivated by the people in a very Eastern style.

But there's a problem with it. So if you do it wrong, you can create a kind of rift in reality, create... Oh, so no big deal. You can just tear open a wormhole.

Yeah. You basically create a zone where physical laws don't apply. It can be deadly, but it can also just be weird.

And it can infect humans. They can become infected with corruption, which can turn them insane or make limbs grow where they aren't supposed to. It can do anything because it doesn't follow any laws, basically.

And so the hierarchy, obviously, they're kind of tasked with taking care of that not happening. So they check on people doing magic the wrong way. And since she has this corruption, they know that someone out there is doing it the wrong way.

So they send her and her new partner back to where she was attacked to find out who it was. They also used a name when they attacked her, which is the bad apothecary, which belonged to someone who's supposed to be dead. So that's kind of where the story really begins.

They go back to this place and try to figure out what's happening. And I don't want to give away more than that. Perfect.

That sounds fascinating. Something that I think you had wrote to us before was that you like when there is not this black and white between villains. And I'm kind of seeing that in how you're describing this.

There being this kind of ambiguity that exists in villains, which I think is really fascinating. Yeah. Yeah.

And especially towards the end of the story, there are a few conflicts where this really comes out, where you don't really know who was the bad guy again. And why are they doing this? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I love me some villains. A lot of times I root for the villain in a story.

Because he's broken. Because Magneto, if you know anything about comics, I like Magneto most out of all the X-Men. Professor X, I just don't care.

Because Magneto is more complex and more interesting. And Loki from either the comics or the new Marvel stuff, I just find them more fun, more complex. And if you write a villain in such a way where he's not just a bad guy, because you know, you're trying to make some kind of moral statement or he's a bad guy for the sake of being a bad guy.

They're fun to read. You know, so I love it. On a social post recently, you mentioned something that made me think of Dao.

And I commented on it. Can you elaborate? I tried to find it before the show here. I don't remember which post you made about it.

And I was like, oh man, that'll be great to talk about on the show here. So it sounds like, if I remember the post correctly, please correct me if I'm wrong, which I probably am, is you were saying that part of the world has this thing that is unnamed, this power that you mentioned. And that, like, it sounds like it's a heavy influence from the Eastern philosophies.

Right. Right. I mean, there is a lot of influence from Daoism.

I did study Daoism on my own quite a bit. I was a Qigong teacher for a while. I studied inner alchemy, which is like the Daoist mystical practice of meditation and energy work and things like that.

I read a lot of the Chinese classics translated about Daoism. So yes, there is a lot of influence there. I think what you're thinking of, not my post, but from the Dao Deqing, there's the Dao that can be named is not the real Dao.

Yes. Yeah. And in a way, yes, I was talking about ninth path.

So ninth path in my world, the paths are different flavors of magic, basically. And until the story happens, there were always only eight paths. And ninth path is the one that Diwu basically births, in a sense.

So she's the first person to be able to use this ninth path. And ninth path gains or is based on the universal concept of unknowability. Okay.

So the guaranteed unknown, like we can't know what we don't know. There, even in physics, we have similar concepts where there's a kind of uncertainty to things. I mean, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or the kind of not fixed nature of matter where it's, whether it's a wave or a particle, there's always this kind of blurriness to our world, even though it's substantial.

And this is kind of the idea of ninth path. Fascinating. What do you, this is a science question, so this might not interest all the viewers.

What do you think is going to be a discovery that will happen in our lifetime still in physics? Sorry, is that the, am I in the right podcast? This is the wrong podcast. It's just, I've got, I got friends who talk about quarks and what is it? The God particle, the Higgs boson. So like, I'm just like down this different trail right now.

That's not actually indie author related because I'm like, oh, hey, cause you don't meet a lot of people who can, by no means, am I an expert or even well-read in this. I just have conversations about it. And I, cause it makes me dream.

It makes me think. So if you don't have an answer for like, what physics discoveries we might do, like are aliens real? You know, just basic questions. I've read the third body problem.

I know that aliens are real. I'm a, I'm actually I'm, I'm, I'm a complete skeptic. So I don't believe anything.

I don't even believe in dark matter and dark energy as they put it. Because to me, a theory in which basically 95% of the universe exists, but you can't measure it, means your theory is probably wrong. We believe this thing is here, but we can't measure it.

Can't observe it or yeah. Yeah. Like if it's, if it's something small, I'll be like, okay, you can back, that can kind of fit into the idea of the, of the incompleteness.

But if it's 95% of the universe, to me, it sounds like your equations are wrong. If they're pointing to this. So I'm, I'm a, I'm a skeptic.

All right. What about, so the, I can't remember all the details about this, but like with supercomputer chips where they like put them in hyper cold or super cold stuff and like the, the molecules like are moving, but not moving. Yeah.

Superconductors. Maybe it's superconductors. And then there was like this thing, I'm, I'm just like very disconnected.

I'm, I'm unhinged this morning. So please bear with me. Is like, there's also like a, like molecules that kind of are like there, but not there.

I don't really have a question. I'm just talking science now. Feel free to.

Hey, he's taking one philosophy class. So he's an expert on all this. I didn't say I was an expert ever.

I just, I enjoy talking about it. That's all. I think, I think there's a lot of mystery and a lot of yeah, a lot of, a lot of stuff we don't really understand in physics.

And I think one of the biggest problems we have nowadays is that we kind of as is it Krasivsky? No, it's not Krasivsky. It's someone else says don't mistake the map with the territory. So what happens is the physicists they'll come up with an interesting theory, a theory that fits rather well to whatever they've observed and they'll, they'll elaborate on it and I'll explain it.

And yeah, so the, and then they start with, so the universe is this but that's, but that's where they're going wrong. What they've discovered is a model that can mathematically or, or in some way explain what they're seeing, but it doesn't mean that that's true. It doesn't mean that that reflects reality, even remotely.

They just made a model. And a lot of people, especially the lay people that haven't studied physics, but also a lot of physicists, they forget that step. They forget that what they're looking at is a model and not reality.

And, and for me, that's one of the biggest, biggest problems we have nowadays when we're discussing these things. I'm like, no, this is just a model. Well, a bit of a lighter question, because I'm a Philip K. Dick fan.

I'm a Philip K. Dick fan. What is your, what is your favorite Philip K. Dick book? My favorite one, I would say the Transmigration of... Timothy Archer. Timothy Archer and the Three Stigmata of Palmer S. Eldridge.

Those are the two I haven't read yet. I bought a book right there. They're in that book.

But mine, Scanner Darkly, I have, was blown away. I have reread it probably three, four, five times because it's just a fascinating story. We covered Ubik on this, on this podcast.

I loved Ubik, Man in the High Castle. But, oh, The Variable Man, like all, like I love speculative fiction. And if you like Philip K. Dick, I think you probably have read it if you're into this stuff and in this world.

But have you read Roadside Picnic by the Stugoski Brothers? You should read it. No, I've never heard of it. And I'm not spoiling the story.

The concept is some time ago, written by two brothers in the Soviet Union, I think in the 50s or 60s. And the concept is aliens visit the earth. And they visit seven places on the earth, now called zones.

And these zones show aberrations. Their physics doesn't exist the way we understand physics, right? The laws of physics are broken, the laws of gravity are broken. Things can make you go insane, things can just kill you.

And there's these people called stalkers who take people on trips to these zones. I've seen the movie. Yeah, and the movie is fantastic.

Tchaikovsky, not Tchaikovsky, Tarnakovsky. He's a great filmmaker. The Mirror, and Solaris, all those stuff.

I was introduced to them when I was a kid and that broke me forever. But the idea in Stalker, and this is not Stalker, Roadside Picnic, same thing. But the idea there, and this is no spoiler, is the zones that are looked upon three different ways by people.

Either they're things to be explored, things that are kind of amusement parks, so four different things, things that are not holy in any theological sense, but almost sacred. Because, oh, the aliens have visited here and maybe this stuff can help us build technology. And then the other point is, maybe this is just alien junk.

Maybe they just came here, ate a picnic, threw away their scraps and left. But because of the differences between the species, what they left just screwed up our atmosphere, our country, the zone in the country. And we're just making it a bigger deal than it is.

So having this conversation with you, I think that book is up your alley. You will enjoy the hell out of it. It's very short and it's a fantastic read.

It's the only book that I recommend on threads when people are like, give me a book recommendation. I'm not kidding. People are like, give me a book recommendation for Romanticy.

I'm like, Roadside Picnic. It doesn't matter what recommendation they're asking for. The only answer that I give, because I run our threads, shocker for everyone on the internet, is just Roadside Picnic.

It is my favorite book that Slava has had us read on the show because it was so otherworldly. I don't know how else to put it. And I did think of it a couple of times when you talked about changing the physics of the world.

It felt like when you were describing your book earlier and what the magic could do is if someone gave Salvador Dali godlike powers to walk around and be like, oh, and people are like, now I'm floating. And then another one where he's like, melting clocks, but it's real now. You're like, that was actually secretly my inspiration.

This is the first episode where Kenneth Wilber was mentioned, Salvador Dali in some sense that makes sense. This is the most intellectual conversation that the PsyQuest podcast has ever had. No, it's a good thing.

That's a good thing. What's interesting though is, oh, sorry, what did you say, Josh? Next episode, string theory. I hope you come well read because I'm not going to.

I'm just going to talk about whatever's talked about on social media regarding string theory because it's true. It's not a model. Oh my gosh.

So as we're winding down here, Keon, can you tell us about book two? It comes out September 9th, right? What should we expect? What should we know? Give us a little teaser about that coming out here. Okay. So book two comes out the 9th of the 9th because it's 9th past, of course.

Brilliant. I love that. And it's also my daughter's birthday, so it's a special day.

I get to celebrate whether the book launches good or not. What to expect. This second book is actually where for me, the real story starts.

So everything before that was kind of a prelude, which I didn't even know I wanted to write initially. And now the second book is where the big arc that I had planned for the series really starts. It really involves the second main character, so Nex.

It really involves him a lot more, though maybe it's not quite visible that much in this book. It then evolves. So this is a longer arc that happens about in the middle of the book.

You get a kind of the inciting event that really sets things off. We get to know the hierarchy a little bit more, their methods, how they work, and it's very city focused. So where the first book is a little bit in the city and then a little bit outside of the city, the second book focuses much more on the city.

So it has that really nice urban, weird, arcane punk atmosphere going on. There's a lot of nice action scenes. There's a lot of different cultivators that kind of get to show off their powers.

So I really enjoy this book. Digo kind of comes into her own a little bit more. I wrote this as like an ongoing series initially with the idea of web novels.

I don't know if you know any web novels, but the big ones, they have like 2000 chapters. So my idea was always to kind of have it like as a long story. It was what really this format of web novel was what liberated me enough to decide, okay, I can write.

Because it wasn't like so it has to fit into a book, you know? How long do you want it to be? Do you just want to keep going? No. I think there will be a conclusion, but I can't really tell how long it will be because from my experience writing so far, it's always longer than I expected. So I don't know.

Where can people go to preorder or to pick it up? The first book is on Amazon and Kobo. So if you want a hard copy, then Amazon. If you want an ebook, you can get it on either.

It's also on Kobo Plus. So for those that have a subscription, it's free to read. But the first book is also free to read on Royal Road for anyone who can't pay or doesn't want to pay.

So I've put it there. You should pay. I paid.

I bought your book yesterday. They should pay. Stop eating cheapskates and pay for the book.

No, I mean, I put it as in like, if you want to support the author, please buy it. But if you can't, for some reason, I don't want to keep it from you. Be sure to support the author.

I've always wanted a free version to exist. I know it's not a good marketing strategy, but it's kind of what I wanted. And then the second book can be preordered on Amazon at the moment.

I also preordered it, by the way. I'm not trying to fanboy out here, but I did preorder it. So others should do it too.

Exciting times. So Kian, my last question for you as we wind down today, it's kind of a bigger question, so I probably should ask this earlier. What is the meaning of life? Science.

What is the meaning of life? Yeah, yeah. 42. 42.

42. Good answer. Good answer.

No, so when you're writing, and you hit walls, I'm not talking about writer's block, but you're like, man, I'm stuck. The story, it's not that you don't know where you want to go. It's that you're like, I am supposed to solve this problem without a deus ex machina.

So as an author, how do you, I mean, you've got magic in the world, so you have a little bit more liberty than someone with a hard science, but how do you help yourself overcome those creative challenges? That's my final question. Okay. Usually if I get stuck, it's because something isn't working in this preamble to where I'm stuck.

So what I've learned to do is take all that, archive it, and start with a blank page. How far back? Depends, but I mean, usually I get stuck in like a chapter or two, so then that goes into the archive. I don't delete it in case I do it, but for me, that usually helps.

And maybe then I'll, like starting with new words, starting with a blank page there, I'll usually figure it out, or I'll be able to see like what needs to change before to figure it out. When I wrote my manuscript, I think I've started over about three or four times, like completely started over from nothing. And I'm very glad I did it.

It was obviously a lot of work, but at the same time, every iteration that I created made me see more clearly what I wanted the story to be, what I wanted the characters to be, so that in the last iteration, I was very sure what each character needed to do and how I needed to portray them. So I'm not afraid of deleting and going back, even if it's many, many chapters. I rewrote my first chapter after getting to chapter four.

I was like, this is not going to work. And so then I rewrote the first chapter completely, and then I did the whole thing of changing the character that I mentioned earlier in the episode. So starting over, yeah, pain in the butt, and it could be difficult, but it works.

It works. Well, I think that's all, folks. I want to thank Keon Shore, author of Nine Path.

Go buy it. Go pre-order the second book. We've enjoyed this conversation immensely, Keon.

I'm not only speaking for myself, but I think the audience and both of my illustrious, to use that word again, co-hosts here. We've enjoyed meeting you. You're a great person.

You're fun to talk to, easy to talk to. And again, I've only read a little bit, but I'm hooked on the book. I like the writing style.

I like where it's going, the way you've set up the story here. It's great. Can't wait to read it.

And for those of you who have read it, leave us some teasers and tidbits in the comments to get other people reading Keon's book. Thank you for having me, guys. Yeah, this was a pleasure.