A behind-the-scenes conversation between author and editor, unpacking Chapter One of Lord of Water — Book I.
Editor: Chapter One does something bold right out of the gate — Shane dies peacefully at 86, and by the end of the same chapter he's already a newborn on another planet. No fear, no lingering grief, no unfinished business. What were you working against when you wrote it that way?
Author: I feel that I was educated — and all the generations connected with my life were educated — into a belief in scarcity and danger and the survival of the world. I remember clearly, around 1978, there was a movie called The Day After. A film about the day after a nuclear war and its effects across the US. It scared the daylights out of everyone and put us into fear of the future, thinking we'd all be gone by 1980. Well, we weren't. And then the global warming fear campaign began. "The ocean levels are going to rise." "The ice caps are going to melt." Fear sells newspapers.
Editor: So Chapter One's line — "we just have to play the game and make it seem rare" — isn't really about water scarcity in the story's universe. It's a direct answer to the scarcity messaging you grew up inside.
Author: What do I actually see? The home that was my grandparents', right at the lakeside, still sits there. The water hasn't risen a millimetre. I see more green along the Pacific Highway than I did as a kid. I now have four acres of land that grows oxygen, fruit, vegetables, a thoroughfare for nature. I own a 2.4-hectare environmental covenant on the edge of Turquoise Waters that will never be built on — abundant with wildlife, crocs and snakes included.
Editor: That's the real-world proof sitting underneath the fiction. You're not just writing that abundance is possible — you're standing on land that's been quietly demonstrating it for decades, whatever the broader headlines say.
Author: So anyone sitting in a city apartment complaining about what "Man" is doing to this planet — plant a tree. The attitude of our protagonist never even considers that he's going to lose. It's not optional. That's the educational pattern I believe needs to replace the fear education currently running through our schooling. This planet will be here for many, many eons to come. We'll find connection to other water planets. Planet Earth is a wonderful garden with room for 50 billion people. It's a garden — and when you have a garden, you help it grow. There's no need to bring fear into it at all. When a man has an adventure in front of him, a journey he can travel, a purpose he can contribute toward, he becomes his best. That's what I believe our protagonist is part of, here on Planet Earth, 2096. Of course he feels great and totally ready for the next adventure. He played his part.
Editor: That reframes Shane's certainty for me. It's not a personality trait you handed him for narrative convenience — it's the corrective. He never audits whether the mission is winnable, and that's exactly what frees him to act with joy instead of dread. He doesn't need the outcome guaranteed in writing. He just needs to know his part, and play it.
Author: So writing this into fiction, and playing my own part as part of the journey, is very much the intention of this trilogy. But most of all — to have fun. When I have fun, I get a hell of a lot done.
> Worry is optional. Contribution is not. Plant the tree. Direct the water. Do your part — and let go of the outcome, because the outcome was never really in doubt. And have a hell of a time on the journey.
That's Chapter One. That's Blue-3. That's water abundance, not as a hopeful guess, but as something Shane — and his author — have both put their hands to and watched grow.
Lord of Water opens with a man who has already won, closing out one lifetime in total peace before beginning the next.
Read Chapter One free at [lordofwater.com](https://lordofwater.com/book-1/)