Let's Talk "Risk" (Concordant Vibrancy 4: Inferno Blog Tour)

Hello Awesome Visitors!

I am very glad you could join us on the Concordant Vibrancy 4: Inferno tour. It is an honor to be featured in a collection with such wonderful talents and that you have a chance to learn about their craft and their stories in this anthology.

Please, if you have not already done so, take a gander at some of the authors which have come before me. You definitely will not regret it!

Today is my feature day and I’m ready to dish on all things risk in my story “Antipode”.

Awesome visitors, the first question you probably have is “Why?”. Why did I select Risk as the ingredient to sustain humanity’s blaze?

When one is in a holding pattern in life, sometimes it takes the unusual to light the fire in one’s belly.

This is my philosophy. Contentment and happiness are not necessarily the same animals. If they were, why are flickers of happiness so intense that they are blazes, but flickers of contentment are so calm that they are nothing more than candles, just to light the way to another path?

The focal point of “Antipode” is a man named Carsen Mulligan. He’s presented as an unassuming, kind man. A man who doesn’t require much to be content. A man who tries to keep the peace and eliminate or avoid conflict as much as possible.

All appears to be going well for him. He’s with a woman (Chelley Priestley) he’s head over heels with, in line to be his life partner. He’s in the running for a promotion at his job at Amphere Museum. He works at the museum with Morton Yang, who he’s been friends with since childhood.

What could possibly go wrong?

As “Antipode” demonstrates, every flipping thing.

An unsettling revelation comes about involving his love Chelley. This causes what should have been a joyous celebration into disappointment, as reflected in this segment:

Carsen was so fixated on Todd and Chelley that he hadn’t noticed the silence of the restaurant or the manager and two additional men surrounding him, ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble. On the outside, Carsen projected an eerie, almost admirable sense of calm in the wake of this betrayal. Inside, his spiritual temperature was dropping, as were bits of his heart.

Then, the promotion Carsen believes is a shoo-in falls through, with an extra insult to injury in regards to who received the job instead, as depicted in this exchange:

The intensity of Carsen’s emotions suffocated his calm. Agitated, he loosened his tie while rising from the opulent seating. Carsen was unsure which bothered him the most—the decimation of Mr. Deschand’s role in Amphere, the allusion to his romantic mourning somehow affecting his job performance, or the betrayal of Morton.

“Carsen, this doesn’t have to affect our friendship. I talked to Mr. Toler, and Falcourt Museum has an opening. They would love to have you onboard.”

Morton’s suggestion was met with wearing the remainder of Carsen’s fizzy drink. “Then you should have gone to Falcourt. Being the curator of Amphere was my dream and you knew it! You’re not only disloyal but a thief. My moral compass won’t permit me to be friends with either.”

These tribulations put Carsen on a path that catapults him to the verge of madness.

Just when Carsen is at his breaking point, Miles, his next-door neighbor, presents him with a solution that could turn his life around. All Carsen has to do is risk breaking from his comfort zone to try something different. Taking this chance morphs Carsen’s life in ways he never could have dreamed.

Find out if the fire of risk consumes Carsen in a positive or negative way by reading “Antipode” by yours truly.