My backlist of books proves I wasn’t always Rothbardian

I’ve met a lot of people who adopt a worldview and defend it through thick and thin. As a recent Rothbardian, I’ve never been that person.

These days, I’m a fully-fledged Rothbardian who believes the State is nothing more than resistance against the natural forces of Nature and, therefore, Natural Law.

But I didn’t adopt that worldview until mid-2024. My flagship series, the dark paranormal fantasy Catenarian Chronicles, drives that worldview home. That said, working through my backlist shows that it hasn’t always been the case.

In 2011, long before I wrote and published my first book, I was far-Left, meaning I was a big believer in collectivism. I was such a big believer, I felt the State needed to adopt heavy green energy and similar programs to “provide progressive-leaning jobs” to people who were either unemployed or underemployed.

Sounds insane, right? I wrote a few manuscripts at the time, but never had the intent to publish them. Ironically, those manuscripts became the baseline for later plots that I tackled in 2014, when I rewrote them from a Right-leaning lens before going at them again in 2017.

That year, I was in the “we need an all-out war against the State” mindset, and my main characters were violent aggressors. Not the most libertarian read.

The tide started shifting in 2020, but my Rothbardian views didn’t emerge

I went from “violent revolutionary hypocrite” to more of a reformer. So, I became one of those capital ‘L’ Libertarian Party types who adopted more of “the right people” mindset.

“If we could just get Libertarians in public office, we can finally get some real reform.” So, what’d I do? I wrote Wind Wielder (Book I in Elementals of Nordica), a book that showed how the “right people” leading a region could turn it into a utopia.

Wind Wielder tells the story of Nordica, a group of 13 counties that successfully seceded from the Tamurian Empire. But one man was the shot-caller. A man who served as its pseudo-national leader, the military commander, and a university president.

One whose policies created a “minimal State with maximum liberty.” Sounded like a good idea when I published the book in 2022, along with two sequels—Wind Master and Wind Keeper.

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