I am excited, today, to announce that I have completed the writing of Ronin Part 5, and that it should be available for purchase on Amazon or for free download as a PDF by 16 November.

So, what is Ronin Part 5 about? This new chapter of the story picks up a few weeks after the traumatic ending of Part 4, where Ronin and Julia had been assaulted and thrown into a hangar by three fullsynths, who were determined to experience the sex that mostly organic halfsynths, like Ronin, and fullhumans, like Julia, were rumored to enjoy.

We follow them as they process the trauma (or don’t process it), see how the uncertainty and fear that arise from it affect Julia, and how they navigate their different experiences as a couple. We witness, too, the doubts that continue to grow inside Julia about General Genghis’s intentions, as well as how they begin to trouble Ronin, himself. Now, I will not say anything about the ending of Part 5. However, I will tell you that it marks a turning point for both Ronin and Julia as they discover strengths they had not had before.

And there is another thing I would like to say before I let you go, which is my reasons for writing sexual violence into the story. You see, I truly hate reading books that depict acts of rape or sexual subjugation in them, so much so that when I started reading Game of Thrones, Book 1, and I got to the scene where a prince was selling his sister for sex as a political means, I immediately closed the book and threw it into the trash.  I had never done that before, and I am more careful now about what I read. And I find, as well, that I cannot read books where characters or the narrator use racist insults; I just can’t make myself say the words out loud or even say them in my own mind. So, how could I visualize acts of sexual violence? I cannot. This being so, why would I choose to write about rape in Ronin? I decided to do it because sexual violence is still all too prevalent a crime in our societies, and I wanted to say something about the terrible traumas it causes, even if, as is the case in Ronin Parts 4 and 5, the act was not consummated by the rapists; the pain and the hurt are real, regardless. The one limit I imposed on myself is that I would not describe the acts in any way, and I did not. But the event is still part of the story. And, if you’ve looked at my “Other projects” page, you will know that this topic is a very important one for me because people very close to me have been the victims of sexual assaults, which led my brother and I to compose songs to talk about the topic from various perspectives in the hope that the songs will help increase awareness to both the evil of the acts, which should no longer exist in our species, and the evil of the silence that surrounds sexual violence.

Having said all this, why not read Ronin Part 4 or Ronin Parts 1-3, if you have not yet done so while you wait for Part 5? Both books can be read in a couple of evenings, if you are a slow reader like me, or in one sitting if you have a couple of hours for it.

A good week to you all in the meantime, L.A.