I'm Mike DiBaggio, Author and Creator of (Open Source) Worlds of Heroic Adventure

in #introduceyourself8 years ago (edited)

Hello Steemit! My name is Mike. On the surface, I'm a normal guy. I live in a house on a quiet street, I have a wife and pets, and every morning I get in my Subaru and drive an hour-plus to work, where I'm a lead software developer for a company you've shopped at many times before. You may have even passed me on the street today and not noticed anything remarkable.

But I have a secret identity. I create whole worlds using some of the deepest, most powerful magic humankind has ever known: the written word. Airy thoughts given power, fantasy transformed to reality. Those poor souls stuck in the mundane world, where everything is robbed of its wonder, have applied the decidedly unimpressive name of Author to this High Sorcery.

My wife has a secret identity, too. She does the same thing, using both words and pictures. She gets the slightly more impressive, but still entirely insufficient, designation of Author/Illustrator.

We're a team -- a team of superheroes, if you will -- and everyday we battle to save reality.

A World of Resurgent Myth

You see, while I crunch code everyday, that's not where my mind or my heart really is. I want to be creating worlds of adventure and breathing lives into the characters that I love. I want to forge more novels and short stories out of the aether called imagination.

We already have six books out, which you can buy on Amazon or read more about here. These stories span many genres, from Young Adult to Mystery and Suspense, from Science Fiction, to Action and Horror. But they're all tales of heroic adventure, where bold, daring, and (more or less) virtuous people battle against gigantic odds to do what is right.

And each of our books are set in the same shared universe, which we call the Ascension Epoch. It's a world close enough to our own to be recognizable, but different enough to be wondrous and exciting. History took a different path in the Ascension Epoch, a path where the events of some of the greatest works of fiction ever written actually happened. The most important of those changes are:

  • The re-emergence of paranormal abilities (superpowers, if you will) in the mid 19th century. Both the extraordinary abilities and the extraordinary people who wield them are called Talents in our universe.
  • The invasion of Earth by the Martians, a la H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, which wrecked the world's empires, redrew the political map, and, in some cases, transformed the geography.

Our alternate history is chock full of details taken from the public domain works of creators as varied as Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Will Eisner. And it's populated both with heroes and villains you're already familiar with and hundreds of originals that I hope you'll grow to love.

Heroes of the Commons

I really do want you to love these characters and live their adventures in the fullest way possible, and that means the freedom to share and remix them in whatever way you like. Accordingly, all our stories, artwork, and designs are open source, released under CC-BY-SA, now and forever.

Besides, it would be silly if we incorporated so much public domain material and insisted on copyright, wouldn't it?

I intend to post some of our shorter stories on here, and eventually I will also share some of our novels in episodic installments. But to do that, we have to publish a few of the six or seven books that we currently have in flight.

One day I'll be able to quit my day job and turn fantasy into reality full time. One day...

Back to Mundanity

While I get ready for bed (I have to be up early for that hour-long drive to work, remember?), maybe you can help turn my fantasy into reality by buying some of our books, or, If you've already done that, by leaving a review or spreading the word about our grand project. Sorcerers of the written word thrive on encouragement, you know. Perhaps you'd like to join in the project with your own creations, or share your own adventures in worldbuilding or Open Source fiction.

In any case, I look forward to hearing from you, and I look forward to sharing more of what I love with you.

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Awesome! Followed!

I like your idea of remixing, and have a similar idea myself with my unfinished novel Merwin In The Multiverse. I was thinking ,after I put more of it on the net, of having other authors write versions of stories that take place in the parallel worlds of the characters.

So if you don't mind I'm gonna check out your work and see if I can work some of your characters into my book. I love the idea of parallel worlds meeting, and I feel like that is what's happening after reading your post ;)

Thanks, @kendewitt. It's always nice to be able to encourage others to open their creative works to common development. The way I see it, people who like your stuff are going to do it anyway, so there's little point in alienating them by trying to shut them down (a la Paramount, Disney, etc...). And the best way to get people to enjoy your art is to make them aware of it. I'd be thrilled to see some Ascension Epoch characters appearing in your work.

I haven't been writing publicly long enough to have anyone really even see my work, let alone want to riff off of it. But I'm totally open to that. I think Steemit can be a place for an open exchange of ideas between writers in a way that hasn't really been done before. Or maybe it has but I have just never run into it.

Are you from Pittsburgh? Just reading the synopsis of The Dismal Tide. I was born there and grew up on the west coast, but lived there a couple years in high school. I mean nobody who isn't from there calls it The Burgh AFAIK.

I live in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, about 4.5 hours away from Pittsburgh. If you have heard of Yuengling beer, you know where I'm from.

But I lived in Pittsburgh for four years in the early 2000s when I went got my undergrad degree at Pitt. I lived in Oakland and Shadyside and spent a ton of time exploring the area. I think it's a really neat place, at least geographically and culturally, with a surprisingly deep history for a city in Pennsylvania. Plus, write what you know, and all that...

upvoted, and followed.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support!

That looks awesome! Upvoted!

Hey bud, its Luis from Google+!
:DD Glad to see you're on :D

@mikedibaggio Wow! Excellent and well written. Upvoted and following you now!
BTW we now have a functional "feed" system. You can see current posts of people you're following by going there. Anyways, welcome to steemit!

Thanks for the follow and the info, @williambanks. I've followed you as well.

Awesome! Followed and upvoted. Welcome!