I'm super excited to have Sarah Delena White sharing her thoughts about hope on the blog today. Find details about her new release, Shadow Light, at the end of this post.
Hope is the last thing I feel like talking about today.
The world is a dark and heavy place right now. In the space of two weeks, I’ve lost my job and income, watched the coffee industry I love be severely damaged, struggled with depression and anxiety, and grieved the loss of most of my interpersonal connections and plans for the foreseeable future. I feel isolated, restless, and aimless—the same place that many of you are probably in as well. We wait for the news to get better, for our lives to return to some semblance of normal. And we look for hope.
I definitely didn’t plan to release a book during this time. I wrote Shadow Light last month, just wrote it to get it out of my head, and then edited it and put it up for preorder in short order because I felt like I was supposed to. I had no idea how much I’d end up relating to the characters’ struggles or how important the story’s central theme would become.
Hope in Shadow Light isn’t some fluffy, sparkly thing. Aeric and Layla live in a world that is being swallowed by darkness, yet they carry out their mission because they are looking past the present moment and the peril surrounding them. To them, it doesn’t matter that monsters are overrunning the world and no one else believes they can be defeated. It doesn’t even matter whether they live to see the fruits of their bravery. They’ve been given a mission, and they cling to that purpose and to the belief that evil will not ultimately triumph, no matter what trials they face.
That’s the sort of hope I’m trying to cling to these days. It isn’t easy, and the only way is to continually look to Christ and remember there’s more to the story beyond what I can see. No matter what we’ve lost or how many plans have been shattered, we can hold on to hope that there is a purpose to all of this and it’s working out for our good and His glory. We can hope for a good end to this story and know that it’s coming, one way or another.
Fights against dark monsters aren’t just a thing of fantasy. They’re something we all must do every day. But, thank God, we don’t have to fight alone, and we have hope for a future and a victory that rests in His hands.
Night lived in a tower at the end of the world.
Her name was Layla, and the world did not know her.
Day had no tower.
His name was Aeric, and the world held no refuge for him.
Yet with the evil Coroc and his army of shadowfiends terrorizing the lands, Layla and Aeric must work together to restore light and hope before all is lost.
Night and Day must unite to save all peoples from eternal, terrifying evil in this lyrical tale that combines the wonder of George MacDonald’s fairy tales with the beauty of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.
Sarah Delena White was raised by wolves in an alternate dimension. She writes eclectic speculative fiction that reworks mythology with a fine balance of poetry and snark. She's an experienced world traveler who loves to weave world folklore and ancient concepts into vibrant, original story worlds. She is the administrative manager for Uncommon Universes Press. When she's not writing, she can be found making elegant designer bead jewelry, traveling to festivals as a professional ballad singer, drinking tea, and seeking to create the perfect latte. She can be bribed with dark chocolate.
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