Inspiration Behind The Drama

What Inspired you to write The Peaceful Drama? Since releasing my new book The Peaceful Drama: A Forbidden Comedy, I’ve been asked this question several times, so I decided to bring the answer here to the Writers Block Blog.

The origin of this book started during one of my usual solo nights out in West Texas in early 2024. I was at a bar I frequented just hanging out like normal. I was friends with the DJ there—he was one of my biggest supporters when it came to my writing and owned several of my previous books.

During one of our conversations he asked me a simple question:

“Yo, have you ever read Dante’s Inferno?”

At the time, I hadn’t.

He told me he saw similarities between my writing style and Dante Alighieri, especially after reading my previous book Petty Poetry, which was a dark poetry collection heavily influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. That comment planted the first seed of an idea in my mind, though I didn’t act on it immediately.

At the time I was serving on active duty in the Air Force in a physically demanding job. Between work and exhaustion, my creative drive was distracted and stalled.

Later in 2024, I was out again at another bar when I ran into a girl I knew who was aware that I wrote books. During our conversation she asked me the exact same question the DJ had asked earlier that year:

“Have you read Dante’s Inferno?”

She was in college and had been assigned to read and analyze it for a class. She suggested I might be able to take something from it to add to my own writing.

At that point I was convinced.

This would be my next writing project.

Discovering Dante

At the time I had been reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer, but I paused it to begin studying The Inferno. I downloaded an ebook version to my phone and slowly read it during my graveyard shifts at work.

The first time I read it, I enjoyed the story but struggled to fully interpret what was happening. The book was written in the 14th century using epic poetic language filled with phrases like:

“O full of pity she…”“To misery doom’d…”

The language was beautiful, but difficult for a modern reader to process.

When I mentioned this to the girl who had recommended the book, she told me what helped her in class: reading modern summaries before each chapter to understand the events before diving into the original text.

I adopted the same strategy for my second read-through, and suddenly the entire story became clear.

Now I was mentally loaded.

I was ready to write.

Building My Own Vision

One thing I knew immediately was that I didn’t want to write in 14th-century language. I wanted the story told in modern language so readers wouldn’t struggle the way I initially did.

At the same time, I had many other influences running through my mind.

I’m a huge fan of anime and gaming, particularly the Cyberpunk game series and the Edgerunners show on Netflix. Alongside that, I spend a lot of time studying and exploring different spiritual systems and practices such as Mysticism, the left-hand path/craftwork, meditation, Shakti philosophy, Buddhism, Voodoo, Root magic, UFology, Kabbalistic angelology, demonology, the Law of One philosophy, and the Remnant's idea of The Most High.

Professionally, I also study computer science with a focus on cybersecurity.

With all of these influences in my mind, I had to engineer a way to bring them together into a story that balanced them all and still made sense.

Inverting Dante

The solution came through a structural inversion.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante descends downward through the nine circles of hell.

I decided to invert that structure.

Instead of descending into darkness, The Peaceful Drama follows the protagonist’s ascension upward through the seven chakras of the human body.

The environments of the story take place within a massive futuristic city designed like a chakra system. The protagonist begins in the lowest part of the city and journeys northward and upward, with each district representing a different chakra and spiritual challenge he must overcome in order to activate the next level of his ascension.

Personal Experience

The story also reflects pieces of my own life.

In 2020, when the COVID lockdowns placed society into a strange reset, I experienced my own spiritual awakening. During that time I lost both of my jobs and found myself confined to my apartment due to quarantine restrictions.

For the first time in a long time, life slowed down.

Without the constant distractions of work and chasing money, I had time to sit with myself and reflect. That period became the beginning of my own spiritual journey, and parts of that experience are mirrored in the protagonist of The Peaceful Drama.

The World of Auracite

With my background in computer science, cybersecurity, and my love for futuristic storytelling, I decided to set the story far into the future in the year 2284.

I wanted the book to be science fiction, but infused with spiritual philosophy.

This led me to create a genre I call:

Esoteric-Sci

A fusion of:

• Cyber

• Spiritual philosophy

• Science fiction

Even some of the military discipline I experienced during my time in service found its way into the story.

The Final Result

What you see now in the promotions and images surrounding the book is the final product of all those influences coming together.

If any of those ideas interest you—cyberpunk worlds, spiritual ascension, philosophical science fiction—then The Peaceful Drama may be worth exploring.

This is my ninth book after more than fourteen years of writing independently, and it is unlike anything I’ve written before.

As the first witness to this story, I can confidently say it walks its own path.

Hopefully this answers the question many people have asked me.

And when you’re ready to begin your own ascension, you know where to find your copy of:

The Peaceful Drama: A Forbidden Comedy

~ Gambol A humble writer at Ravens Society ~