On the Eve of Deployment
- Kenton Moore
- Mar 25
- 4 min read
A trip down memory lane while the future unfolds
I have been thinking a lot about my past today. In a few short days, I will leave home for the West Coast to embark on the first two appearances of my BC Tour to promote Vallen, book 1 of the Cloudbreakers series. I have dreamt about this world and this story for more than twelve years, and today, I thought a lot about why. I thought about when I discovered Steampunk as an art and a genre. I thought about all the people who inspired me, supported me, and refused to let me quit even when I wanted nothing more. And I thought about four words that a fellow wordsmith - John Ward - told me: "Write what you know."
Okay... so let me start by saying I have obviously taken a lot of liberties with "what I know" in a world with talking wolves, ancient stories of dragons, flying airships, etc. Some suspension of belief is required in speculative fiction, which is why Cloudbreakers fits better within the Gaslamp Fantasy genre than its more restrictive Steampunk cousin. The world, places, and people are make-believe. Not real-life London or Earth in the 1800s. But that does not mean that what I put into Vallen and the sequel I have already started working on are not "what I know." Fate, or perhaps even dumb luck, has held the wheel in the story of my real life, and without getting into the boring "why" of it, we'll start in January 2002 on the day I signed the dotted line and pledged a blank cheque to the service of my country.
Good lord, I was young in those early service pictures. There is a story I tell often about my first day of boot camp; standing in line with my duffel bag at my feet, not answering my name when the instructor called out "Ordinary Seaman Moore." I had filled out all my paperwork to be in the Air Force. There had to be another Moore on the course. A fairly common name, so it was possible. But alas... I was mistaken, and after having to admit I did in fact, know my own name, I discovered the Navy had claimed me. There was no way to know back then, the effect that my service would have on me. Nor the effect the people I met along the way would. Barely a year into my service, my first posting to a ship saw me setting foot in Pearl Harbor at 21 years old along with friends who are still, to this day, like brothers to me.
Amid it all, there were some wild adventures and some experiences you had to be there to believe. There are stories I will only share with my service family and stories my kids beg me to tell whenever I meet their friends. From funny to sad to angry, the nine years I spent on Canadian ships was an entire lifetime of adventure for most. In the Canadian Navy, there is a large abundance of cross-training to ensure efficacy with the limited numbers we have to crew our ships, so we were trained constantly and wore a lot of hats. My primary trade was Supply Chain and Logistics, but I was also a hazardous material specialist, a medical first responder, a fire-fighter, and more. I spent time as the ship's sharp-shooter, I was taught to shore up leaks and broken pipes for flood repair, and I even joined the boarding party for a time. That one was fun but also a very serious, no-nonsense task. All of them were, but boarding party was something else.
When John Ward said those words to me, all these memories of people, places, and adventures flooded my mind. When I started creating the Cloudbreakers world, it was my service and the stories of everyone I served with that was at its heart. No, absolutely none of it is meant to glorify the military or military service in any way. At the heart of it all, Cloudbreakers is a social commentary through the lens of someone who did glorify military service and adventure, but along his journey, he learned that a lot like icebergs, there is so so much more below the surface. It is a human story of the call to put others before one's self, to seek found family and meaning, and to protect that which you love with all you have. The airships were born from our fleet, the peregrines from our boarding party. The story of war from the veterans that came before us.
I realized today that I am having this trip down memory lane because I stand on the precipice of embarking on a new adventure in my life. A new chapter, if you will... taking this story beyond my friends and family. Reaching out to the world with it. And before any new adventure, it is normal to look back to glean wisdom and perhaps help create expectations and soothe the anxious nerves about the unknown. I had the same feeling every time the ship was about to deploy, and just like now, I had my family, my friends, and my crew at my side. So come with me. Unlock the Sky. Enter the world of the Cloudbreakers, meet Vallen and the others, and maybe... just maybe... we may find ourselves in a pub someday shouting "to the Rise, for the Fallen!" and we all know what it means.
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