Samuel DenHartog's Blog: The Road to 1,440 - Posts Tagged "navajo"

Some stories unfold across kingdoms or continents. This one unfolds across sacred ground, where rivers remember, stones watch, and monsters are more than simple villains. At its heart is a journey between two brothers, one shaped for battle and the other for wisdom, traveling through a world broken by ancient wounds. Their path takes them from the safety of home to the edge of the sky, and finally into the deep places where the hardest choice is not how to fight, but whether to.

The monsters they face are drawn from Diné (Navajo) tradition, each one a force of imbalance: giants, serpents, creatures of bone and hunger. But the story is not a catalog of battles. It is a reckoning. Some beings are slain, yes. But others must be spared. And those moments of restraint say as much about the world as the fiercest fights do.

The Holy People, the Sun, and the sacred weapons are all woven into a narrative that stays close to the original structure while allowing room for emotion, silence, and doubt. These characters are not symbols. They are sons, brothers, and seekers. By the end, they do not just survive the journey. They carry it with them. That weight was important to preserve.

If you are thinking of picking up "Monster Slayer and Born-for-Water," I hope you will find in its pages the presence of something older, something that walks beside you rather than ahead. This is not a story that shouts. It follows the rhythm of myth, of memory, of lessons that reveal themselves only when you are ready to hear them. Not all monsters are what they seem. And not all power comes from the blade. Some stories arrive quietly and wait to see if you are listening.

When I began shaping this story, I knew I wanted to explore the moment when harmony breaks and what might grow in the silence that follows. The book follows a young Diné (Navajo) Medicine Man whose life begins in balance, deeply rooted in tradition, family, and the sacred songs that shape his world. His bond with his twin brother is nearly unshakable, and their childhood in the high desert is filled with ceremony, laughter, and the early signs of who they will become. But when love and jealousy collide, that bond shatters in a single moment of violence.

What follows is not just a fall from grace but a transformation that crosses the lines between human and animal, body and spirit. The man we once knew becomes something else entirely. He walks roads far from his people and far from the name he once carried, changing in ways both physical and spiritual. These transformations are not gifts. They are consequences. Each one reflects a new stage of exile and a new way the world fears or misunderstands what he has become.

This story lives at the edge of Diné belief, where beauty and balance guide the living, and the consequences of breaking that harmony ripple outward like a cracked drum. I spent a great deal of time researching traditional songs, ceremonies, and mythic figures to echo their gravity within a fictional framework. My aim was not to define what a Skinwalker is, but to imagine what kind of man might walk that road.

By the final chapter, the man walks where names no longer follow. Whether or not there is peace is left for the reader to decide. This is not a tale of redemption, but one of reckoning, shaped by the weight of what cannot be undone. That is the story at the heart of "Skinwalker Rising."