Synopsis
Corruption oozes from the highest seat in the Stevedom, the Temple of Light, yet the gods are silent. The Guardian who watches over the land, and his sadistic Vanguard of Destruction, rule a dominion that smudges the glory of creation that built the wonders strewn across the holy city of Blurizar.
In the Artist’s Guild, dreams of fire haunt young Zaddia Stevens. She sees the capital burn, the smoke rising up to a hundred million stars scattered across a black canvas—a realm called Starry Zarria—where she is a hero destined to save the lost legends of the past. The statues erected to commemorate both the great deeds and awful devastation wrought by those lost souls are brought once more into the light.
Foreword: Starry Zarria (2025)
When you were a child, did you have vivid dreams? Did you dream of other worlds where you possessed great power? Or were you helpless before the giants that stalked your realm of sleep?
And when you awoke, were you relieved that the hardship had ended? Or were you disappointed that you had to say farewell so quickly? Did you discard the memories that were, for a short while, your real life, or did you bring a fragment of them with you into your waking reality?
According to the mythos of Stevism, dreams reveal a shard of another world, an illicit peek into a realm where an entity similar to us experiences their own challenges, hardships, joys, and futures. Such worlds are innumerous. The lives of our mirror selves reflect our own, and their warnings are not to be taken lightly.
The subject of this tale is Zaddia, a prophetic child in a Stevic world whose dreams foretold calamity, a destruction great and terrible, and the future she seized. Herein is one of the essential tales of Stevish lore, a revelation of divine proportions that paves the way for the beginning of ends.
Best Regards,
Prophet Steve
Afterword: On Writing Starry Zarria (2025)
Starry Zarria is the first novel I completed without the generous vacations afforded to teachers, and I worried whether I’d be able to finish it within a year. I was correct. In 2024, I lost my streak of publishing a “novel” each year and regretfully fell back upon releasing the short story The Zad, which I had finished in 2015. This was a disappointment that I have only recently overcome with the affirmation that this story would not be as culturally rich had I rushed it through production, and the addenda would have been cut.
Starry Zarria is special because it is the first novel fully and unquestionably within the Stevish canon, featuring the Stevish gods and their influence upon a decaying world, and Starria, who shall play a pivotal role in the future. Crumbs of Stevism snuck into Dollar Superpowers, where Clape is an adherent of Zad, and In the Hollow of the White Sycamore, where the furresh of Skoradazar are actually Stevish angels of world-ending power. But digging deeper into the pious side of this story also made it challenging. I debated whether the references to Stevish gods, monsters, and legends might make this novel fail as a standalone piece. Then, I decided to not be concerned about it. I held fast to spontaneity and wrote almost everything just the way I wanted it to be. I leaned into writing the scenes that felt natural and fun rather than adhering to the rigidity of my storyline.
The original draft emphasized the dystopian nature of the novel and went into more detail about the unfair power the Vanguards and even the Enforcers had over non-believers. But I realized that I really wanted to emphasize the legends more, and so I did. In the earliest draft of the storyline, I planned for the conclusion to reveal that the Guardian had actually been influenced by foreign nations and that he had taunted Starria to destroy the capital to free the Dominion from the grasp of a futuristic imperial United States. But I ultimately cut this in favor of emphasizing Starria’s prophetic role to go to the realm of Starry Zarria.
A sequel is intended for this novel. However, such a sequel must await the official release of the holy book of Stevism, the Stevos, as well as the release of other stories of Stevish canon, such as the story of Spark! Such plans keep me going.
Best Regards,
Stephen Knudsen
Stephen Knudsen 