At Eposic, we’re all about engaging and exercising the mind in creative ways. Sometimes it’s a new challenge for ourselves we’re focusing on. Other times we’re stirring up something new to challenge our fans. We’re unconstrained, taking on a variety of projects, from GameLit / LitRPG novels to electronic digital music albums to chess variant rule books to digital art and animation to mazes and other games and puzzles. With our products available on various sites across the web, links to all of them will be collected on this site.
We’re people with hyperactive imaginative minds needing a variety of entertainments to avoid mental disintegration, looking for like-minded individuals to share the results of our creative passions, hoping to make a living while we’re at it. We’re glad you’re here and hope you’re sufficiently similar to us to find something we’ve done to your liking.
MK Eidson
The owner/operator of Eposic, MK (Mike) Eidson grew up in the Missouri Ozarks, the oldest of six children, in a rural area where everyone knew everyone else for miles around, which isn’t so difficult when your closest neighbors are your grandparents living a quarter of a mile away.
Fiction and storytelling have always fascinated Mike, and he didn’t think twice about being called upon more than his fellow students to read his stories in front of his elementary school classes. As the only member of his senior class involved in the school band, he handily won the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award his senior year, though his ability to play the baritone saxophone was mediocre at best, as his music teacher was quick to point out before the school awards assembly. His love for music unwavering, Mike delved into composing electronic music on the computer as soon as computers and the appropriate software arrived on the scene. Unable to draw a decent stick figure by hand, Mike turned to computers and digital art programs when they became available too.
Often unable to distinguish right from left and terrible at remembering things, especially names, younger Mike would strive for perfection even when his circumstances made it impossible to achieve, wasting much time and energy in pursuit of the unattainable. Older Mike has learned to accept imperfection, coming to understand that the soul of art, music, and fiction reside not within the divine but the broken, the reason why the original Creator created humanity. The heart of story lies in the mortal struggle, the conflict, the contradictions, the paradoxes, not the happy endings or the ascent to Heaven. Yet we humans need our happy times, our victories, our triumphs, to feel our worth, and as with any well-crafted story, our most satisfying victories come without divine intervention, without deus ex machina. For MK Eidson, happiness is found in completing a creative effort, whether it be a novel, a music track, a piece of art, or a puzzle. He loves them all, and likes to believe the Creator is proud of him.
Mike currently lives in Windermere, Florida, with his wife and their little girl dog, not far from the Disney, Universal, and Sea World theme parks, which have also been sources of happiness for Mike.
Emila H Thicke
Always quick to point out how much of an introvert she is, Emila H Thicke grew up knowing next to nothing about her biological parents, and prefers not to speak about her life before reaching adulthood. She makes an exception when it comes to the sale of her first novella, You Died on Tuesday, when she was seventeen. The story was accepted and some rights purchased in 2008 by MK Eidson as owner/editor for Eposic Diversions LLC, the predecessor to the current incarnation of Eposic. Emila’s story, along with half a dozen others, was slated for publication in Out of Order, which was to be the second anthology from Eposic Diversions LLC. Unfortunately, the LLC folded before Out of Order was published.
Living in near proximity to Mike, Emila stayed in touch with him, and before long he introduced her to table-top role-playing games: Tunnels and Trolls, GURPS, Fudge, and others. She became a member of Ken St. Andre’s Trollhalla web site for Elite T&T players. For years, she was known as Arlene in the WarTune MMORPG and spent way too much money on the game. She ranked high on her initial server, but as servers merged, she kept falling in the ranks, not willing to spend even more money to compete with those who had been playing longer and had spent even more than she had.
Her real love creatively is time travel fiction. When Mike approached her about co-authoring a GameLit/LitRPG series, she voiced her hope to include time travel elements. With Undone, book two of the series, time travel is central to the plot, making Emila one happy woman. She is even happier that a portion of her novella, You Died on Tuesday, a story based in part on her own life at seventeen, was incorporated into Undone.
Emila lives with her significant other in Central Florida, in the same zip code as MK Eidson.
Dave Eidson
Also a native of the Missouri Ozarks and born in the fifties, Dave Eidson grew up a few miles from the small town of Macks Creek. After graduating from high school as Valedictorian, Dave worked at various jobs and finally spent over thirty years working at Blair Cedar and Novelty Co. If you’ve driven through the Ozarks and purchased any cedar novelty souvenirs, Dave might have had a hand in making it. He enjoys photography, art, songwriting, and playing music, and posts songs on YouTube on his channel, Ozarkbluefox.
With MK Eidson as co-author, Dave wrote the short story, The Huntress of Avaleor, which the two of them published under the pseudonym David Michael Elk because it seemed like the fun thing to do at the time. The story is out of print, though it might yet be resurrected and republished by Eposic.
Dave and Mike invented a chess variant as youngsters. Back then, they called it something different, but they recently published it under the title Enchantment Chess. You can find more info about the game elsewhere on this site.