Release day is here! I hope you’re excited to dive into the journey of the Greysons in the first entry in this new fantasy series!
Greysons of Grimoire started as a web novel, its first chapter published in September of 2017. This published novel is a heavily revised, edited, and polished version of the first Arc of the story, called A World of Magic. If you haven’t checked out the book yet, here’s what it’s about, taken directly from the blurb on the back:
“The city of Grimoire is home to mages, wielders of marvelous and varied magic. They think they know all there is to know about the powers they wield. But when Caleb Greyson meets the mysterious Isabelle, a young girl who can use magic in impossible ways, that knowledge is tested…
For Caleb, the Time Mage who struggles to bear the burden of his own powers…
For Chelsea, a Hunter harboring dark secrets that threaten the one she loves…
For Fae, an artist whose drawings hold secrets even she doesn’t understand…
For Shana and Shias, twins trying to solve the mystery behind the ever-increasing number of missing children…
For Delilah, the youngest of her family, who wields astonishing power and yet struggles with finding her place in the world…
These six unlikely heroes embark on adventures into a magical world beyond their own. A world that draws out their deepest fears. A world that holds answers to their most important and most secret questions. A world housing evils that threaten all they hold dear…”
That focus on characters in the book’s blurb is integral to the story itself. I always make a point of establishing that this is an ensemble story, one that has multiple main characters with personal journeys that intersect and overlap in interesting and surprising ways. If I were to distill it down to genre, it would be “fantasy ensemble adventure.” It’s obviously a fantasy story, it’s an ensemble with a wide range of main characters, and it’s centered on adventure, on exploring strange worlds and learning new things.
Like the end of that blurb suggests, Greysons is a story about facing one’s fears, about asking questions and pursuing answers about who we are and our place in the universe, and about facing down evil and protecting those we love.
If that sounds interesting to you, I hope you’ll check A World of Magic out! If you’re an ebook reader, it’s quite cheap on Kindle and is even free to read for Amazon Prime members through Kindle Select, so don’t hesitate to give it a look! But if you’re more a fan of physical books (like myself), it’s also available in both paperback and hardcover, from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
To coincide with the book’s release, I’ve also added a “Commentary” post on the site and on the book’s page. This is something inspired by what Brandon Sanderson does with his novels, and is a Chapter-by-Chapter commentary giving my thoughts on each chapter, the story, the characters, and also some looks into the writing process involved. It’s meant as a companion piece to the novel, and if you’re interested in getting a deeper look into my process and mindset when creating this story, that’s something great to check out! Currently it has a commentary on the first eight chapters, but the full commentary will be complete by the end of this launch week.
A World of Magic is my first published novel, but it isn’t my first completed novel. I’ve been telling stories since I could talk, and I’ve been writing novels since middle school. My first completed novel was one I wrote in eighth grade, and while it’s very not good in hindsight, that’s how almost everyone’s first works are. And for an eighth-grader, maybe it wasn’t half-bad. Hopelessly derivative, but there’s completing a novel for the first time, no matter your age or the novel’s quality, is nothing to scoff at.
Since that eighth grade experience, I’ve written at least five complete novels that have gone unpublished. I’d like to talk more in-depth about this in the future, but I say “at least” because there are also dozens of rewrites and heavy edits that could perhaps count as another completed novel, but because they weren’t completely from scratch, I’ll separate them from the five.
Two of those novels are complete, ground-up, so-massively-changed that they’re basically brand new stories, rewrites of that first novel I wrote in eighth grade. One of those five is a completed second book to that planned series. The other two of the five are brand new concepts. The first of those was written over the summer of 2015, and I started a full rewrite of it and got about two-thirds of the way through when I realized, while the characters were really, really good, the setting and general storyline needed a massive overhaul, so it’s on hold as I slowly figure those details out.
The final of the five was written, all 130,000 words of it, start to finish, in eleven days in the summer of 2017. I’m still… not entirely sure how I managed that. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to replicate that anomaly, but that novel turned out so good for a first draft that I’m deep in the process of writing the second draft, and plan to release it in 2020.
I’ve also written several short stories, one of which won an Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest’s annual writing competition. Though I must admit I’m not very good at short-form writing, so that Honorable Mention was fairly surprising, and I’m still quite proud of that short story.
That’s not even mentioning the dozens of unfinished or discarded stories, some getting only a few pages in before realizing there wasn’t a future for it, and others making it as far as 40,000 words and realizing it’s just not working. And there are still others that are just “on hold,” each one with its own reason for why it’s not in active development at the moment.
The point of all of this is to say, I’ve been writing for a very long time, and have written quite a lot. My “debut novel” isn’t the start of the story. It’s, in many ways, the culmination of roughly two decades of pursuing storytelling and fantasy, of writing and failing and rewriting and maybe succeeding now and then. Lots and lots of learning, experience, and heart has gone into this release.
And, at the same time, A World of Magic is just the very beginning of a whole new chapter in my life as a storyteller. Of course there’s the whole Greysons of Grimoire series, which will span five books. But there’s more than that. You’ll notice a new addition to the website — an “Upcoming Works” page. You’ll also notice that all four of those novels are planned for release in 2020. That may sound strange, or like I’m rushing, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. A lot of planning has gone into this, a lot of preparation, in order for me to have the confidence to commit to those four. Not to mention, Greysons will continue publishing through 2020, with the second book coming in January.
Like I said, A World of Magic is the culmination of one era, and the start of a new one.
I hope you’ll look forward to all that comes from here, and I hope you’ll enjoy A World of Magic if you decide to pick it up. Again, it’s free to read for Amazon Prime members through the Kindle Select program, so don’t hesitate to take a look if that applies to you! And the paperback and hardcover editions are really beautiful, I’m so happy with them, entirely thanks to my fantastic cover illustrator and designer, Andii. She’s created something really special, that I never could have done on my own, and I’m so in love with this cover. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with for the rest of the series, and to share those future covers with you!
For the Upcoming Works, those “Project” titles are not the actual titles. I’ve kept the titles a secret for now, and kept their descriptions short and vague. Little teasers, leaving room open to steadily reveal more as they near their own release. I hope you’ll look forward to that!
If you’ve taken the time to read this blog post, thank you so much. If you’ve bought or borrowed or gotten to read for free A World of Magic, thank you so much. I know I say it a lot, but it’s because it’s true — I really hope you enjoy it! And if you do, tell your friends about it! I’m so grateful to my readers, and to all those who have helped bring this book to fruition, who have guided my writing journey and have played a part in helping A World of Magic be the very best that it can be. Thank you, all of you, so very much.