I'm Publishing a Book

So, I’ve written a bit about the different stages of the writing process. I learned this process the hard way: by trying to write books. To be fair, I also read a mind numbing number of books about writing books, because I have always learned best by reading, but most of my learning in this regard was the Samuel Beckett variety—try, fail, try again, fail again, fail better.

One of the reasons I left Tucson was because I was convinced I would never do the things I wanted to do with my life if I stayed in the old pueblo coaching soccer. Chief among those things I wanted to do was write a book. I have wanted to write a book since I was a kid, spending all of my free time devouring books at an unconscionable rate. I tried writing in Tucson. It didn’t take. Every idea died in infancy, barely a dozen pages, if that.

One thing that helped me enormously in trying to figure out how to write a book was going to graduate school. Now, I didn’t go get an MFA, which I really should have. I got a Masters in Education with a focus on system design. The thing is, in getting my degree, I had to write a dissertation. So, over the course of my studies, I built a 130 page paper about systemic development and curriculum design. There’s even a bound hardcopy in the university library. It was far and away the longest thing I had ever written, and in the process, I learned how to approach large writing projects.

While I was in school, I began working on a book. It was a wildly ambitious first book, and I ended up slaving over it for six years, featuring numerous sizable rewrites, including breaking the one book into a trilogy, and one writing convention where I got a manuscript request from a publisher that I never followed up on because I never felt like my book was ‘ready’.

Since then, I have written seven other fiction books and one non-fiction book I prefer not to think about. I think I’ll probably rework the non-fiction book into a series of blog posts and share them with you all here. The fiction books, however, I have decided to publish, starting with the four book series I have most recently finished. It’s the first series I have finished. The first book I wrote was part of a larger series I do plan to finish someday, and I wrote a prequel to it, while the other two books were standalone books.

This is a Young Adult series that is a blend of sci-fi and fantasy. It could probably be called Urban Fantasy, though it is set in a near future. There is scarce language and non-graphic sexual situations because it is a depiction of kids who are in high school, and kids in high school curse and have sex, though there isn’t any sex until the third book, when they’re in their junior year. The people who have read it have had positive things to say about it, and my twelve year old nephew, who is as voracious a reader as I was at his age, loves the first two books and has reread them several times, which is as high a commendation as I could hope for.

With no further ado, here is what the first book is about:

The Lakeside Kids and the Magical Metamorphoses

In magical America, the government implants wizards with microchips to regulate their magic and control their lives, even ending them in extreme situations. Every citizen is tested for magical ability before high school, and those with the ability get sent to one of five specialized magical Academies.

The day James Clayden discovered he could cast magic was simultaneously the best and the worst day of his life. His family of staunch anti-magic purists disowned him and his girlfriend dumped him, but he would be attending the Lakeside Academy of Magic and Advanced Technology, the most prestigious of the five American Academies. Despite his upbringing, James had always secretly wanted to be a wizard, so he was both elated and devastated at the turn of events.

Life at the Academy surpassed all James’s expectations. His more socially competent new roommate introduced him to several other students, and they all became fast friends. The robot chefs made better food than he’d ever had in his life. The library was exhaustive, and there were magics to read an entire book in an instant. On top of everything else, there was the actual learning and casting of magic.

Things at the Academy are not all they appear to be, though, as soon one of James’s new friends is transformed into a tree through magic no one seems to know either how to cast or reverse. Soon, more students are lost to unexplained transformations, transformations they don’t survive, and James and his friends set out to figure out who or what is behind these deaths. While navigating new relationships and confronting bullies, James has to discover the cause of these deaths before he or another of his friends falls victim to whatever is happening, or, worse, the Academy is closed.

I’ll be posting updates as I work through the logistics of publication, so feel free to follow along! You can subscribe to my newsletter announcing publication (and nothing but publication details) details here.