Month: April 2020

I’ve completed editing my newest novel, which I plan to release either in May or June of this year. It is a YA novel with plenty of magic in it. It was a 3 year journey to complete, and in the book, I have included an afterword that explains the process.

I’ve started another project which will be a collection of short stories. It’s more in the vein of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone–stories about the bizarre, with strange twists and turns. I’ve started one story already and am wrapping it up.

I’ve been wanting to write a collection of short stories for awhile. But instead of having distinct stories with no relation to each other, these stories will interconnect, though they will only be related because of a worldly event that has occurred.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, is a fun and engaging ride through the world of Narnia as seen through the eyes of its characters. The story is about four kids: Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter, who are staying in a house of a professor in England during the air raids of WWII.

While playing hide and seek, Lucy hides in a wardrobe. As she reaches into the recesses of the wardrobe, she discovers a world of snow and forest. She meets a faun, Tumnus, who takes her to his place for some rest. But later, Tumnus admits that he kept there so that the white witch could find her. He also tells her that the witch has made it winter in Narnia, but Christmas never arrives.

Tumnus decides to help Lucy escape before the witch finds her. When Lucy returns to her world, she realizes that hardly any time has elapsed since she was gone. When she tells the other kids what she saw, no one believes her.

Later in the story, she and Edmund enter Narnia separately. He encounters the white witch, and she offers him Turkish Delights to win him to her side. He has aspirations of becoming a king there, but only if he brings the other kids to the witch.

After they leave Narnia, Edmund tells the other kids that Lucy made all of this up. But they end up going to Narnia altogether, meeting Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, Father Christmas, Aslan, and other characters.

The story is a fun and fast read. There is lots of adventure with gripping tension as we discover how the witch is using Edmund. Like The Magician’s Nephew, the story is humorous and has great illustrations by Pauline Baynes.

The Magician’s Nephew, by C.S. Lewis, is a fun story about two kids (Digory and Polly) that find magical rings in Digory’s uncle’s study (Uncle Andrew). The rings allow the two kids to teleport between worlds.

They first end up in a wood area with pools where they can choose which worlds they decide to teleport to. The rings have an order to them as well (yellow to enter, green to leave).

They decide to take a chance and explore a random world. Upon entering, they discover the ruins of a kingdom. They run into the witch Jadis, after Digory rings a bell which awakens her. They learn of a war that had transpired in her world, and her plans to escape to rule another world using her magic.

The kids must stop her, and in the process, they bring people from their world along to Narnia incidentally. There, we’re introduced to Aslan, the lion, and he awakens other animals that can speak. There is a biblical reference to the forbidden fruit. Digory must make a choice whether to bring the apple back to save his mother despite Aslan’s warning.

The story is easy to read and has funny humor in it as well. The end of the book is a precursor to the next book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It also establishes a quality about the wardrobe in the next book.

I also enjoyed the illustrations in the book by Pauline Baynes. They’re colorful and complement the book’s magical storyline.

I’ve been working hard on a new novel that’s coming out soon. It’s a YA/urban fantasy novel with magic and lots of mystery.

I made it a goal this year to complete 4 novels, and I’m getting close to finishing number 3. The 4th novel is still up in the air, but I know I’d like to take a break after novel number 3 and complete number 4 later on this year. If you haven’t checked out Rogue Experiment or The Birnbaum Case, please check those out. They’re out on Amazon as well as iBooks.