A Wizard's Errand

Around the end of 2018 (Dec. 31 -- the very point of the sting on the wyvern's tail, in fact) I achieved one of my life goals: becoming a published fantasy novelist. Well, self-published, at least. I had been reluctant to talk about it here, perhaps out of some strange desire to keep my game-blogging life and my novel-writing life compartmentalized, but what the hell ... here it is.

Needless to say, with the combination of my shoestring budget and extreme loathing for shameless self-promotion, it hasn't exactly taken the world by storm, but I'm rather fond of it nonetheless. Among the limited readership so far, it seems to be curiously polarizing: some have loved it and written of it in fairly glowing terms, and some have despised it, even to the point that their reviews take on a strong tone of personal affront. (How dare I give away free ebook copies and force them to read such dreck?) It's been described as refreshingly unique (I probably wouldn't go that far, myself) and as a shameless LotR ripoff (which I'm also quite sure it is not, despite some possible similarities in genre and tone.)

At any rate, the truth of its quality probably lies somewhere in the vast continuum between timeless masterpiece and abject turd, though I have some small hope that it leans slightly nearer the former end of the scale. It's meant to be the first of a series of three books (one of those "trilogy" things, I suppose) with the sequel, A Minstrel's Apprentice, currently slogging through its final draft before beta reading. I didn't really set out to write a young adult novel, and I wouldn't necessarily consider it one, but that's probably the demographic to which it might appeal most consistently; whether it's the cup of tea of those 40-somethings and beyond who comprise this blog's readership I leave as a question for the individual.