The Setup
— Feel free to skip this bit and get to the book description below
First, for those of you who remember my old travel blog… I changed hosting providers and that content is gone. I have it archived, I may one day upload it here, but that a future maybe thing. 🙂
In the meantime, this new (so far *very* basic) website is my first pass at a place to put book-related things because…
🎉 I have a book! 🎉
So, here’s the thing. Back in 2022, I came to realize that, while I was happy with my life, I’d let some things drop by the wayside and I actually wanted more out of life. So I started reading with more dedication (it’s been, I don’t know, 1,000+ books since then?), and exercising more. I started a local Science Fiction and Fantasy reading group here in Cuenca, which has a pretty consistent membership of 6-8 expats — just the nicest, smartest, funniest people you could ask to hang out with.
And, while listening to a podcast (“I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats”, 2 seasons, it’s super good), random phrases that the 2 podcast guys would say in talking to each other would start to spin out stories in my head. And I felt like I really wanted to write them down, so I did. A dozen or so stories later, my friends Mark and Jenni read some of them and declared them Not Terrible™️, which was an unwise level of encouragement if you ask me, but they threw caution to the wind.
So, I took the next step, and sent them off to a writing coach / editor I knew of, Hal Duncan, an award winning Scottish writer (of fantastic books like Vellum, and others). He gave me feedback, of varying degrees of criticism/enthusiasm, but he generally agreed with the Not Terrible™️ assessment for several of them.
Three of those stories were novella length — 15-20,000 words — and they were all about the same theme: a person in our regular world who is, or comes to be, the Guardian of a doorway between our world and the fae world. They were basically all in the same fictional universe, just different Guardians, different takes on how that sort of thing might work and what it would mean to those involved.
One of those stories grew, as I continued to have thoughts about the characters, into what became this novel. It was fairly natural to interweave that tale with the other two novellas, and with other related tales in the same universe that I wrote along the way. Hal continued to give me feedback and suggestions and, eventually, when the whole thing was done, he declared it publishable.
I’ll spare you the painful saga of my following up on references for possible agents for the book and discovering that they were either not currently taking submissions or had submission websites that asked questions like, “How many followers do you have on social media?” I dunno, a couple hundred maybe, just of internet friends not followers of my writing? I’m not an “influencer”! I get that this is how publishing works these days, you’re expected to be doing your own PR, but… nah. I’m just a guy who wrote a thing, I don’t have a rabid fan base on AO3 (the fanfic website, An Archive Of Our Own),
But I realized that all the cozy novels that I really liked were self-published by their authors. Which makes some sense. Cozy novels have grown in popularity — like, Legends And Lattes, about an orc woman who retires from adventuring to open a coffee shop, actually won a Hugo Award for Best Novel — but they’re not the sort of “fighting a desperate battle against a dark lord” that brings in the mass market and gets you a movie deal. They’re generally warm, quiet stories about found family, and sensible people solving problems in sensible ways with the help of their friends.
(I think there’s a reason cozy novels have become so popular. The world’s kind of stressful right now, y’all. People want to get away from that for a bit, and be reassured by friendship and caring and sanity.)
Well, it turns out that what I wrote *is*, in fact, a warm, quiet story about found family, and sensible people solving problems in sensible ways with the help of their friends. Also: letting things go but not letting people go, working through your issues, doors between worlds, the multiverse, reincarnation, panpsychism, and the fundamental nature of reality. But mostly found family. So, self-publishing seemed like the way to go.
I confess, I wasn’t planning on publishing any of this. I was just writing it because it was enormously satisfying to write, and even Hal telling me that it was publishable wasn’t quite enough to push me over the line of hubris that I thought was required to do it. I mean, *I* liked the book — I should hope that I did! — but that was no reason to think that anyone else would.
But, at a certain point I realized that I’d stopped writing stuff for pleasure. And I quickly realized that it was because, in my head, the previous thing wasn’t done yet. The last step to writing that book was to publish it, and until I did that, my brain wasn’t freeing up to write other things. I had to do the last step, or I couldn’t move on.
So, I started looking more carefully at what I would need to do, to do that, what was required to self-publish on Amazon — book formatting, cover artists, etc — and putting some of my fiction up on AO3. (Where it’s done better than I’d hoped, honestly, considering that it’s original fiction on what is mainly a fan fiction website, where most people are going for Naruto stories and romances about Harry x Draco as secret lovers. And werewolves. So many werewolves.) And, low and behold, as soon as I started moving on this, I started writing again!
And, thus, here we are: with me setting up a new WordPress site to be an author page, and to be able to explain in one place, to my friends and family, what this book is and why you might or might not want to read it.
The Book Description
The link to the book on Amazon is here: https://a.co/d/6mc2xUs
Have a look at this book cover, y’all, it’s fricken amazing!
Mousam Banerjee is the artist. I sent him a description of what I was looking for, along with reference photos, and he vastly exceeded my expectations. This blows my mind. I can only hope that the book is as good as the cover, or I may be sued for false advertising!
So, here’s the description from the back cover:
When his estranged grandfather dies, William Hanlon, the last surviving member of an old West Virginia clan, returns to the family estate to settle his affairs, only to discover that his family were not just community leaders, but also the guardians of an ancient doorway between the human and fae worlds. To accept that responsibility, William must embrace all the things his grandfather hid from him, forge new connections with the people he’d been cut off from, and rebuild a community and a tradition of guardians that had nearly died out in his family’s last generation.
And maybe find a boyfriend. Surely that’s not asking too much?
(It’s just an eBook for now. Amazon has a special Kindle publishing thing where if you list the eBook with them for the first 90 days — no other formats there, and no eBook presence on other sites, they like you more. I gather that’s important. I’ll probably see about a physical book later.)
I want to be clear, here: I am not trying to push this book on anyone. No “If you were really my friend/family- member/acquaintance, you’d read my book!”. As I said earlier, *I* like the book — I laughed, I cried, it’s a part of me now — but I’m really publishing it because my brain seems to think it’s the last step of the process, and won’t let me move on otherwise. Stupid brain.
But, still…. My friend Jenni was very insistent that I not do my usual self-deprecating thing and tell you all the reasons that you shouldn’t read it. I suppose she has a point. ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄
So, what I’ll do instead is give you a few descriptors, and you can decide if it’s something you’d be interested in or not, and no harm no foul either way.
- It’s a cozy novel. It’s mostly about people figuring out both their lives and some weird, magical stuff that happens to intersect with their lives. There’s more time spent discussing food than there is discussing anything threatening.
- There’s not a whole lot of stress involved: there are maybe 3 places that resemble fight scenes and they’re over *real* fast.
- There are some pretty funny bits, if I do say so myself. And, to be clear: I do. I mean, I used to write technical documents for work that people found entertaining — you know how hard that is? (Spoiler: it’s hard.) I wrote a travel blog for a while that my friends thought was funny and this is kind of more of the same. Like if I had traveled to West Virginia instead of Chiang Mai, and wrote about a doorway to the Elflands that I found there. If you never read my blog, well, you’ll have to take my word for it. Good stuff. 😁👍
- There’s some emotional, personal growth stuff. Please, for the sweet love of gods, don’t assume it’s about me. Like, my main character starts off as the last surviving member of his family, while most of my relatives are still alive. I did *not* kill y’all off in some weird, fictional, wish fulfillment, really, I didn’t!
- There is queer romance running through the whole thing. Don’t worry, it’s not a kissing book. Ok, there are a couple of kisses, but nothing you wouldn’t have seen on network TV circa 1975. It’s entirely G-rated, nothing stronger than some innuendo. I don’t think I could stop laughing long enough to write erotica. So, if erotica (or, gasp!, queer erotica) is the sort of thing that would worry you, never fear. (Unless simply knowing that queer relationships exist is the sort of thing that worries you, in which case: be afraid. Be very afraid.)
- It’s a long book, not gonna lie. If this were 1990 and I’d found an agent and a publisher, they’d have probably made me split it into two books, cause it’s almost exactly 2 books long and has a plot division neatly in the middle. I’m hoping it will feel like, “Cool, there’s a lot of it,” rather than “Gods, isn’t it over yet?” but that’s really in your hands, not mine. If anyone pays cash for it, at least they’ll be getting high word count per dollar. That’s what people look for, right? Right?!
Speaking of paying: This blog post is meant for friends and family, and I have zero interest in trying to convince y’all to shell out real money for my little artistic endeavors. So I’m going to be sending you folks a Dropbox link where you can get the book in your choice of formats, if you’re so inclined. I have discovered that every eBook system (Kindle, Kobo, B&N, Apple, etc) has a slightly different way of displaying ePub books, so pick the one that best suits your needs. For example, with Amazon, you can pick the “Doorways-Kindle.epub” file, download it, and email it to your Amazon Kindle address, and then it will show up in your Kindle and you can read it without buying it.
For the rest of y’all: it’s on Kindle Unlimited, so it’s free there if you have that. I have to keep it there exclusively for 3 months, according to their rules, but then I can post it elsewhere too. Your call what you want to do with that.
And, finally: I will not be asking *any* of you if you’ve read it. There’s zero pressure. Read it if you like, and I hope you enjoy it! If you don’t, no worries, I won’t be offended. (Even if it’s somehow objectively good, cozy novels aren’t to everyone’s tastes. No harm, no foul.).
If you do find you liked it, and want to leave a nice Amazon review, I wouldn’t say no! In fact… I would say yes! But, please don’t say that you know me. “I used to change his diapers, and he’s grown up to be such a talented boy!” is not a winning review strategy, sad to say.
And if you read it and don’t like it… I’m not sure. I was going to write, “Just don’t tell me!” But, ya know, whatevs. Crush my dreams, I don’t mind. <sniffle> I can take it!
I will still love you! ❤️
(Mostly.)
Your friend / family member / acquaintance / random book author,
Charles
(As in Charles Castleberry. You probably knew that. If you were looking for someone else, like Chris Hemsworth… wow, do I not blame you, but you came to the wrong place. Good luck with your search!)
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