Like most writers, I start with one question: What if…?
For my upcoming epic fantasy novel, In the Tower of the Wizard King, I asked the question, “What if there was a portal in a trunk?”
I never imagined where the story would take me or how it would end up or that it would be about four characters whose lives are forever intertwined. I never imagined that it would lead my main character, Aoife (EE-fa) from the human realm to Faery to find her missing mother, nor did I imagine that it would to a time travel to the past of Faery.
It was definitely a book I wrote with a lot of joy. It made me happy to visit the characters every day and find out what their story was and how they were going to solve these problems I’d created for them. The more I wrote the story, the more I realized there was a lot more to the world than I initially thought.
I’ve asked myself “What if” a lot when starting a new book, but I’ve never plotted an entire story around the question before. It was a new experience for me.
The book releases September 1.
Here’s the blurb:
In the Age of Wizards, Time is a commodity more valuable than gold.
Her magic is dormant.
When Aoife Burke rushes home after the unexpected death of her father, she discovers her mother has vanished amidst inexplicable circumstances. With a warrant out for her mother’s arrest, Aoife returns to her childhood home to search for clues to lead to her whereabouts. Another shock awaits her—Sean O’Connell, the object of her girlhood crush, purchased the family home. She senses Sean is hiding something from her, refuses to let her inside and does everything he can to keep her out. A determined Aoife breaks inside and stumbles upon an antique trunk in the attic. When she opens it, instead of the normal musty clothes and ancient letters, she finds a stairway leading into darkness. It calls to her and she cannot resist stepping into the trunk and onto that first stair.
His magic is dangerous.
Sean O’Connell has been assigned by the Inter-dimensional Portal Protection Agency to keep Aoife and her mother out of Faery. But when she breaks into the house and disappears through the portal in the trunk—like her mother—he has no choice but to go after her, even though stepping into Faery will force him to face his own demons. Now keeping her safe and out of the hands of the Wizard King becomes a fight to save Aoife’s life from her own mother, who has discovered a time portal in Faery that can lead her back in time to alter her past mistakes—one of them the conception of Aoife. Sean is willing to do anything to make sure Aoife’s life is not eradicated—even if that means he has to tap into his dangerous magic to do it.
