ey there!
Well, here it is. As an author, this is the most exciting part of the job. More exciting than signing a new contract or opening a royalty statement, or even receiving an award nomination. Here it is. The best thing in my life since… the release of my previous book, nearly two years ago:
My new book is out!
Shadowmancy is a book about a boy named Quay who goes to a secret, magical academy where his now-disgraced father was a leading professor. Quay’s father was a bad seed, and the legacy he has left his son–both in the way Quay has been reared and the politics he has left behind him at the Academy–quickly bears its poisonous fruit. Quay is a talented but troubled student and, he’s going to need every skill he can muster to survive his education. But for all his youth, he may yet prove a bigger threat to the Academy and its ways than his father ever was.
I hope you will find this book quite different to what you might expect. I am strongly influenced by Ursula Le Guin, so if you like the Earthsea books (they’re my favourites) I think you will appreciate these books. I’m not quite the right generation for J.K. Rowling, but I don’t believe you will find many similarities there… but I have also heard comparisons to Lev Grossman’s Magicians series. I am a fan of those books, but I think this book is different again, being less concerned with secondary worlds and more concerned with abusive families and the process of making Art. Or art with a lowercase ‘a’… But that is an essay for another time.
TL;DR: Think of Wizard of Earthsea and We Need to Talk About Kevin, not Harry Potter.
Shadowmancy is fast-moving, cerebral, and very dark, and I hope you will enjoy it for what it is. At the very least, it’s full of gorgeous illustrations by my long time collaborator Nicholas Hunter.
If you’d like to grab a copy it’s available right now, direct from Argonautica Press, or from the usual online vendors (Amazon Kindle ‣Rakuten Kobo ‣Barnes and Noble Nook ‣Apple iBookstore ‣Google Play ‣)
And remember, if you are local to Melbourne and want to hang out, we are hosting a book launch on:
Thursday, 7 November 2019 from 18:00-21:00, at:
Readings Bookshop
701 Glenferrie Rd
Hawthorn 3122
Jason Fischer and I are going to launch the whole Argonautica line, but Shadowmancy, our new title, will be front and center of the festivities. Narrelle Harris is going to MC the event, so you know it’s going to be a fine old time. And so will my Mum, so I will be on my best behaviour. We’d love to see you come along.