Falling Shadows
My short novel Shadowmancy is getting a US release and a gorgeous new cover.
My short novel Shadowmancy will be out on in North America on September 5th and thought it would behoove me to tell you about it. Let’s start with the gorgeous new cover by artist Shannon Potratz:
Shadowmancy is the story of a damaged young man who is accepted into a magic school where his father is a disgraced former teacher. Now I know you think you know where this is going as soon as I say the words ‘magic school’, and I would like to assure you that this is not the case.
I’m just a bit too old to have been caught up in the Fandom That Shall Not Be Named. To tell you the truth, I always resented it a bit because of the similarity its hero has to Timothy Hunter, from the Books of Magic comics by Gaiman et al., which I enjoyed years before the other bespectacled, dark haired English boy with an owl learned he was to be a Wizard. But even more than that, I’ve loved Ursula Le Guin’s young goatherd-turned-mage and the stories of his own magical education. I won’t repeat what I’ve written about that work elsewhere here, but if you are interested, it’s here.
The first book in Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle has the protagonist, Ged, dispatched to magic school. Upon graduation, he sets forth on some adventures of the dragon-slaying variety, but these adventures are a distraction. Ged is dogged by a shadow that he loosed as a careless apprentice and the real story of the first Earthsea book is about Ged coming to terms with his past hubris. If you’re looking for a pure source of inspiration for Shadowmancy, it’s right there. This story is about the hero’s shadow.
Roger Zelazny is my other favourite writer, and I should also mention his book Jack of Shadows here. Published just a few years after A Wizard of Earthsea, the protagonist of this book is a vicious rogue with magical power over shadow. Jack lives on a world where one half, which lies in perpetual darkness, is powered by magic. The bright side is a beacon of science. Jack is the only being who can travel between the civilizations. You’ll see many of these elements present in Shadowmancy as well: a sociopathic protagonist, the boundaries between science and art, and, yes, some cray-cray magical action scenes.
But let’s go back to the subject of schooling. Attending a magical academy would be altogether stranger and more disturbing than going to an ordinary school, and schools are disturbing enough as it is, especially if one looks to what is going on at schools in the United States, with their active shooter drills, the arming of teachers, and the recruitment of ex-military personnel to fill teaching staff gaps. So that’s here I am coming from in this book, which I think of as a psychological horror novel first, and a dark fantasy novel second.
Here’s the blurb:
On a mountain that does not exist, there is a school where they teach the impossible.
From his first day at the Academy, things are difficult for Quay. Though he has surrendered his name, like every other acolyte at the magical school, Quay is the son of a disgraced professor, and he finds that his father’ s old enemies are already lined up against him– while the professor’ s own faction is just as suspicious. As Quay’ss powers grow it becomes apparent that the damaged young boy may prove a greater threat than his father ever was.
Deep in the Library of Shadows, Quay finds a way to survive his father’ s treacherous legacy, but the price is high indeed.
Shadowmancy began its life as a short comic, which I wrote for the brilliant Nic Hunter to draw. It was published in Kagemono #1, an anthology series I intended to showcase my short horror stories in comics form. The first part I wrote became what is the last chapter of the book—so I always knew where this was going even when I hadn’t worked out the full journey. I planned out the rest of the story as a six part serial, but when our to publication plans were truncated and we put the project aside with only three of the installments written and drawn.
Some years later I decided to adapt Shadowmancy into a novella. I was in the midst of doing this, wondering where I could possibly sell it, when a small press approached me to pitch them something. They liked the sound of and encouraged me to extend it to its current length, which, at 45,000 words, (just barely) qualifies it as a novel. But shit happens, as it does in the world of small press, and the publisher went under.
When Jason Fischer and I decided to start our self-publishing co-op, Argonautica Press, this was the first project I wanted to do. Then Outland Entertainment acquired the North American rights our line (as discussed here), and that brings us to today.
I’ll write more about the book and its approach to magic closer to the release date, but for the meantime, the Outland edition of Shadowmancy is now available for preorder. It is also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Australian readers can of course find copies here.
Cheers for listening. I’ll be back in your inbox next week with more weird bookiness and future spookisms.
Franksly yours,
— Jason