Note for Parents & Readers
(or some things you might want to know about the nature of the content I write)
I don't enjoy books, movies or shows that darken my soul. I guess I’m sensitive to that kind of thing. Images of gory violence, drugs, and torture stick in my mind and haunt me for days. I do love stories though – a lot – especially ones that keep me on the edge of my seat, make me laugh, fall in love with characters, show underdogs coming into their own, and take me to fascinating new worlds. The books I loved growing up were like that, and it’s how I wrote Misfit’s Magic. There is nothing demented or nasty in it. The story is driven by characters, not shock-value and gore-factor (I despise bland stories that try to jar the audience to justify their existence). While I think this is especially important for books targeted to younger audiences (that’s what I write – I guess I’m still a kid at heart), I also appreciate it when I find authors that follow the same consideration for adult fiction.
As a kid growing up in the sixties seventies and eighties, I had undiagnosed mild dyslexia, ADD, and social anxiety (nobody in my world even talked about those things then). It made growing up hard and succeeding in school difficult. To get by, I lived in a fantasy world. I read, invented things, drew cartoons, and eventually discovered a love for the English language, world crafting, and storytelling. Watching a movie or a show with me can be hard. I analyze the structure of the story and how the various components that make great stories work (theme, message, character arcs, character crafting, plot lines, chemistry, world-crafting, grand-argument elements, subtlety, etc.) are handled or mishandled. Basically – don’t watch a bad movie or show with me. I just can’t help myself. Just ask my wife.
When I came up with the story idea for Misfit’s Magic, I wrote seven versions of it until I created one with the right structure. Writing a book is thousands of hours of work (especially when you write it seven times), but it’s a labor of love for those who enjoy ensnaring people’s minds and hearts and pulling them into a deep fictive trance. That’s why we read, right? To lose ourselves in a story full of characters that feel like new friends. I believe that ultimately, writers owe their readers the courtesy of making the time they spend reading their books enjoyable. Forgetting that is the greatest mistake a writer can make.
Misfit’s Magic is not a simple book (I don't write down to the target age), but it is full of adventure, friendship, fantasy, mystery, twists, turns, and subtlety that leads to a logical conclusion. I really hope you and your children enjoy the time you spend reading it.
Note about Revision 2 published on November 1st: I realized recently that I let the language in this book lean a little too far toward YA, and as I now find that children as young as 10 are having it red to them or are reading it themselves, I wasn't happy with that. Revision 2 has "clean language" appropriate for that age. All uses of soft profanity like "hell", "damn" "screw you", "screwed" and "crap" have been removed. If anyone received a copy of version 1 and was not happy with the language it contained, contact me for a replacement.